HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: U. North Carolina teaching assistants hold grades hostage over ‘Silent Sam’ statue plan. They’re actually holding students hostage. It’s a disgraceful dereliction of duty. Should they do it, students should file suit. The university, surprisingly, seems to have a grip on reality here: “Such actions have been interpreted as coercion and an exploitation of the teacher-student relationship and in fact are a violation of students’ First Amendment rights as well as federal law.”