. . . because much of the content relates both to Washington, D.C., and "outside the beltway" -- the heartland, specifically Iowa -- and because after going from Iowa to Washington via Texas and California I subsequently returned, From DC 2 Iowa.
I'm reminded of a story told about a corporate CEO years ago -- it may have been Alfred Sloan at General Motors. After a brief discussion with a group of his vice presidents regarding a major challenge confronting the company he said, "Well, gentlemen, I see we're all in agreement. That probably means we don't understand the problem. I suggest we think about it some more and meet again in a couple of weeks."
In this case, the Regents are going to meet again in a month.
It's the Mission of Higher Education -- Not the Naming of Buildings
The Regents seem to recognize that the "building naming" issue goes far beyond the mere matter of turning Regents' campus buildings into one of the best advertising buys available to for-profit businesses anywhere, the gift that goes on giving forever: billboards for corporations that will last as long as a building stands.
The Regents are face-to-face with an issue no less significant than the proper role of higher education today in general, and for the Regents' universities in Iowa in particular.
Once the province of religion, with a primary purpose of training ministers, these colleges were followed by land grant universities envisioned to (among other things) assist the agricultural industry.
Once institutions enabling the perpetuation of the socio-economic status of America's elite families, they were expanded to offer opportunity for all -- though still funded by the state, and as close to "free" as possible for students (a goal continued with the GI-Bill following World War II).
Today state funding provides only a small fraction of the cost of running "public universities" that are, in almost every way, the full equivalent of "private universities" -- including the student loan debt that further enriches banks, and impoverishes students, once they graduate (if they do). Once seen as a means to enrich the qualify of one's life over a lifetime other than in a monetary way -- with a greater appreciation of art, music, literature, languages, and a fuller understanding of nature and the products of science that fill our lives -- today a university education is increasingly pursued as (because, in part, it has been advertised as) a way to increase one's income over the course of a lifetime.
Increasingly, higher education is coming to be "corporatized."
Buildings that used to bear the names of ancient scholars now bear the names of donors -- as do faculty and auditorium "chairs," rooms, wings, and even entire colleges.
Facilities are provided for start-up corporations.
Faculty are expected to raise their own salaries from grants -- often, in effect, utilizing university resources and their own talents to increase the bottom line of for-profit corporations, doing research at bargain-basement rates that, but for the lack of state funding, they might not choose to be doing at all.
Universities contribute to the creation of an economy and society in which our very best artists (writers, musicians, graphic artists) are producing the advertising that manipulates consumer demand, and our very best scientists and engineers are paid from defense appropriations to create ever-more-efficient deadly weapons of war.
As I've pointed out in discussing these issues earlier, the primary problem (if such it be) comes from a university's solicitation and acceptance of the money in the first place. Putting the name on the building merely advertises to the world that we're for sale. But what we sold was sold when we took the money -- "with no strings attached."
So that's the issue confronting the Regents -- an issue in which the "naming controversy" is well buried within a substantial pile of more fundamental concerns.
I have my preferences, obviously, but my primary concern is the elimination of hypocrisy.
If our primary role in the 21st Century is to be an "economic engine," if we are simply recognizing our relationship as that of a "subsidiary corporation" in a world that is little more than the Fortune 500, so be it. Let's declare that's the case and do the best possible job we can of pursuing that path, and making those contributions.
Not incidentally, if that's what we decide we are, the controversy surrounding the naming of buildings for our corporate partners and masters thereby becomes a trivial issue to be quickly resolved.
But it's unseemly, in my view, to pretend and advertise that we're here for the students, that we're trying to enrich their lives, that we're committed to the pursuit of a "liberal arts and sciences education," when that's not the case. That's all.
I'd rather we first figure out, and then just declare, what we truly are -- and then start much more aggressively "haggling over price." It's Not About Guns
As for more academic armaments on campus, I'm reminded of the bumper sticker: "Whatever is the question, war is not the answer."
In our case, "whatever is the security issue, weapons are not the answer."
The Regents are also entitled to some praise for wanting to give this one a little more time and investigation as well.
The matter is highlighted by this morning's Press-Citizen.
Bob Patton's editorial cartoons always put the matter most suscinctly, but there is also an excellent column on the editorial page. David Morris, "Guns Aren't Safe Solution,"Iowa City Press-Citizen, September 20, 2007, p. A7.
What's the greatest security concern on the campus at the moment? The fact that the Iowa City police -- armed or unarmed -- have so far (despite their best efforts) been unable to bring a halt to what is now a string of 30 women assaulted on the streets of Iowa City at night.
There are a number of lessons here.
1. As someone commented in an earlier blog here, the primary risk to the security of students occurs on the streets of Iowa City, not the campus of the University.
2. This, in turn, opens a can of worms about the relationship between the campus police and the Iowa City police. One of the arguments offered by proponents of arming the campus police is that they are responsible for patrolling many areas of Iowa City besides the campus, and that they are sometimes called upon by the Iowa City police to help out. Who made those decisions and why?
3. Thankfully, if I've read all the newspaper reports correctly, every woman attacked was able to defend herself and send the attacker running. Thus, it would seem that (a) this is a matter for the Iowa City police, not the campus police, (b) they are armed, (c) but being armed would not seem to be necessary in this instance, and (d) in any event, armed or unarmed, they have been unable to find and arrest the attacker or protect the women.
4. Thus, as Bob Patton illustrates, and I've discussed at length in other blog entries here (see, e.g., "Politics and Psychology," linked below), arming the campus police is little more than an irrelevant "security blanket," a decision being made at the wrong time (a response to Virginia Tech) for the wrong reasons, that (like our invasion of Iraq) is as likely to decrease rather than increase our security.
As Regent Rose Vasquez observed, under any rational benefit-cost analysis one has to acknowledge that arming campus police has the usual equation backwards: there are virtually no benefits to arming campus police (in saved injury and death of students), while on the other hand there are risks of significant cost (in lost lives). So why are we doing this? My best analysis remains Nicholas Johnson, "On Point, Politics, Psychology, Police and Public Relations" in "Politics and Psychology," September 14, 2007.
[As Radio Iowa reports:
Rose Vasquez of Des Moines says the issue shouldn't be bundled into a larger plan. Vasquez says she's ready to vote on arming officers, saying she's opposed to arming the officers and it won't have anything to do with not beefing up security measures. Vasquez says even after hearing from the directors of the three public safety departments about the threats that face campus police, she did not favor arming the officers.
Vasquez says, "There was no situation that sort of rose up or elevated itself to a level that but for a gun, things would have been different."
This week the Regents seemed to be 7-to-1 in favor of more weapons on campus, but they were unanimous that "campus security" was a much bigger and more complex issue than merely supplying more guns.
Even as to the guns, as I noted earlier,
"the evidence [regarding weapon-toting campus police] was, at best, equally divided as to whether arming campus police would make the UI community safer or more dangerous. The discussion of the issue was not driven by academic inquiry, data -- or even a traditional debate format -- with spokespersons putting forward their best case. It was permitted to be driven by those who advocated bringing more guns onto the campus." Nicholas Johnson, "On Point, Politics, Psychology, Police and Public Relations" in "Politics and Psychology," September 14, 2007.
Finally, I put to the students once again . . .
Think, Students: Do you Really Want More Weapons on Campus?
Students can be a real source of trouble for university administrators.
Sometimes it can be because of what the students do. Other times because of what they say -- or think -- the signs they carry, or the sit-ins they organize.
So while I've never had any difficulty understanding why university administrators would want more, and better armed, police and national guard soldiers to protect their campuses from whatever the administrators may find threatening at any given moment, I'm really bewildered as to why students would want more fully armed "authority" with which to deal.
Here's why.
Witness this event from the evening of September 17, demonstrating how the campus police at Florida University, Gainesville, made students "safer" on that campus when one was in the process of merely exercising his First Amendment right in asking former John Kerry a question:
That student in the video, Andrew Meyer, can be grateful that his campus police chose to limit the pain they inflicted to physical violence and the threat (or actual use) of a taser. Based on his screams, however, it sounded like they were pushing tasers to their limits.
Not incidentally, why did this story -- which received widespread national distribution and has been all over the blogosphere, and is certainly related to the current campus BIG STORIES receive nary a mention in the Press-Citizen? (The Gazette at least carried the AP story, with a picture of Meyer. Associated Press, "University of Florida investigating police Tasering of student at forum,"The Gazette, September 19, 2007, p. A5.)
When guns are brought onto a campus to control students the results can be both painful and deadly. In the case of the Kent State Massacre, where armed national guard troops were used, the results were four dead students and nine injured from gunshot wounds.
For those students not old enough to have lived through the Kent State Massacre of May 4, 1970, you might want to review the video below. Because it starts with President Nixon's speech, just substitute "President George W. Bush" for "President Richard Nixon," "Iraq" for "Vietnam," and "Iran" for "Cambodia" to bring it up to date and make it easier to relate to.
Here's another take on those events, from "Democracy Now."
You can't imagine how much safer I feel, knowing that soon the UI will also have access to the deadly weapons necessary to control unruly students.
September 18, 2007, 11:45 a.m., 7:30 p.m. -- Additions (bottom of page) of video of campus police Taser incident Sept. 17 and Kent State Massacre in 1970!!
TIFs, Tiffs, and Sullivan
Rod Sullivan for Supervisor
Every once in awhile a public official comes along who is so outstanding in every way that it is hard for citizen-taxpayers to even fully understand, let alone appreciate, what they have.
Johnson County Supervisor Rod Sullivan is such an official.
Name a positive adjective and it fits: bright, courageous, hard working, creative, leadership, compassionate, friendly, articulate, thoughtful, giving . . . the list is endless.
And there are two reasons why I mention that today. One is that he's just announced his campaign for re-election to a second term on the Johnson County Board of Supervisors. Kathryn Fiegen, "Sullivan decides to seek another term,"Iowa City Press-Citizen, September 18, 2007, p. A3.
The other is an item in his weekly "Sullivan's Salvos," Monday's edition. (It's available to you, as a free email if you're not already a subscriber: Just email rodsullivan@mchsi.com with "subscribe" in the subject line.) Not incidentally, while we're raving about Sullivan, this is in my opinion the single most useful of all the e-zines and email services maintained by any public official.
Not only does it keep you up to date on what Johnson County (and other counties) are doing, it contains personal items, and other informational pieces as well.
Wellmark Joins Doctors, singing: "Taxpayers, can you spare a dime?"
For example, yesterday's edition of "Sullivan's Salvos" contained the following:
A GREAT book for anyone who might be interested is The Great American Jobs Scam by Greg LeRoy. Are you tired of hearing about governments giving our tax dollars to big corporations so they can "retain jobs"? Me, too.
LeRoy debunks several common myths, such as "Company X would have left the community but for these incentives." LeRoy writes at length about the myths of TIF, Enterprise Zones, and many other common economic development tools used by municipalities in the name of growth.
The book offers important suggestions to the tax code that State lawmakers can use to protect our interests, such as combined reporting. This book also notes the work of UI Professors Peter Fisher and Alan Peters.
I urge everyone to read this book, then ask your state and local elected officials to read it as well. It is available at local libraries.
And speaking of TIFs, the Press-Citizen offered a well-written and balanced assessment of the proposed $600,000 subsidy for doctors on this morning's editorial page: Editorial, "TIF is the Wrong Prescription for Surgery Center,"Iowa City Press-Citizen, September 18, 2007, p. A11. (Why "balanced"? Because the paper sets forth the reasons for supporting the hand-out offered by the "Iowa City economic development staff . . . [because of the ] cumulative effect of a number of smaller reasons . . .." And the editorial repeats, "We've always asserted that [TIFs] can be a good tool when used effectively." My position has increasingly become that there is no worthwhile, benefit-cost-risk-justified basis for arguing their "effective" use in any circumstances.)
Want another example of outrageous corporate subsidies?
Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield will build a new $175 million headquarters in downtown Des Moines . . ..
Des Moines will provide a number of incentives . . .. [Des Moines] City Manager Rick Clark . . . declined to put a dollar amount on the incentives . . . , but [Wellmark Group Vice President Cliff] Gold said the combination of state and local incentives is more than $10 million.
. . .
The city's incentives will be in four areas, Clark said.
- The city will shoulder the burden of straightening out High Street to provide a little more room for the project.
- Eventually, the city will help extend the downtown skywalk to the building. That may take some time because the nearest connection now is at Ninth Street and Grand Avenue.
- Some type of mass transit encouragement for Wellmark employees to take the bus will be included.
- Tax increment financing will be use to rebate some property tax money to Wellmark. Clark declined to say how much TIF money might be involved.
Among other things, he said, TIF money will be used to make the new building LEED certified, a designation for buildings that are energy-efficient and use environmentally friendly building technology.
The city could also use TIF money to pay some of the cost of removing chemicals from the property now occupied by a dry cleaner.
The city will work with businesses located in the area to find new locations within the city, Clark said. City officials also helped negotiate the sale of parcels of land on the building site not owned by Iowa Health Systems.
. . .
Wellmark has more modest growth plans - perhaps as many as 100 new employees in the next few years, according to Gold. . . .
Advantages to a downtown site include a central location, access to transportation and sticking to a 68-year history with the central business district, Gold said. . . .
Gold said that Wellmark has adequate resources to pay for constructing the building and equipping it.
"We don't think we'll need to borrow," he said.
Note the following:
(1) At best, these corporate subsidies accomplished no more than shifting a building from West Des Moines to downtown Des Moines -- a classic example of intra-Iowa (in this case intra-city!) competition producing no benefit whatsoever for Iowa's taxpayers.
(2) Claims of significant new job creation are often inflated or downright bogus. In this case they were virtually non-existent with a "modest growth" possibility of 100 low wage jobs -- "perhaps."
(3) The real reasons for this corporate decision, as is almost always the case, involved factors other than bribery with taxpayers' money -- as the company's executives revealed they wanted the downtown location because of "a central location, access to transportation and sticking to a 68-year history with the central business district."
(4) Moreover, they didn't need the money. In addition to the fact that they earlier had enough spare pocket change to invest in a 66-acre urban plot they ended up not using, as Wellmark's Executive Vice President Gold put it, "Wellmark has adequate resources to pay for constructing the building and equipping it" and "We don't think we'll need to borrow." Not only does it not sound like low income housing (one of TIFs' original purposes) it doesn't even sound like a gold-plated corporate tin cup in need of additional funds from the taxpayers.
And speaking of Wellmark buildings . . .
. . . UI President Sally Mason would prefer not to have a policy on building naming.
The Regents decided to postpone coming up with a naming policy, but Mason is quoted as saying, "I would prefer our hands not be tied and we look at it on a case-by-case basis."
Sounds like we may be in for weapons in the hands of campus police AND corporate names on UI's building -- "on a case-by-case basis," of course.
Erin Jordan, "Regents Seek New Naming Policy,"Des Moines Register, September 18, 2007, 9:34 a.m. ("New U of I president Sally Mason said last week that the Regents and the universities should remain flexible on the issue. 'I would prefer our hands not be tied and we look at it on a case-by-case basis,' Mason told Des Moines Register editors and reporters Friday.")
Senator Joins Fruitless Call for Research and Balance on Campus Weapons Issue
Since the Regents are also looking at providing their campus police officers with deadly weapons I thought I might add today that four days ago I wrote, "the evidence [regarding weapon-toting campus police] was, at best, equally divided as to whether arming campus police would make the UI community safer or more dangerous. The discussion of the issue was not driven by academic inquiry, data -- or even a traditional debate format -- with spokespersons putting forward their best case. It was permitted to be driven by those who advocated bringing more guns onto the campus." Nicholas Johnson, "On Point, Politics, Psychology, Police and Public Relations" in "Politics and Psychology," September 14, 2007.
This morning we read that a much more authoritative -- but probably no more persuasive -- source is making similar suggestions: "In a Sept. 10 letter addressed to Iowa State University President Gregory Geoffroy and later sent to the nine members of the Iowa state Board of Regents, Sen. Herman Quirmbach, D-Ames, said the report lacked data-driven analysis, trends in campus crime, assessment of risks and an analysis of possible effects of such a change." Brian Morelli, "Senator questions security report; Quirmbach: Recommendations lack thoroughness, objectivity,"Iowa City Press-Citizen, September 18, 2007.
Given Governor Chet Culver's last minute jump on the well-armed bandwagon (because of Virginia Tech), my "Politics and Psychology" analysis of this groundswell seems more and more correct with every passing day. Associated Press, "Culver Favors Arming Campus Police,"Des Moines Register, September 18, 2007, 10:48 a.m. ("He [Governor Culver] says the shootings on the Virginia Tech campus in April highlights the need for serious consideration of security on college campuses.")
To no one's surprise, the Regents have now come down with a "firm, possible maybe" on the issue:
The Iowa Board of Regents delayed a final decision to arm campus police for at least a month. The board unanimously approved a motion to develop a comprehensive safety and security plan for Iowa's three public universities. That plan would be approved at a future meeting. The board then voted 7-1 to allow a provision as part of that policy allowing campus police officers to carry firearms in the regular course of duties. Before Regent Michael Gartner voted on the second motion, he clarified that the decision to arm police could still be reversed with a future vote on the comprehensive safety plan.
Regent Ruth Harkin of Cumming says there are many other issues that go into a secure campus, and it's difficult to single out arming campus police. "I just wouldn't want to give the impression that we think we have responded to the security call by voting on a firearms policy," Harkin says. The board asked its staff to develop a comprehensive security plan that would include arming campus officers.
The only Regent to voice opposition to the idea - Rose Vasquez of Des Moines - says the issue shouldn't be bundled into a larger plan. Vasquez says she's ready to vote on arming officers, saying she's opposed to arming the officers and it won't have anything to do with not beefing up security measures. Vasquez says even after hearing from the directors of the three public safety departments about the threats that face campus police, she did not favor arming the officers.
Vasquez says, "There was no situation that sort of rose up or elevated itself to a level that but for a gun, things would have been different."
Think, Students: Do you Really Want More Weapons on Campus?
Students can be a real source of trouble for university administrators.
Sometimes it can be because of what the students do. Other times because of what they say -- or think -- the signs they carry, or the sit-ins they organize.
So while I've never had any difficulty understanding why university administrators would want more, and better armed, police to protect whatever they may find threatening at any given moment, I'm really bewildered as to why students would want more fully armed "authority" with which to deal.
Here's why.
Witness this event from last evening (September 17), demonstrating how the campus police at Florida University, Gainesville, made students "safer" on that campus when one was in the process of asking former Senator John Kerry a question:
That student in the video, Andrew Meyer, can be grateful that his campus police chose to limit the pain they inflicted to a taser. Based on his screams, however, it sounded like they were pushing tasers to their limits.
When guns are brought onto a campus to control students the results are both painful and deadly. In the case of the Kent State Massacre, where armed national guard troops were used, the results were four dead students and nine injured from gunshot wounds.
For those students not old enough to have lived through the Kent State Massacre of May 4, 1970, you might want to review the video below. Because it starts with President Nixon's speech, just substitute "President George W. Bush" for "President Richard Nixon," "Iraq" for "Vietnam," and "Iran" for "Cambodia" to bring it up to date and make it easier to relate to.
Here's another take on those events, from "Democracy Now."
You can't imagine how much safer I feel, knowing that soon the UI will also have access to the weapons necessary to control unruly students.
Given President Mason's and other UI administrators' obvious priority on campus security -- spurred on by their having received their third email regarding bomb threats [Kurtis Hiatt, "String of Bomb Threats Continues,"The Daily Iowan, August 30, 2007, p. A1] -- I'm sure they are, or soon will be, all over the Virginia Tech report. But they won't find it in the local papers.
Here are links to the New York Times' story and the entire Review Panel's lengthy report, broken down into pdf files, including its 70 recommendations -- all presumably of at least interest, if not direct applicability, to all U.S. colleges and universities. Ian Urbina, "Virginia Tech Criticized for Actions in Shooting,"New York Times, August 30, 2007.
Note, as I've blogged here before, that Virginia Tech's campus police are armed and yet -- as would often (if not near always) be the case in an unanticipated random shooting -- that made no difference in their ability to prevent the tragedy and deaths. At least one UI student, in a letter to the editor, has expressed the view of many that she would feel very much safer if the UI campus police were not armed than if they were. Thalia Sutton, "Arming Campus Won't Reassure Me,"Des Moines Register, August 27, 2007.
Meanwhile, this morning's DI has a professionally balanced and well written review of campus opinion on the issue prior to the Regents' discussion at their regular meeting September 18 -- including what appears to be President Mason's leaning toward arming campus police while recognizing that "I'd feel safer if no one had guns" and "I'm not a fan of guns." Ben Fornell, "People Split on UI Police Guns,"The Daily Iowan, August 30, 2007, p. A5.
Iowa's Back in Train - ing
I have a vague recollection of seeing railroad trolley car rails embedded in Iowa City's streets when I was a little boy. (No trolleys; just almost totally covered tracks). But that memory may come from another town. I certainly remember the CRANDIC ("Cedar Rapids and Iowa City") interurban line, with its depot down by the east side of the Burlington Street bridge, on the south side of the street, across from what was then Nagle's Lumber. The Rock Island Line was my usual means of getting to Des Moines or Chicago as a high school student when attending student organization meetings. I occasionally came home to Iowa City from Austin, Texas, during the 1950s on the "Katy" railroad. And I remember regularly commuting by trolley car in Washington, D.C., during what must have been the summer of 1957.
So it's not like passenger rail is new to me -- or to Iowa. But what's only been history may now be on the verge of coming back. (As Johnny Cash used to sing, "I hear that train a comin.'") A local group of railroad enthusiasts took the CRANDIC out of mothballs and rode it up and back to Cedar Rapids the other day. The local papers editorialized that it was a good idea.
From a tiny village in Switzerland my wife and I discovered we had access to two passenger rail services, both of which seemed to run every 20 minutes or so. In fact, our former U-High school mates who live there don't even bother to own a car. It's like they were living in downtown Manhattan and relying on the subway. (I had similar experiences traveling in Japan years ago, with trains criss-crossing that entire country on regular schedules.)
The entire country of Switzerland is only 15,940 square miles. Iowa, by contrast, is is 3.5 times that size: 56,276 square miles (26th in size among the 50 states). And yet Switzerland has 3145 miles of railroad, mostly for passenger trains. If Iowa had the equivalent amount of rail per square mile we'd have 11103 miles of rail criss-crossing our little state. It may surprise you to know, but we had almost that much about 1910. With the popularity of the automobile -- encouraged by the lobbying pressure of the auto, oil, contracting and cement industries (General Motors bought up Los Angeles urban rail, destroyed it, and replaced it with auto dealerships) -- we permitted Iowa's rail to decline over the years to the point that 10 years ago (the latest figures I could quickly find) it was 38% of that, at 4275 miles (almost exclusively used for freight). (Prior to that -- and General Motors' efforts to kill off rail -- most cities of any size were served by electric rail systems.)
Would it be expensive for America to go back to passenger trains? Of course. Everything's expensive. It all comes back to benefit-cost. And "compared to what"?
1. It's never going to be any cheaper to do than it is now. As big a fan as I am of "rails to trails" (for hiking, jogging and biking), a few "rails to rails" might not be a bad idea either.
2. Have you ever taken a look at the total taxpayer support provided the auto industry with our multi-billion-dollar road system (Interstates, state, county and city roads)? Or the locks along the Mississippi for the barge business?
Or the airline industry -- runways and airports, air traffic control and TSA, the 9/11 bailout, and the defense contracts (originally producing war planes, but inventing technology that then finds its way for free into commercial aircraft) -- which ends up benefiting a relatively small proportion of the American people? (The "externalities" associated with the fact that jet planes are a major contributor to global warming and the hole in the ozone makes the industry's claim on subsidy dollars even weaker.)
I used to time those Swiss passenger trains (and their big clocks on the depots). I keep my watch set to the atomic clock time, accurate to the second. So, apparently, do they. It was a rare occurrence for a train to vary by more than 10 seconds either way from the very minute it was scheduled to arrive.
Our Amtrak passenger train (from San Francisco to Chicago, by way of Mt. Pleasant) may arrive as much as four or five hours late by the time it gets to eastern Iowa.
But note: That's not all Amtrack's fault. It's been deliberately set up be a rail fail. It has to travel on rails owned by railroads in the freight business. And with a policy that puts freight profits over passenger punctuality, Amtrack trains have to find and sit on a side track waiting for the freight trains to pass.
I'm reminded of a joke in a collection from the 1920s called "On a Slow Train Through Arkansas." "How come the train's stopped?" a passenger asks the conductor. "Guess we must have caught up with those cows again," he's told.
For rail -- or any other public transportation system -- to work there has to be lots of it.
If you're within a walk of a Metro station in Washington, you can enter that underground system there, transfer at Washington's Union Station, get off the train at Pennsylvania Station in New York City, and take a subway to your ultimate Manhattan destination without ever exiting this point-to-point rail transportation system.
You can't count on people driving to Mt. Pleasant to wait 4 hours for a train to Chicago when they could have driven in less time than that. The trains need to meet people's schedules rather than people having to meet the trains' schedules.
And all that goes for Corridor trains between Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, and maybe Amana.
To do it right we'd need to start by putting rail between Iowa's major population centers, and out to the primary locations where the employees in those urban centers live. And we'd need to have additional transportation from depots to ultimate destinations. And the trains would have to run with sufficient regularity that people would be willing to accept their benefits in exchange for the additional flexibility offered by the automobile. (We might also want to take a second look at the Swiss roadbeds that produce the super-smooth rides, in part, by attaching the rails to the ties with six heavy nuts and bolts rather than a single spike.)
The benefits would be enormous in terms of economics, consumption of energy with its attendant seeming need for Middle East wars, global warming, and commuters' increased productivity and reduction of stress.
We did it once. Will we do it again? In my lifetime? I'm watching -- but I'm not going to be selling my primary form of transportation, my old bicycle, anytime soon.
"What did you tell him?" I asked my friend, as we talked over a little interpersonal conflict her son was having. She had given him just two little words of advice: "Be nice."
The words came back to me this past week as virtually everyone in America struggled, together, with the events at Virginia Tech. Amidst the things we come together to do at such times -- prayer services, lowered flags, bell ringing, moments of silence, memorial services, ribbons, and the media, always the media -- my thoughts ranged from resolution of grief to reflections on remedies.
I'm not going to reflect here on the "big issues" -- Would easier access to handguns make us safer or more at risk? Does the media's reporting of (or fictional programming involving) violence encourage additional real life violence? Was it a mistake to close down our mental hospitals and house our mentally ill in prisons instead?
The fact is that most of our restraints on anti-social behavior are dependent upon a fundamental human quality: the desire to preserve one's own life and happiness. A criminal wants to avoid the possibility of being shot by the police -- or spending years in prison. Once there is no longer that restraint, that desire to stay alive -- whether with a suicide bomber in Iraq or a mass murderer in Virginia -- there is very little that anyone can do to predict, let alone prevent, the carnage they can create (up to and including "weapons of mass destruction" in a briefcase or backpack).
So I'm going to focus on some things that every American can do, from the youngest to the elderly, something to do every day, long after the memorial services are over, the bells have stopped ringing, and the VT ribbons have been lost among the socks in the back of our dresser drawer.
A 2002 federal study on common characteristics of school shooters found that 71 percent of them "felt bullied, persecuted or injured by others prior to the attack."
The report said that "in some of these cases the experience of being bullied seemed to have a significant impact on the attacker and appeared to have been a factor in his decision to mount an attack at the school. In one case, most of the attacker's schoolmates described the attacker as the kid everyone teased."
Cho "would almost be a poster child for the pattern that we saw," said Marisa Randazzo, the former chief research psychologist at the U.S. Secret Service and co-author of the study, conducted jointly with the Education Department.
* * *
Classmates in Virginia, where Cho grew up, said he was teased and picked on, apparently because of shyness and his strange, mumbly way of speaking.
Once, in English class at Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va., when the teacher had the students read aloud, Cho looked down when it was his turn, said Chris Davids, a Virginia Tech senior and high school classmate. After the teacher threatened him with an F for participation, Cho began reading in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth," Davids said.
"The whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, 'Go back to China,"' Davids said.
Stephanie Roberts, 22, a classmate of Cho's at Westfield High, said . . . friends of hers who went to middle school with him told her they recalled him getting bullied there.
"There were just some people who were really mean to him and they would push him down and laugh at him," Roberts said. "He didn't speak English really well and they would really make fun of him."
Now let me make clear what I am not saying. I'm not advocating more sympathy for Cho, or that "it wasn't really his fault," or that the sole cause of Cho's horrific act was the fact he was bullied in junior high. I'm not saying that if only he had been treated with greater sensitivity none of this would have happened. I'm certainly not saying those junior high classmates of his are responsible for 32 deaths. Cho obviously had a lot of problems besides his experiences in school. On the other hand, based on the federal study, how he was treated by his teachers and classmates over the years could very well have had some impact on the person he became.
In terms of one's sense of insecurity, there are some other numbers to keep in mind. The odds of any given individual college student being killed by a stranger in a mass murder on a college campus are, as we say, "somewhere between slim and none at all." There are some 30,000 firearm deaths a year, and about the same number of suicides (over half of which involve firearms). That's about 80 for every one of the 365 days each year. [National Safety Council, "What Are the Odds of Dying?"] The 32 killed at Virginia Tech constituted the largest number ever; seldom would it be as many as 85 in a year for the entire nation -- twice the number who die from being struck by lightning. By contrast, among 15-24-year-olds suicide is the third leading cause of death. [American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, "Facts for Families: Teen Suicide," July 2004.]
And while we're trying to imagine the grief of those 32 individuals' friends and family members, try this exercise. Recall the grief you felt for the 32 deaths of individuals who -- most likely -- were personally unknown to you. Now multiply that by imagining if some of them were your children, or bothers and sisters, or good friends. And now multiply that by 2000. That is the grief felt by the people of Iraq for the civilian deaths of 64,000 friends and relatives from the violence of the current Iraq War. [The best estimates range from 62,000 to 68,000 civilian dead. "Iraq Body Count Database," as of April 20, 2007.]
All of which brings us back to the admonition: "Be nice."
There are a lot of things most of us can't do. We can't bring to bear the professional skills of psychiatrists -- because we don't have the training. We can't, single-handedly, change our nation's laws regarding handguns.
We can "be nice" every day, to everyone with whom we interact. Will we occasionally be rebuffed in our efforts? Of course. But rarely. And the benefits are well worth that price. Because we need not be motivated solely by a desire to reduce mass murder. Befriending the lonely and the loners, the least popular of one's classmates; taking their side when they're being ridiculed, excluded, or abused; looking for opportunities to pay a compliment or say "thank you" to those who are most seldom recognized and appreciated; catching ourselves before uttering the words that project our prejudice and deliver another's pain -- these are all things worth doing for their own sake. Not only do they give a little boost to another, they make us feel better about ourselves as well.
Getting to know the students from another country, or from out of state, can be especially rewarding -- for us as well as them. Someone from another country, or for whom English is their second language, who knows no one at their high school or university, for whom everything is new and strange, and who is homesick and may be under the stress of enormous family and colleague pressure to succeed is someone who can really use a friend.
If your reaching out to others happens to contribute in some small way to preventing a future mass murder, that's a very big added blessing.
And that's why, with all of the adult chattering about VT, I was so pleased to see in Thursday's (April 19) New York Times the following:
As masses of mourners assemble at sites like Facebook and MySpace.com . . . a slogan also surfaced. It's a sign of the times, and has unmistakable poignancy for devotees of social-networking Web sites. It's simple: "Reach out to loners."
"After what happened on 4/16/07," read one page,"I'm gonna talk & reach out to every loner."
Others pledged to smile at people on the street, to greet quiet people and even to visit those who seem isolated.
Wondering where the "UI Held Hostage" came from? Click here. (As of January 25 the count has run from January 21, 2006, rather than last November.)
For any given entry, links to the prior 10 will be found in the left-most column. Going directly to FromDC2Iowa.Blogspot.com will take you to the latest. Each contains links to the full text of virtually all known media stories and commentary, including mine, since the last blog entry. Together they represent what The Chronicle of Higher Education has called "one of the most comprehensive analyses of the controversy." The last time there was an entry containing the summary of prior entries' commentary (with the heading "This Blog's Focus on Regents' Presidential Search") is Nicholas Johnson, "UI President Search XIII -- Last Week," December 11, 2006.
Searching: the fullest collection of basic documents related to the search is contained in Nicholas Johnson, "UI President Search - Dec. 21-25," December 21, 2006 (and updated thereafter), at the bottom of that blog entry under "References." A Blog Index of entries on all subjects since June 2006 is also available. And note that if you know (or can guess at) a word to search on, the "Blogger" bar near the top of your browser has a blank, followed by "SEARCH THIS BLOG," that enables you to search all entries in this Blog since June 2006.]
Bob Patton's editorial cartoons always put the matter most suscinctly, but there is also an excellent column on the editorial page. David Morris, "Guns Aren't Safe Solution," Iowa City Press-Citizen, September 20, 2007, p. A7.
