FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts:

CJ Frogozo, cj@fitzgibbonmedia.com, 310.570.2622

Madison Donzis, madison@fitzgibbonmedia.com, 210.488.6220

Philadelphia, PA — Starting this week, ColorOfChange.org will run a moving billboard around Temple University for ten days, 8 hours a day, calling on President Neil Theobald to take definitive action to address corruption of the school’s academic integrity by for-profit prison companies. Starting Oct. 13th, ColorOfChange will have a positional billboard running for 4 weeks near Roosevelt Expressway and W. Cayuga Street.

The billboards read: “Temple professors published an unethical private prison study” “Tell Temple University: Set a higher standard of ethical research” “Temple University: Private prisons corrupt academic integrity”

Images of the moving billboards may be seen here:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.colorofchange.org/images/Templebillboardlive.jpg https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.colorofchange.org/images/Templebillboards2.jpg

Rashad Robinson, executive director of ColorOfChange.org said, “Temple officials have failed to take any definitive public action to address the growing student, faculty, and public outrage at the private prison study published by Temple professors, which praised for-profit prisons without any mention of the study’s private prison funding.

“Private prisons are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses of the past 30 years and they depend on this type of inaccurate and unethical research to legitimize their bad practices in the eyes of the public. The study has had significant real world harm, with Michigan passing a devastating privatization bill following the study’s release, and Temple needs to contend with the impacts of this unethical study in a real way.

“More than 25,000 ColorOfChange members are calling on President Neil Theobald to move forward new policies that will require Temple researchers to reveal funding sources at all stages of the publication process, from working papers to final reports. By failing to strengthen the school’s ethics policies, Temple is keeping the door open for future corruption by for-profit prisons and violating it’s commitment to ethical research that furthers innovation, critical thinking, and the public good.”

ColorOfChange.org launched a petition calling on President Theobold to investigate the report back in July. Since then the petition has garnered over 25,000 supporters. http://act.colorofchange.org/sign/temple_university/

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With over 900,000 members, ColorOfChange.org is the nation’s largest online civil rights organization.