[Vision2020] message from Roberta Radavich

[Saundra Lund]

Oh, good grief!!!

While I agree with much of what Ms. Radavich writes & and I think she's made
some good points, I've actually seen The Flyer.  It was, IMHO, despicable
and utterly appalling, and I do hope Joan is able to get it typed up to post
so that folks can judge for themselves.

I can tell you that I attended a high school with a closed campus -- you
lose a few students a year driving to or from the (elite) high school on an
(elite) incredibly dangerous road and it's amazing how quickly folks realize
that the cost of youthful feelings of immortality shouldn't be death driving
to/from school for lunch.

Guess what??? There were NO guards, armed or other wise.  Period.  No
checking of student IDs or anything else, either.  Period.

What there *was* was the rule (closed campus) and . . . here's a novel idea:
consequences for not following the rule.

Now, I don't know what all schools do with respect to closed campus (or even
that any such local plans would materialize), but after seeing that totally
reprehensible flyer, I did take the time to call & email around to friends I
have around the country.  The *only* schools (all two of them, one in
Chicago and one in NYC) I was able to find with guards are those with *open*
campuses.

So, how responsible would it have been for me to hang out around the high
school handing out flyers stating that a new open campus would require
"guards (armed?)"?!?!?  Not very, huh?  If I were a betting person, I'd put
my money on your reaction to me having pulled a stunt like that based on
*absolutely NO facts* not being at all favorable.

As far out of line as I'd have been to do something like that, at *least* it
would have been based on something more than allowing paranoia to take over
my own worst possible spin on a *potential* closed campus.  Where are your
facts?  I don't recall any being cited with respect to guards & closed
campus on that odious piece of work.  I'm left to assume that because there
*was* no factual basis -- please correct me if I'm wrong.

Quite frankly, I find it totally IRRESPONSIBLE to toss out completely
unfounded crap like that, and to *kids*, no less!

That is lower than I'd ever dreamed I'd see local politics sink  :-(

Maybe you didn't dream up the closed campus part, but it certainly seems
that you dreamed up the "guards (armed?)" part.  If not, then provide us
with FACTS.

Furthermore, if you want to get yourselves worked up into a tizzy about
something, why not pick something real that's already here rather than
something you apparently dreamed up?  For instance, given your autonomy &
parental authority concerns, why aren't you up in arms out our community's
junior high school students not being allowed to take backpacks to class?


Saundra Lund
Moscow, ID

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do
nothing.
Edmund Burke

-----Original Message-----
From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of Janice Willard
Sent: Wednesday, 27 April 2005 1:14 PM
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] message from Roberta Radavich

Janice, I do not really desire to join v 2020.  Could you see through to
posting this in my behalf? 

RE: Closed Campus for high school 

Readers,  the description so maligned by Rose Huskey  (Wednesday, April 27,
2005 2:25 AM) of a closed campus is based upon this evidence and  these
thoughts. 

School board member Paul Weingartner told me that they most certainly would
close the campus of the new high school to the lower grades.  Those of us
who have lived through closed campus are aware that you actually can't have
a closed campus without enforcement.  The description of the enforcement,
however odious, is a description of what some of us have lived through.  The
trail donation required an 8 foot cyclone fence around the proposed school
property as a condition of the sale. During the final stage of the women's
league of voters meeting, when parties were encouraged to ask further
questions of the representatives on both sides, Candis Donicht told Dave
Peckham that a closed campus was planned for the lower three grades.  How do
you think a closed campus will be enforced, if not by checking each car at
the gate?? 

    Please note, I didn't just dream this up as an ungrounded scare tactic.
I was told it was in the plans already, at the new site. 

  We should be looking at real need, and at our various strategies to meet
that need.  The real need, as I see it,  is for our children to be
successful as they  move into society, and for them to be safe, and for them
to develop a healthy sense of personal value. Clearly from this bond
election, we as a community, have a lot of different strategies for how best
to meet that set of basic needs.  There is a problem with using the word
"need" to describe a strategy.   A new school on the "trail site" is only
one possible strategy to meet a  need.  I believe we can all be clearer in
our process, less confrontational, and more understanding, when we have
clarity on what is a need and what is a strategy.  The emotional punch that
we generate claiming that a strategy is actually a "need", clouds our minds,
so that we loose the focus of what our basic needs are, and we loose the
creative process of  looking at the full range of strategies. 
    Our community has so many truly bright and well intentioned thinkers on
all sides of this issue, and I believe we are once again at the place where
we should focus on the basic needs of our children and our community, all of
us, and let voices from all quarters be heard.  We must come back to the
table with whatever levels of compassion we can personally muster, and again
negotiate strategies. 
    There are things that we wisely fear,  like we fear water when we do not
know how to swim.  I personally fear the things that make a child feel he
has no control of his life, not even in the simplest of decisions, such as
where to eat his lunch, because I feel that our children already have so
little opportunity to exercise their own decision making processes. They are
told for hours each day, 5 days a week, where to be, what to do.   My first
living child, who at the end of high school got 99.9 on his PSAT, told me
years later, that it took him 2 years before he could get beyond the damages
generated by having told what to do for so long.  He said, "I knew a lot of
things that I didn't want, but it took me two years before I even began
realizing that I could be thinking in terms of what I *did* want for my
life."  I fear this deadening that occurs as we remove so many areas of
decision making from our children. 
    Another linked fear for me, and again I stress that this is just me, is
that of  gradually desensitizing of our US citizens to police powers, so
that we do not defend on a national level, our rights to the freedoms set
down in the Bill of Rights.   It's been so long since most of us read that
document.  Changes have been occurring,  escalated recently by fears of
terrorism, so that now we meekly submit to searches when we get on a
airplane, to laws that allow people to be held in prison for unspecified
long periods  without being accused of  a crime.  Each step we make that
accustoms our children to the idea that they must submit to losses of basic
freedoms, when that loss is not necessary, seems to me a further step toward
acceptance of a police state.  I want to see our children successfully
integrated into a free society.  I want them to know our downtown business
owners, to know there are places other than Wal-Mart that they can browse
through, to become active members of the community.  Isolating them... how
will this accomplish our goal to socialize our children? 
    I feel that the closed campus idea usurps the authority of a parent.  If
a parent wishes his child to take a sack lunch and remain on campus, this
power should remain with the parent.  If a parent wants the child to be able
to leave campus and head to the nearest eatery of choice in our town, I
think that parent should be able to direct that freedom for their child,
based on their own trust of the child and on the family needs, without going
through an involved and cumbersome permission process.  If any campus has
lovely and inviting seating areas, and foods that are desirable, chances are
most students will happily stay put and visit with each other.  There are
many ways to meet the lunch time need for fueling the body, however.  It is
my opinion that those that choose not to remain on campus should be free to
take a walk, or a drive with a friend, and feel the same level of personal
freedom that other free adults in our community enjoy.  This would be my
preferred strategy to additionally meet the need for our children, at some
level,  to have autonomy,  to retain the sense that they could make
decisions as adults do, wise or foolish, and to learn from them.  In my
opinion, it is not always wise to protect a child from every possible form
of harm, or else, how can he even learn to walk? 
                                        Roberta Radavich