Salt Lake Tribune | 2000-12-04 | Page 14

e Page A14 OUR VIEW The Salt Lake Tribune’s Editorial Position Sticks and Stones Sticks and stone might break your bones, but names can never hurt you. Lawsuits are a different matter, however, and the Beaver County School District and a former administrator are embroiled in a childish legal mess today because they ignored the simple wisdom ofthe nursery rhyme. District officials started the trouble in May when they overreacted to a student's Internet home page, on which students and administrators were the targets of a’ vulgar string of insults. No threats appeared on Ian Lake’s Web page, butofficials claim they feared for the public’s safety and liad the teen arrested. Safety seemed less a motivation than vengeance, however, when sheriff's deputies seized Lake’s computer while leaving several guns in his home. The overblown incident might have ‘ subsided long ago had Milford High simply suspended or even expelled the teen. Instead, Lake was held for seven days in juvenile lockup, encouraged to leave town (heis | ing with grandparents in California) and charged with criminal libel. The charge was unnecessarily harsh. If anyone was libeled by Lake's insults, they have adequate remedy in civil court. That finally occurred to one ofthe Web page’stargets, former Milford High Principal Walter Schofield, three months later, and he sued Lakein civil court. Betterlate than never? Maybe notthis time. That suit has further inflamed the situation. Lake has responded with a civil rights lawsuit against Schofield, the school. district and other district officials, and he is asking for $7 million in damages. The legal trifecta begins in earnest this week with a hearing on the criminal libel charge. Ifthe Beaver County SchoolDistrict is wondering where the path through such a legal morass can lead, it need look no farther than Schofield's new employer, the Salt Lake School District. The Salt Lake district wasted $197,000’ of state moneydefending itself from two student lawsuits after ‘ing gay clubs from East High School, where Schofield now works. The American Civil Liberties Union, which has taken Lake's side in the criminal case, has asked the 10th Circuit Court to force Salt Lake district to pay $300,000 in legal fees for one of the gay club suits andis negotiating with the district on fees for the secondsuit. Lake’s Web page was profane and insulting, but while his medium might have been unique,his rantings were not unlike slurs that can be heard and read every day in high schoollocker rooms and hallways across the country. Dis- trict officials lashed out like angry children on the playground, and thus have added a second verse to the wise old rhymethat could have saved everyone a lot of trouble and expense: Names alone can’t break your bones,but lawsuits can break the bank. Israel Calls Election election problems,considerIsrael. Ehud Barak,the Israeli prime minister, agreed last weekto call new elections for this spring. Barak has beenin office for only 17 months. His predecessor, leader. Barak will be willing to make any concessionto achieve somekindofdeal, the critics say. But thatis not necessarily true. Arafat mustcalculate that he will be better off cutting a deal with Barak than Benjamin Netanyahu, held office for risking the return of Netanyahu as Is- If you think the United States has only 19 months. The two menare ex- - pected to face off for the top job again, though thatis notyet certain. The newelection is being called after a two-month spate of violence with the Palestinians thathas claimed thelives of some 260 Palestinians and 35 Israelis. The other major casualty has been the peace process. Barak staked his leadershipofIsrael ona questfora final peace settlement not only with the Palestinians but with Lebanon and Syria. Israel withdrew its troops from Lebanon in May, but the CampDavid negotiationsin July did not bear fruit. Now both the peace process and Barak's government havecollapsed. fronically, his best chance to win a new term as prime ministeris to reach some sort of accommodation with the Palestinians, be it interim or otherwise. An agreement would become his election platform. against Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian raeli prime minister. During his short term, Netanyahu was an obstacle to peace, andin the wakeofthe violence, he will almost surely be one again. His party, Likud, has savaged Barak’s peace efforts and argued for taking a hard line against Palestinian violence. Of course, it is possible that’ Arafat does not want peace unless it achieves his goal of Palestinian sovereignty over the holy sites in Jerusalem, something that the Israelis will never concede. Eventually, both sides mustrealize that somesort of shared authority andjoint administration is the only hope. « So, Israel enters new elections. in a state ofnear-war. Neitherofthe two most likely candidates for the top job was able to complete his previous term in office. What's more,the Israeli system for direct election ofthe prime minister means that the successful candidate may enter office without the backing of a parliamentary majority. The likely result is another weak government. ANOTHERVIEW THE PUBLIC FORUM Lettersfrom The Tribune’s readers Vote Smart Thank goodness for the Florida Supreme Court andthe Florida Legislature. Without their wisdom, Floridians who voted incorrectly or notatall for a presidential candidate need not worry. Maybe by the time we havethe next presidential election the lucky voters in Florida won't even have to go to the polls. Why should they? . Obviously the state judiciary, state legislators, lawyers andelection officials know the will and intent of the voters better than the voters themselves do. So maybe in the next election the state officials can just figure out how manyregistered voters of each party reside in each precinct and assign the appropriate number of votes to the candidates. No more having to deal with those overly complex ballots and cumbersome voting machines. Some lawyeror judge can vote for you. I don’t know how many dimples I may. have madein a ballot, or how many poor old chads I have impregnated.I don’t even ‘e. [do know thatit is my responsibility (a rightto vote. I can vote smartly, stupidly, correctly, or incorrectly, that is my choice, But once I walk out and drop my ballot in the box I am done andI certainly do not want somejudge,lawyer,legislator or election official telling me how I intended to vote regardless of what my ballot shows. So get overit folks. Ifyou goofed up, too bad; move on with yourlife. Don’t let the government take over andtell you how you voted this time, Just get it right next time. ROD WETSEL Riverton From The Minneapolis Star Tribune u Kernel of Truth Thoroughly Utahn Scientists cringe when the slur “Frankenfood” is applied to biotech ster escapesfrom the laboratory and has to be recaptured by his creator. It’s not a bad allegory for the recent fiasco over StarLink corn, and it shows why the public deserves a better accounting from StarLink's inventor. StarLink, a corn variety that produces its own internal pesticide, was marketed to farmers starting in 1998 even though federal regulators had not approved it for export or human consumption. In theory, farmers would grow it only for livestock feed. But in September, traces of StarLink corn turned up in taco shells, triggering a huge product recall. In October, StarLink was detected in Japanese baking mixes. Now16 attorneys general and Minnesota Agriculture Commissfoner Gene Hugoson want blood. They're asking StarLink’s creator, a North Carolina biotech firm called Aventis CropScience, to reimburse farmers and grain elevators for financial losses resulting from chaos that has ensued in the corn marketplace, If consumers are to reap the benefits of biotechnology . . . they must have confidence in governmenttesting of new foods and in industry protocols that honor governmenttesting. Farmers need to know that they can plant new products without nasty market surprises. The p"blic needs to know that biotech companies won't bring products to market before the market is ready. StarLink has challenged all of these premises, and Aventis needs to explain how it happened. TheSalt LakeTribune UTAH’S INDEPENDENT VOICESINCE 1871 PAST PUBLISHERS John F, Fitzpatrick (1924-1960) PUBLISHER Dominic Welch John “’, Gallivan (1960-1983) EDITOR Jerry O'Brien (1983-1994) James E. Shelledy 4 KEARNS-TRIQUNE CORPORATION, 143 8. MAINST, SALT Lane CITY, M111 name, signature, address and daytime telephone numbers. other than your name and the city in which youlive are kept confidential. @ Keep it short. Concise letters developing a single theme are more likely to be published. @ Please type and double space, @ Letters are condensed andedited. @ Because of the volume of mail received, not all submissions are published. @ Mail to Public Forum, The Salt Lake Tribune, P.O. Box 867, Salt Lake City, Utah 84110 ‘@ Our fax numberis [phone]. Jordan’s Intent? I had a strange dream last night. I dreamed thatI had gone back a few years andthe Utah Jazz and the Chicago Bulls were again playing for the NBA Championship. Butthis time, the series wentall the way to Game7,It was close, hardfought gamein aclose, hard-foughtseries. But at the final buzzer, the scoreboard showed the Jazz up by3. Butwait! A quick recountoftheofficial scoresheet showed that a point for the Bulls had been missed, so the score was corrected and the Jazz were upby 2. But wait! A look at the game tape showed the Jeff Hornacek’s big toe was touching theline ononeofhis three-point shots. The officials decided to apply the rules strictly, and deducted anotherpoint. The Jazz were nowupby1.(Strangely,in my dream Jeff was wearing a military uniform.) Lori Hiatt (Forum, Nov. 29) puts on crops, but even a clumsy metaphor oc casionally carries sometruth, Consider the moment when Frankenstein’s mon‘ display her extensive ignorance and prejudice when she ways,“Asfar as the nonMormons in our state, if they are so highlysensitive, then why in the world do they live here? I would be just as happy for them to go back to where they came from...” T've got a question for Ms. Hiatt: How about those of us non-Mormons whoare from here? Don’t tell meto leave, because Iloveit here andI'm not going anywhere. It is Ms. Hiatt who seems to have a problem. Perhaps she should leave. Both Mormons and non-Mormons alike would be, better off without the kind of selfrighteous bigotry shejust displayed. JOHN BARNHILL Salt Lake City But wait! The Bulls organization somehow managed to convince the officials that even if a player had missed a shot,it was his intent that was important. If it could reasonably be presumed that a player intended to score when he had missed, then points should be counted. And so a review of the gametape began. But this new rule was only applied to Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. The intents of all of the other players on the court were not examined. I woke up thinking thatifthe Bulls had won originally, or after the official recount, or maybe even after the reduction of Hornacek’s points on a minor technicality, I would have been disappointed, but I would have recognized the Bulls as the winners and offered them my congratulations. But if this final, selective application of a rule change put the Bulls overthe top, how could I ever recognize them as the legitimate winner? DAVE ARGYLE Riverton Favorable Portents Tknowthatfor a few Utahns what I am aboutto say will be hard to accept, but Al Gore should concede to George W. Bush. But don't fret; Utah is slowly advancing to more liberal ideologies. For instance, we are now the third-most Republican state (after Idahoand ee However, I to After all, at least the LDS Church has fi- nally taken a position thatit is no longer a sin to be a Mormon and a t. Don't think of our loss, think of our gain. We at least salvaged Jim Matheson'srace, , | ZAKREY COON Salt Lake City Q Viciously Appalling ‘The viciousness of the editorial “IQ and Execution”(Tribune, Nov.28) is sim- ply appalling. Worse than the editorial’s blatantdisregard for the plightof a criminally defective human being is its attack upon the integrity of the U.S. Supreme Court. Publication of“IQ and Execution” is demeaning to the illustrious history of The Salt Lake Tribuneas oneofAmerica's most admired independent newspapers, 4 is) — Share the Vision Where to Write @ When submitting letters to the Public Forum, please include your full eryt Mormon womennot content with secondclass status, caught ina bind. . Excommunicated Mormon Women .: . “unhappy”? When graciously ‘submitting tonal its in to the point where the only apparent alternative is rebellion and divorce/ excommunication from “God's church,” perhaps the egos of the menalso need releasing. Are these women hypocrites, professing to believe butdiscrediting this belief in actions? Wemighthonortheir desire to'seek to discern the truth that is within the Mormonhierarchy so that the chaff can be marked for destruction and appropriate maleleadership can restore the happiness originally intended by the Almighty. Does Jean Herzog (“Only Their Opinion,” Forum, Nov,7) havea vision of harmonious differences in roles, allowing the ideal of contentedness to be realized? Perhaps Herzog could share her vision to restore the faith ofthese excommunicated lost sheep, offering grace rather than condemnation. Orwill it take Buddhist intervention to bring the compassion needed to cross this gap? KIMBERLY WILLIAMS Salt Lake City Libertarian Difference Eighty-one thousand-plus Utah voters cast their ballot for a Libertarian this year. My race forthestate treasurer's office attracted Democrats, Independents and Republicans who wanted a change. Manycasttheir first vote for a Libertarian.I hope it will notbe their last. There are free-thinking voters in Utah ofevery stripe, Liberty was the voice with which these voters chose to speak. I just wanted to let them know how well some of us are listening.If you voted for any Libertarian this year, thank you; you've made a difference already. HUGHA. BUTLER Salt Lake City TV News Fiasco Tam thankful that I can turn off Katie “ouric, Tom Brokaw and their ilk on all the networks, They made terrible mess ofthe election and watching them revelin itis sickening. I will get my news from the newspaper. e LOU ANDERSON HeberCity Dumbas a Bush So I hear that Rep, Chris Cannon is overwhelmed by the success of his Web site urging the spamming of editors to aceri+urge fiGare toconcede, worked eeorne with th 7)The Tri . math with 12,000 E-mails, the percenta, with just the Wasatch Front isinfinitest percentage 5 bune's boat. But then I guess that sup. porting such a weak individual like George W. Bush has a tendency to greatly diminish your expectations, GARY COX West Jordan