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This week's question:
Should City Manager Mitch Johnson continue to sit on the dais with Greensboro City Council members during their meetings?
Is it appropriate for a staff member to sit with elected officials during meetings? Or is being concerned about this much ado about nothing?
Council member-elect Trudy Wade has raised the issue and there already has been a fair amount of discussion about this in the local blogosphere. But there's always room for more!
I'm working on an editorial on what it will take to build trust in Greensboro and heal some of the traditional rifts in our community.
Social capital studies cites a high level of giving and community engagement but also high levels of distrust.
How do we best address that as a city? What can we do as indivduals?
Are you trying to avoid products made in China when buying gifts this holiday season?
Has news of recalls and of tests finding lead in many toys caused you to decide against buying products made in China?
Is it even possible to avoid products made in China? One family who tried to do this found out it was harder than you might think.They wrote a book about their experience, "A Year Without 'Made in China': One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy."
Or perhaps you think it's ridiculous to be concerned about such a thing ...
Let us know your thoughts by Wednesday and they may be printed in next Sunday's News & Record.
And thanks to all of you who responded to last week's question about Mitch Johnson!
Elma Sabo
Last week, following the news story of M. Reza Salami's protest of the "Jesus is your savior" sign in a patrol car, we editorialized against allowing law enforcment officers to carry religious items in patrol cars. This week, we are looking into writing an editorial on another aspect of Salami's recent encounter: the open container law.
In an op-ed that ran in today's paper, Mr. Salami said that he was ticketed for breaking the state's open container law because he was carrying empty wine bottles slated for recycling.
Perhaps we should have known better, but some of us didn't realize until Salami's incident that carrying recyclables in the passenger compartment could lead to being ticketed.
Is this fair? If not, should the open container law be revised?
Have you ever gotten ticketed? We'd like to hear from you.
Should illegal immigrants be allowed to attend North Carolina's colleges? If they do attend, should they pay in-state or out-of-state tuition?
Among editorial topics we discussed this morning were the fights last week at Grimsley High School.
These were not gang-related clashes, per se, though they did involve at least some loosely allied groups of students, male and female, from rival neighborhoods Hampton Homes and Cumberland Courts.
As we see it, the problem was community friction that unfortunately spilled into the halls of a public high school:
There are three obvious realities here:
1. That such dangerous, disruptive behavior can not be tolerated on a school campus. The students involved deserve stern disciplinary action, as school policy prescribes in the case of physical violence. This is no time to fret over suspension statistics.The schools have an obligation to be firm but compassionate in how they handle the students involved in the fighting. But they also have an obligation to the majority of students at Grimsley who don't fight and are there to do what they are supposed to do at school: learn. They have a similar obligation to the teachers and staff at Grimsley who presumably signed up to teach lessons and provide guidance, not to referee impromptu hallway boxing matches.
2. That this is a problem that students brought with them onto campus. As one who grew up here, I'm aware of an ugly tradition of turf wars between members of various neighborhoods. It recalled Jim Schlosser's story last week on gangs that drew their identity and common bonds from neighborhoods such as Smith Homes, Hampton Homes and Morningside Homes. Decades ago Hampton Homes was referred to ominously by some as "Southside."
3. That the community definitely needs to be involved in the root solutions underlying these conflicts. Parents, youth and other concerned community members should feel compelled to be part of the answer -- in fact, the major part. There are many decent, law-abiding in those neighborhoods. There are presumably also many young people from both neghborhoods who get along fine and see each other for who they are, not where they live. They need to be involved in lasting answers to these ugly, destructive rivalries.
One of the students involved in the various fights described the brawling as a means of defending the honor of his neighborhood.
"I don't feel like anybody should disrespect my home," Shan Carter, a Grimsley junior, told a News & Record reporter.
Ironically, his actions, and those of too many of his classmates, did precisely that.
What can you say about the shameful behavior of some parents attending a holiday program at Oak Hill Elementary School last night? (WGHP FOX 8 has video.)
We'll try to come up with something for tomorrow's lead editorial.
Oak Hill is in High Point's West End, where police and local churches have done a great job cleaning up crime and addressing other social problems. It's a very diverse school except for the common denominator of low income. I tutored there for three years in the early 2000s and always found a very orderly environment there. The school hasn't experienced unusual disciplinary problems among students.
Then this happens. The question is how to react to it. What responsibility does the school system have for dealing with disorderly parents? Very limited, I'd say -- other than banning the brawlers from future school events.
Your opinion?
Today's editorial noted the deaths, on the same day, of two musical icons in Greensboro: Sheldon Morgenstern, the founder of the Eastern Music Festival, and Herbert Hazelman, longtime Grimsley High School music teacher and band director.
What we didn't know until this morning is that there was a more tangible connection:
Dr. Sam LeBauer, Morgenstern's cousin, confirmed with staff writer Dawn Kane, who covers the arts for the News & Record, that Morgenstern played French horn in the Greensboro Senior High School (now Grimsley) band under Hazelman.
It seems only fitting that the two men crossed paths earlier in their lives and at the end.
Which issues or events affected you the most in 2007?
Was it the housing market, the war in Iraq or something more local or more personal? Did your life change much because of it? Or do you see it leading to change?
What issues do you want government to address in 2008?