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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > January
January 2009
Editorial: ‘New’ Wright pieces can serve future
It’s an easy thing to say: Dayton is the birthplace of aviation.
What’s not so easy is turning that very real historical fact into an active reputation, making it a symbol of ingenuity and creativity for the hometown of the Wright brothers today.
The physical reminders of the region’s aviation history are special assets. They can be attractions, helping to fix in the minds of others an image of Dayton as different than other places it competes with.
Yet, preservation of that historic past is too often undervalued. Fortunately, three recent events are converging to provide new opportunities to capitalize.
In the last month, Congress took a big step toward adding two new sites to the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park. Then the National Park Service named a new superintendent for the local park, choosing a respected pro who is already familiar with historic preservation efforts here.
Finally, the economic stimulus bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives contains $200 million for restoration projects, money that could be tapped for a big project needed at one of the new park sites.
The expected new park sites — Hawthorn Hill and the Wright Company Factory — are the biggest missing pieces in the region’s aviation history collection.
The Hawthorn Hill mansion in Oakwood was once called the “White House of aviation.” Built in 1914, it was home to Orville Wright, his sister and father after Wilbur’s death. It hosted a parade of the country’s most famous inventors and aviation pioneers, including Charles Lindbergh, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Alexander Graham Bell.
In 1910, the Wright brothers constructed a manufacturing facility off Wisconsin Boulevard in West Dayton for the newly formed Wright Company. The factory buildings helped launch the aviation industry. Today the buildings are part of a former Delphi manufacturing plant that’s been closed.
“You can recreate anything you want, but we’ve got the real thing,” said Michael Gessel, vice president of the Dayton Development Coalition. “There is only one Orville Wright mansion, and we’ve got it. And the Wright Company factory was the first building constructed for the purpose of manufacturing airplanes in the U.S. It really is a part of America’s heritage.”
On Jan. 15, the U.S. Senate passed a bill that would add the mansion and factory to the other national park sites here — Huffman Prairie, the Wright Cycle Company shop, the Wright-Dunbar Interpretive Center, the Paul Laurence Dunbar House and the Wright Flyer III, housed at Carillon Park. Final approval in the House of Representatives is expected within a couple weeks.
Dean Alexander, the new park superintendent, comes from the Hopewell Culture National Historic Park in Chillicothe. He’ll replace Larry Blake, who retired late last year.
“Dean has a pretty good understanding of what’s going on here,” said Tony Sculimbrene, executive director of a partnership of aviation and heritage tourism groups in the area. “The first thing he said to me was, ‘I can’t wait to work on the Wright factory building.’ “
That space could become a business incubator, a branch of Sinclair Community College’s aviation program, or it could even house airplanes and interactive displays that allow visitors a hands-on experience with aviation history.
These sites, improved and maintained in partnership with the park service, have the potential to attract tourists, but, more important, they say something positive to the world about Dayton and the region.
Dayton’s remarkable history can be connected to a continuing innovative spirit— at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, area colleges and universities and start-up businesses that are doing cutting-edge research.
Some special places in the community are on the cusp of becoming even more special — and better appreciated.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Local History, Scott Elliott
GOP rejection of stimulus might just be smart politics
In his column today, Martin Gottlieb writes about why all Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, including Mike Turner and Steve Austria from our area, voted against the more than $800 billion stimulus bill passed by the House this week.
In short, Martin argues that the sheer size of the spending in the bill made it all but impossible to get a yes vote from any politician subscribing to the classic conservative view that less taxes and government spending is the best way to manage the country.
It’s hard to argue with that, especially since the Democrats’ electoral success in 2008 traded many moderate congressional seats from Republican hands to the Dems. In other words, the smaller group of Republicans in this congress is just generally more conservative and more traditionally “Republican” in its world view than when its caucus cast a wider net in years past. The moderate districts, for the most part, went blue in 2008.
But beyond the personal choices of each Republican lawmaker, there is also a bigger strategic advantage to a strong Republican rejection of the stimulus bill. Put simply, it’s probably the smart political play.
Here’s why.
These were the Republican options for responding to the Obama stimulus bill and the political reality of each scenario:
—Embrace the bill and it goes on to be effective. If Republicans believed the stimulus was the best way to improve the economy, they could have considered joining Obama in support of the bill and try to later claim some credit for its success. The downside is there is very little chance anyone other than Obama would be the prime beneficiary if the bill is ultimately viewed as a big success. Meanwhile, embracing the bill for Republicans would mean explaining themselves to angry voters and, for some, possibly inviting primary challenges in 2010.
—Embrace the bill and it goes on to be ineffective. If this happened, then Republicans would share blame for the stimulus’ failure and Democrats could explain it away by saying the entire congress did the best thing it could for the country at the time. This would be a big missed political opportunity for the Republican Party.
—Reject the bill but it goes on to be effective. There is very little downside for Republicans if they oppose the bill and it succeeds. Essentially, if the stimulus is ultimately viewed as a big success, Obama gets a big victory to crow about and the GOP must find a counter narrative. Having rejected the stimulus bill, they can probably at least point to specific items in the bill that did not succeed and argue that their opposition was based on legitimate concerns about the bill’s flaws.
—Reject the bill and it goes on to be ineffective. This is political gold. If Republicans unanimously reject the stimulus and it is ultimately viewed as a failure, then they have an issue to run on in 2010 and 2012. From a purely political perspective, the upside of this possibility makes opposing the bill the most sensible option, since supporting the bill has such little chance of benefiting the party politically.
Again, I am viewing the Republican options purely through a political lens. Should GOP lawmakers have supported the bill because it is what the country needs right now? That is a different question. It seems Republicans in the house, en masse, do not believe this bill is what the country needs now.
And, helpfully for the party, this stance puts the GOP in a position to capitalize politically if the stimulus fails to pay big dividends.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: National Politics, Scott Elliott
Martin Gottlieb: Bipartisan pitch meets 2 local Republicans
Some people look at the partisan nature of the House vote on President Barack Obama’s stimulus package Wednesday (with all Republicans opposed) and see hope fading for the kind of bipartisan government the president wants. In fact, though, this was probably the wrong issue on which to expect much.
It’s hard to imagine how somebody could vote for this bill and still talk Republican; you know, complain about the evils of big government and all that. The plan represents the tightest embrace of government in a generation. On top of the $700 million business bailout, it ushers in a whole new era of spending.
Of course, most Republicans in Congress have voted for big spending in the crunch before, whether for adding prescription drugs to Medicare or for war, without pushing hard for major cuts elsewhere. They’ve also voted for enough tax cuts to destroy all pretenses of being interested in balancing the budget. Still, the Obama stimulus is so big and has such a high public profile.
Rep. Steve Austria, the freshman who replaced Rep. David Hobson in the district that includes Greene County and Springfield, talked to the Dayton Daily News editorial board Friday, Jan. 23, at length about the package. The conversation started with some talk about the kinds of projects the Dayton region might expect or not expect to get under the stimulus.
But Austria would not commit on whether he would actually vote for the bill. He said he still had questions. He wanted to know, for example, what Ohio and other state governments would do with the money. Would they just put it in existing programs to fill budgetary gaps, or would they launch job-stimulating projects? And he wanted to talk about cutting the capital-gains tax rate and providing tax incentives for small business.
It seemed kind of late to be expecting a great deal more enlightenment or major changes in the bill. But Austria noted that Republican leaders were meeting with the president that day.
In truth, Austria was never likely to buck the party line. He ran as more conservative than his predecessor, and he is. The real question last week was not so much what would Austria do as what would the party do.
This week, Obama actually went to Capitol Hill to talk to all the Republicans. At that point, Rep. Mike Turner, of Centerville, said his mind was not made up.
That was odd, because afterward Turner said that a huge concern of his was the sheer size of the spending plan. But nobody was expecting the price to shrink much. Obama was dug in on the view that “boldness” was necessary.
Turner’s situation is more complicated than Austria’s. He doesn’t talk ideology much, preferring an image as a pragmatist and nonpartisan. He builds his reputation around his work for his district. He’s now the central congressional player on matters involving Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
He insists there was no pressure from his party on this vote (and that everybody was amazed that not one Republican bolted).
Turner says the House measure was an “omnibus spending bill,” representing a Democratic wish list. He says “they threw everything” into it. And he insists that about half of it isn’t really “stimulus” oriented.
He said, “I truly believe we are close to an economic crisis,” and that by spending so much now, the government is tying its hands for the future.
(This question of what’s a stimulus and what’s just spending gets awfully murky. Turner, who complains the Obama package isn’t stimulating enough, says more should go into highway projects. But the administration says those are the projects that aren’t “shovel ready,” which makes them dubious as stimulators. Turner responds that just announcing that a project will be funded is a stimulus, because it starts things happening in the way of other investments.)
Bottom line: It’s hard to see what Obama could have done to get votes from House Republicans — a more and more conservative group as their numbers shrink — once he decided to be bold.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Martin Gottlieb, National Politics
Editorial: House right to take a bold leap
“Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy — where a lack of spending leads to lost jobs, which leads to even less spending; where an inability to lend and borrow stops growth and leads to even less credit.”
— President Barack Obama
When you’re in a crisis, you review your assets for something that might get you out of it.
One asset the U.S. government has in confronting the worst economy in the lives of most Americans is its ability to borrow money in extraordinary amounts. Its creditworthiness is uniquely unquestioned.
This asset looms all the larger because the government has already lowered interest rates about as far as they can go.
If the government now starts spending way beyond the norm — in a sense adding roughly $1 billion to a $13-billion economy — that will put money in the pockets of people who will spend it, which will stabilize the economy enough to cause others to feel it’s safe to spend, lend and borrow. That’s the theory, at least.
But, of course, borrowing is a two-edged asset. The money does have to be paid back.
The president insists that he’s not just throwing money at the crisis. He says he’s doing things that need doing and will make the economy more efficient: doubling alternative energy usage, modernizing federal buildings, making homes more energy efficient, computerizing medical records, expanding broadband.
For Ohio and the Dayton region, the package would also mean aid to the state government so that programs like Medicaid don’t have to be slashed, and to school districts and for individuals in dire straits. There’s also money for development projects designed to create new jobs; in the running would be several local projects, including the Austin Road interchange.
Qualms about the deficit spending are legitimate. But the president is basically on the right track. His plan certainly beats just hanging in there. That was tried at the start of the Great Depression, and the approach was discredited. The country wants something bold. So do a wide variety of economists.
When the House passed a version of the Obama plan Wednesday, Jan. 28, all Republicans voted against it. President Obama had gone out of his way to talk to them and compromise. He eliminated spending projects that the Republicans ridiculed.
But Republicans, including Rep. Mike Turner, of Centerville, said the bill had been drafted by House Democrats, who weren’t accommodating.
Most Republicans talk about the need for more tax cuts and less spending. House Republican leader John Boehner, of West Chester, says, “We can’t borrow and spend” our way to prosperity.
But cutting taxes entails borrowing, every bit as much as spending does. Indeed, it probably entails borrowing more, if you accept the belief of most economists that targeted spending would do more than tax cuts to stimulate the economy and increase government revenue.
Certain kinds of tax cuts can be defended. But if tax breaks go to people who are doing OK, they’ll probably save the money; that wouldn’t help the economy.
Many Republicans say the bill should be smaller. But if it’s cut in half, it would only be about twice the stimulus of 2008, which failed. And the 2009 problem is a great deal bigger.
The Obama plan is a work in progress as it moves to the Senate. Difficult trade-offs have to be made between projects that are “shovel ready” and those that promise the most good in the long run. The administration proposed too little for transportation infrastructure, saying not enough projects were ready.
The plan might not spark a turnaround, even by the end of 2010. But the chances are good that it will keep things from getting as bad as they otherwise might. That could save millions of jobs.
The effort must be designed as much as possible to serve the future generations that will pay for it. And it must entail a recognition that deficit spending does have a limit. Under those conditions, it’s the best of the bad options available.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Economy, Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, National Politics
Strickland: Budget details coming Monday
I went to Stivers School for the Arts tonight to hear Gov. Ted Strickland talk about his big education plan and, frankly, I wish I had done a better job of getting him to be specific in his answers.
The big things he said were:
—Annual education spending in Ohio will increase in $925 million in the next budget as the education plan phase-in begins. This will bring education spending to about $18 billion annually.
—If all the elements of Strickland’s plan were implemented right away, his office estimates it would cost about $3.5 billion.
—Strickland keeps talking confidently that the new spending will be offset by cuts elsewhere, but he’s not being specific. He did say many state departments will take deep cuts of 10 or 20 percent of their annual budgets. He specifically mentioned the departments of jobs and family services, natural resources and mental health while talking about cutbacks.
—The proposed budget is due out Monday, and Strickland said that’s when we will learn the specifics of how he will pay for his plan.
For our full story, go here.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Education, Ohio politics, Scott Elliott
Passenger rail: A boon for Dayton?
One of the non-education proposals that was in Gov. Ted Strickland’s state of the state address is an idea that has been kicked around for years with really no progress toward anything actually happening — passenger rail service connecting Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus and Cleveland.
But it seems Strickland’s strong endorsement of the idea and the possibility of using federal stimulus funds to build it could make passenger rail service in Ohio a reality.
The more I think about this, the more I think it could be a huge benefit to Dayton if it happens. Imagine if it was easy to get up in the morning, board a commuter train and get to work on time in Columbus or Cincinnati. And suppose business trips to Cleveland didn’t require a four-hour drive and possibly and overnight stay? What if, instead, you could take a couple-hour train up there and back in the same day?
Would this encourage those who might prefer the lower cost, lower stress living Dayton offers to relocate here and commute to Cincinnati and Columbus? Would businesses be attracted by the low cost of locating here if they had easy access to the major cities in the state?
Dayton is just lucky that the passenger rails identified for this project happen to run through here. They are talking about building train stations downtown and near Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Do you agree that this is a potential opportunity to capitalize on that good fortune? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment | Categories: Scott Elliott, Transportation
Terry Ryan: Lawmakers should support all schools that work well
The public schools in Dayton have been struggling academically for years, battling Cleveland most years for the dubious distinction of worst school system in the state. But Dayton is blessed to have three outstanding high schools.
Recently, DPS’s Stivers School for the Arts and the Dayton Early College Academy charter school were honored by U.S. News and World Report as being among America’s top public high schools. Meanwhile, Chaminade Julienne High School is another jewel.
The Dayton Daily News recently noted that four CJ graduates are serving in the state legislature. The four, all Democrats, are Reps. Clayton Luckie of Dayton and Mike Foley of Cleveland, both class of 1981; Rep. Roland Winburn of Harrison Twp, class of 1965, and Sen. Tom Roberts of Dayton, class of 1970.
For one high school to have four graduates serving in the Ohio General Assembly at one time is unprecedented.
It’s odd then that three of these lawmakers — Luckie, Foley and Roberts — have opposed the Ohio Educational Choice Scholarship Program that makes it possible for almost 1,400 children in Dayton to flee their failing public schools for private schools. (Winburn is new to the Ohio House and has not voted on this or other school choice programs.)
Statewide, almost 10,000 children benefit from the Ed Choice program. More than 90 of them, according to state records, attend CJ as a result of this publicly-funded voucher program. It’s available only to children from schools that have been rated by the state as in “academic watch” (a D) or “academic emergency” (an F) for at least two of the past three years.
Many of these youngsters enter their new schools two, three or more years behind grade level. The program is capped at 14,000 children statewide, so it is not an effort to “privatize” all public schools.
Private schools do not have to accept the children who participate in this program, but 24 schools in the Dayton area are doing so. There is little doubt that these schools offer hope to the children and families they serve — hope that maybe one day they could be a state legislator or even president. President Barack Obama attended a Catholic school as a child and an elite private preparatory school as a teen.
The Ohio Educational Choice Scholarship Program is a bargain for taxpayers.
Children in the Ed Choice program receive vouchers of $4,500 to $5,300, depending on grade level. In contrast, per-pupil funding in the Dayton Public Schools runs about $13,500.
My employer, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, has been a supporter of school choice, beginning with Dayton’s privately-funded scholarship program known as PACE. Over nine years, from 1998 through the 2007, that program — thanks to the generosity of an amazing collection of local and national funders — provided more than 6,000 scholarships valued at about $8.6 million.
What’s less known, however, is that many of the individuals and organizations that supported PACE also supported Dayton Public Schools’ reform efforts, as well as those of a handful of the city’s charter schools.
Frankly, these benefactors diversified their philanthropic investments across school sectors — district, charter and private — because what they wanted were great schools for all children. They saw competition and diverse reform efforts as the best hope for getting there, and were not doctrinaire about these sector distinctions.
Because Dayton has three great high schools (one district, one charter, and one private), we have evidence that the city can provide high-quality school options for its children. Lawmakers and others — no matter where they went to school themselves — should be encouraged to focus their support on those schools that work for children, regardless of label.
Dayton, like the state’s other cities, needs all hands on deck if we are serious about educating all children well.
Terry Ryan is vice president for Ohio Programs and Policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Education, Guest Columns
Talk is easy; where’s the money for school plan?
Ohio now has the outline of a bold plan to reshape its schools. But a gigantic question mark jumps off the page: How can the state possibly pay for it?
Gov. Ted Strickland used his State of the State address Wednesday, Jan. 28, to unveil his long-promised school reform plan. It was every bit as bold as he has said it would be. Some of his ideas are genuinely cutting-edge; others are overdue.
The governor’s aides said more details about funding would come next week when he presents his two-year budget. But, while he had so many people’s attention, he owed Ohioans at least a hint as to how the state could ever afford all that he wants to do.
Consider just a few of his proposals:
—All-day kindergarten. Today, there’s not much debate about whether a full day of kindergarten is beneficial, especially for children from needy families. The cost has always been the problem with requiring it.
In 2004, Arizona — a state with fewer school children — considered a plan to take all-day kindergarten statewide. Then leaders there estimated that the bill would be $100 million to build new classrooms, and $170 million a year in spending, once it was expanded to all schools. The tab for Ohio easily would be more.
—Lengthening the school year by 20 days, phased in over 10 years. This could make Ohio the first state to require 200 days of school each year.
Why not do it now? Why haven’t other states done this? The cost, of course.
While a 10-year phase-in would ease the pain, the problem is that teachers don’t work for free. If Ohio’s 115,000 teachers were compensated at about the rate they’re getting today, the bill to add just one day — never mind bumping the school year by a month — could top $20 million.
—Building a new, extensive teacher training program and career ladder. Gov. Strickland likened teachers to doctors in terms of their importance to society. He wants a four-year “residency,” during which they are trained and evaluated by a master teacher. He also described a career ladder, with teachers progressing through several career steps as they gained expertise.
Again, these are good ideas, but they have costs. Teachers will have less time in the classroom if the mentoring is as intense as he suggests. And as they move up the new career ladder, they will want additional pay for their added responsibilities.
—Junking the current testing program and replacing it with an entirely new evaluation. The plan would eliminate the Ohio Graduation Test. Instead, all students would take the ACT national college entrance exam, and new graduation requirements would be added, such as end-of-course exams, a service learning project and a senior project. In addition, the governor wants to scrap the achievement tests for grades 3 to 8.
Remember, though, that Ohio’s achievement tests and its graduation test are not that old, and they cost millions to construct. Starting over wouldn’t be cheap.
Gov. Strickland is counting on the federal bailout money to help kick off his plan during the next two years. Even if that works, he still has to explain where the funding will come from for the long term. The stimulus money can only be used once.
Ohio cannot afford to lurch toward an impossible dream. Describing the kinds of schools Ohio should have is the easy part. Paying for them is what has stumped well-meaning governors all across the country. Gov. Strickland said precious little about how he’s going to do that.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
Strickland: Big plans for education reform
Gov. Ted Strickland just delivered his state of the state address which included an extraordinary plan for reforming education in Ohio. I’ve posted some thoughts about it over at Get on the Bus, the DDN’s education blog.
Check it out and tell us what you think in the comments.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Education, Scott Elliott
Scholarships: Good idea or bad?
For those who have not been following along, Martin Gottlieb column today is the fourth in a series exploring the appropriateness of athletic scholarships at universities and colleges. You can find all four columns here:
—Athletic scholarships: Yeah right!
—Sports scholarships not inevitable part of the human circumstance
—Sports money not getting into classrooms
—Distinguishing among sports wouldn’t work
Read them all and give us your final take in the comments. What is your position on athletic scholarships and why?
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Higher Ed, Martin Gottlieb, Sports and Recreation
Editorial: Beavercreek school board has botched teacher’s removal
The Beavercreek school board has bungled its decision to strip responsibility for managing the high school’s spring musical from a popular drama teacher. It’s inviting critics to be suspicious.
Unquestionably, the board is violating Ohio law by refusing to release public documents in a timely manner. By shrouding this case in secrecy, the board is failing a basic responsibility to voters; it has a duty to be transparent, even granting that there are some things board members can’t say when publicly discussing personnel matters.
At the board’s Jan. 15 meeting, a parade of supporters asked the board to reinstate Dawn Stamper as the drama adviser. The board has declined to explain its actions in even the most general way.
Parents have a right to know the concerns about Ms. Stamper in order to judge the fairness of the board’s actions. That information should be spelled out in Ms. Stamper’s personnel file, which, by law, is public. It seems the administration doesn’t have grave concerns about her, since she is still teaching at Beavercreek High School.
Some drama students and their parents believe Ms. Stamper was doing a good job in her secondary role. One thousand people have signed a petition backing her, and 400 people have joined a campaign on her behalf at Facebook, the social networking site.
Maybe board members know something Ms. Stamper’s supporters don’t; maybe their actions are reasonable. But it is impossible to tell because of the wall they have erected to obscure this case.
Consider the district’s response to a Dayton Daily News request to review Ms. Stamper’s personnel file. Such files for public employees, including teachers, are supposed to contain evaluations and information about discipline. The school district is not disputing that it is required to release the file. But it has been dragging its feet.
Ohio law also requires that school districts allow for “prompt inspection” of public records. In general, Ohio courts have interpreted that to mean records should be turned over the same day a request is made unless there is a practical problem in doing so. For instance, courts have allowed a few extra days in cases where a large number of documents were requested or when the documents need to be reviewed to be sure confidential information, such as Social Security numbers or medical records, were removed.
In this case, Beavercreek schools’ attorney, Nicholas Subashi, has not made the case that there is any practical problem with inspecting Ms. Stamper’s file. And yet, it has been a full two weeks since the Dayton Daily News asked to see it. That is ridiculously stretching any reasonable interpretation of the public-records law.
On Monday, Mr. Subashi explained that he wants to give Ms. Stamper an opportunity to review the file first before it’s released. But Ms. Stamper apparently is traveling and he has not been able to speak with her. He said he will give her until today to raise any objections; then he’ll make it available Thursday, Jan. 29.
Beavercreek schools’ responsibility under the open-records law supersedes its desire to be courteous. Mr. Subashi is reading obligations into the law that simply aren’t there.
As recently as 2002, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled against a school district for withholding requested documents for four days. In Consumer News Services, Inc. vs. Worthington City Board of Education, the court found the requested records should have been made available the “same day that the request was received to the extent that records were readily available and not voluminous.” In ruling against Worthington schools, the court also ordered the district to pay the other side’s attorney fees.
If the Beavercreek school board and its administration have good reasons for their decision, the records will tell their story for them. But regardless of what the file says, the documents are not their personal — or private — property.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
Martin Gottlieb: Treating different sports differently wouldn’t work
This is the 4th column in a series on athletic scholarships. Thanks for all the comments.
Before being interrupted by certain national events last week, this column was patiently explaining some of the problems with athletic scholarships. This strange policy of using a college’s money to pay people to play games is worthy of scrutiny.
Established here already: The very phrase “athletic scholarship” is objectionable (as if scholarship and sports have anything to do with each other). Also, athletic scholarships are not an inevitable part of modern society, but are largely an American peculiarity, and are therefore worthy of scrutiny. And big-time sports programs do not make money that helps fund academic programs.
Football and basketball do make some money at some schools, of course, but the money gets used up in athletic departments.
There is, of course, something to be said for paying athletes in sports that bring in money, even if the money is only used by athletic departments. But to offer scholarships only in spectator sports would be awkward.
It would entail an admission that what’s at work is a business transaction, a payment for services, a salary rather a scholarship.
The schools like to pretend that there is some higher-minded rationale at work for “athletic scholarships.” Actually, there used to be.
During the Cold War, Americans worried about American Olympians being at a disadvantage in the Olympics in competition with the Soviet bloc. The communists made pursuit of Olympic glory a government policy. They organized and subsidized their athletes. Athletic scholarships were seen as a way for this country to compete.
If today there is any pedagogical, academic reason that athletic talent should buy a college education, then clearly athletic scholarships must be offered for volleyball, track and other sports that a school might have.
A few decades ago, Congress passed a law, known as Title IX, guaranteeing women equal treatment in higher education. That law has been interpreted to require roughly equal numbers of athletic scholarships. This has resulted not only in the addition of women’s teams, but in the elimination of many men’s teams.
At the likes of Miami University and the University of Dayton — as at hundreds of schools across the country — sports like wrestling were simply eliminated, though wrestling is one of the most participated-in sports in high school.
But, of course, at big-time schools — and not-so-big-time — eliminating football or basketball was politically out of the question.
Today, eliminating the scholarships for low-profile sports alone is politically out of the question because that’s where most of the women athletes are.
Fine. The right way to eliminate athletic scholarships would be across-the-board.
The athletes who bring in money for other athletes (less of which would be necessary if there were no athletic scholarships) deserve no special treatment. They’re getting fun, glory, experience, memories and exposure. Enough.
Some people assume that opposition to athletic scholarships reflects hostility to sports or, at least, to big-time sports. They see somebody like Indiana University academic Murray Sperber, who has written a book called “Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Has Crippled Undergraduate Education.” He laments that college often becomes all about sports, even for non-athletes.
But the point here is narrower. Let the games continue. Let the obsessions continue. Tailgate parties. Sports bars. The whole thing. Fine.
Just don’t pay the college athletes. It’s not necessary to produce watchable college sports — which, after all, predate the scholarship era — precisely because the country is sports crazy.
For colleges to pay students to play games is odd on its face. The more you look into the situation, the more you think it through, the odder it looks.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Higher Ed, Martin Gottlieb, Sports and Recreation
Holbrooke gets another Bosnia to fix up
President Barack Obama is close to making Afghanistan his. Maybe his accomplishment. Maybe his quagmire. But his.
He’s putting Richard Holbrooke in charge of making the country an accomplishment.
Perhaps now we know something about why Ambassador Holbrooke’s name didn’t figure much in speculation about who would be secretary of state. He was at the top of Democratic lists for that post in 2000 and 2004, but he seemed to fade in 2008. Now he emerges with a remarkable role, one that is well-chosen.
The president’s most distinctive mark on big foreign policy issues to date has been his insistence that the United States needs to gradually turn away from Iraq and focus more on Afghanistan.
On the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the president’s publicly known views are far more general. People are still wondering exactly how he’ll come down.
But his posture on Iraq/Afghanistan is concrete — he wants up to 30,000 more American troops, for example — and widely known. He calls that country the “central front on terror” and complains that the Iraq war has diverted American attention and resources. The 30,000 would double the American presence. (NATO also has about that many non-Americans present.)
Some observers are dubious about the Obama plan. They say that Afghanistan would be harder to bring under control than Iraq. It has a history of outlasting and expelling foreigners.
The United States has been in Afghanistan longer than Iraq, and the news just gets worse: more American deaths, more extremist attacks, more expansion of the conflict into Pakistan. Al-Qaida is considered by American intelligence officials to be dug into the mountains around the border.
The central government gets weaker rather than stronger, though Washington once had high hopes for its leader, Hamid Karzai.
Specifically, Ambassador Holbrooke will be the “special representative” to Afghanistan and Pakistan. His role is also expected to extend to relations with India, because you really can’t talk about Pakistan without talking about its nemesis — and fellow nuclear power.
He will report to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but also directly to the White House and its national security adviser. This is because Afghanistan is at least as much a military issue as a diplomatic one. Somebody who isn’t involved on the military side really isn’t in charge.
The arrangement is almost as complicated as Afghanistan. It is wholly dependent upon the ability of people with notably big egos to keep their egos in check and work as a team.
Of the three big foreign policy appointees — Secretary Clinton, Sen. George Mitchell (who’s handling Israeli-Arab issues) and Ambassador Holbrooke — Ambassador Holbrooke is the only one who isn’t a former elected official.
The reason he joins the group is, of course, his legendary success as the father of the Dayton peace accords on Bosnia, ending that war in the 1990s. He brought three countries together to sort through a devilish myriad of issues. They hammered out an extraordinarily complicated agreement that has kept the peace but has left a lot of other problems unsolved.
His new assignment has similarities. It isn’t to make a happily-ever-after future for a chaotic country. It is primarily to make sure that Afghanistan does not function as a haven for a revived al-Qaida. If he can accomplish everything his president wants, “Dayton” could become his second-ranking achievement.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Dayton Peace Accords and Other Peace Initiatives, Martin Gottlieb
Good to see clerk quickly fix mistake
New Montgomery County Clerk of Courts Greg Brush says his office will soon have a problem repaired that will allow access to online records and documents by Web surfers using Macintosh computers or browsers other than Internet Explorer.
The release of the clerk’s new online records system in December created headaches for users — individuals, commercial users and, yes, even us in the media — who did not have the specific equipment used in the clerk’s office. To launch an online interface that, by one estimate, cannot be used by 55 percent of computer users, was kind of bizarre.
But in Lou Grieco’s story Sunday Brush said creating the interface was more complicated than expected and that led to the problems.
It was a good idea for the clerk’s office to update a system last improved in 1997 and to, presumably, save a few bucks by developing the new interface in-house. But it seems like Brush and his team could have figured out on their own that not everyone uses the outdated Internet Explorer browser or or that MacIntosh’s share of the personal computer market has been creeping up above 10 percent the last couple years.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Montgomery County, Scott Elliott
Editorial: Politicians shouldn’t fold on gambling
It was only three months ago that Ohio voters once again showed sophistication when faced with another ballot issue that asked them to approve casino gambling.
Despite record sums spent by outfits with a financial stake in casinos, voters stood firm. They rejected the snake-oil promise that gambling would bring an economic windfall to the state.
Since Nov. 4, the international financial crisis has gotten even worse, and Ohio has been hit hard, resulting in an unprecedented squeeze on the state budget. It’s in that climate that some people’s principles have become expendable.
Gov. Ted Strickland, a minister and psychologist, did an abrupt about-face on casinos just after the start of the new year. He abandoned his opposition to casino gambling, saying he was now open to the idea because of the tax revenue it could bring in.
“The governor continues to believe that expanded gambling would be bad for Ohio,” Strickland spokesman Keith Dailey told the Cincinnati Enquirer. Then came the reversal.
However, “It would be unwise, and perhaps even inappropriate, to not consider contrary arguments,” Mr. Dailey said.
Senate President Bill Harris followed with similar comments that he might not oppose an effort to establish casinos.
Casino backers are eager to capitalize on the state’s fiscal woes. Penn National Gaming, which owns Argosy and pushed a failed effort to legalize expanded gambling at race tracks in Ohio in 2006, is hinting it will try again. In conversations with lawmakers, Penn National was quick to point out that Ohio would receive an estimated $600 million in fees and millions more in taxes if racetrack gaming is allowed.
You can’t blame lawmakers for finding that kind of money enticing. Heading into the budget-making season, things look grim. Legislators can expect to be making tough choices about what services Ohioans can do without. Without drastic changes, the state could be as much as $7 billion short.
With other governors, Gov. Strickland has appealed directly to President-elect Barack Obama to include a huge handout for the states in the federal economic stimulus package that is in the works.
How many times do voters have to say no to casinos before developers and lawmakers believe that they really mean it? Ohioans have made a rational — and correct — choice to protect their communities from the downsides of casino games. Four times since 1990 voters have rejected different gambling proposals, and when they did so the last time, they knew that the state was heading into dire times. The economic benefits of gambling are a matter of much debate, and Ohio has repeatedly sided with those who believe the drawbacks outweigh the advantages.
If gaming advocates don’t want to give up, fine. They can wage another expensive fight to persuade voters to sign petitions in support of their cause, and, if they’re successful, then we’ll have yet another vote.
But they shouldn’t get any help from Ohio’s politicians. Voters have spoken unambiguously.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ohio politics, Scott Elliott
Ellen Belcher: Once again, Mr. Lincoln stills crowd
This vignette will tell you everything you need to know about the emotional significance of Barack Obama’s presidency and the mood that prevailed in Washington last week.
It happened the day before Obama was sworn in — fittingly on Martin Luther King Jr. Day — at the National Museum of American History.
As part of the inauguration celebration, the museum had brought in actors to impersonate Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. At the end of the actors’ presentation, they took questions, answering in character.
A middle-aged black man asked the Jefferson stand-in how he could be against slavery and still own slaves.
“President Jefferson,” according to my husband who saw this scene unfold, stammered something about the times. But he wasn’t convincing anybody that the contradiction could be reconciled.
In sober Lincoln fashion, “President Lincoln” asked if he could respond. He proceeded to say that he understood that, today, much of the world is reliant on a machine that can carry people farther and faster than horses — or so he had been told. He said he also understood that the machine was doing something to the atmosphere that could threaten life on earth.
He’d heard that the reason the machine is still used so widely is that entire economies depend on it. That’s as it was with slavery in the South, he said.
It was a humbling way of noting that history is still repeating itself, and that as much as we think humanity has progressed, blind spots will get you every time.
The black man listened, then said he had one more thing he wanted to say. Before the hushed crowd and without a trace of bitterness, he thanked President Washington, President Jefferson and President Lincoln for what each man had done to pave the way for the historic event that would take place the next day.
The place stood still.
Everybody who was in Washington for Obama’s swearing-in has a story such as this one. Something happened in a line, on the Mall, in the hotel, at a restaurant that they won’t ever forget, and the incident occurred because the country had turned a page in the darkest chapter of its history.
In the run-up to Tuesday, the atmosphere in the city was electric, and you couldn’t help but notice that blacks and whites were going out of their way to talk to each other.
During the swearing-in, I was in front of two French journalists, both based in the States. They said the news weeklies they worked for couldn’t get enough coverage of Obama during the campaign or since.
“You’re so far ahead of us,” one said. “Europe has elected women, but never a minority. We want to be like you.”
There were more than a few disappointments on Tuesday. Some 4,000 people with tickets for the swearing-in, for example, didn’t get in even though they had arrived early and waited patiently in a horrendous — and at moments dangerous — bottleneck. At one point, a man yelled, “Did someone put Michael Brown in charge?” He was referring to President George W. Bush’s FEMA director, who botched Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
But in a telling statistic — considering that the population of Washington doubled for the day — there were no arrests on Tuesday, according to the Washington Post.
The 30,000 law enforcement and military personnel — including 20 officers from Dayton — couldn’t have been more helpful or approachable. The ubiquitous camel-colored camouflage the military wore was a sobering, if unintended, reminder that, notwithstanding the celebration, there’s still a war on.
What you saw had a lot to do with where you were, because the throng was just so massive. From my spot at the swearing-in, the on-again-off-again bright sun gave the normally gleaming white Capitol an ivory cast. I’m not sure whether anyone else noticed, but it seemed an apt color for the day, particularly on an iconic structure that was built with the help of slaves.
The wall-to-wall coverage of the event in newspapers and on television, much of it fabulously done and well-reported, was a great reminder that the world would be a poorer place without crusty, cranky people with cameras and more questions than any reasonable person should have.
It was their work that got beamed around the world, prompting this piece of reporting from China that appeared in the Washington Post on Wednesday:
“University student Zhou Yongfu, 21, who was eating a taco (in a Beijing restaurant that was showing the swearing-in), said he had come to practice his English and to ‘feel the atmosphere’ of the inauguration.
“I’m surprised that so many people stand in the street and they do so voluntarily,” he said.
That French journalist I told you about and who wants to be like us — she may be on to something.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Ellen Belcher, National Politics
Editorial: Central State is small but still vital
Gov. Ted Strickland and Eric Fingerhut, the chancellor of Ohio’s public colleges, have shown admirable commitment to ensuring the future of Central State University. They have shown through action that they want CSU to be a vital part of the state’s collection of colleges.
But with the state’s budget crisis, there’s a renewed effort to save money and eliminate programs that aren’t “mission critical,” in Mr. Fingerhut’s words. Some of the latest ideas for cutting costs require extra care as they’re applied to CSU.
As the state’s only historically black public university, Central State has a unique and important mission. Like other colleges, it, of course, has to operate efficiently while also striving for academic excellence. But its independence has to be safeguarded. Mr. Fingerhut promises that maintaining the university’s independence and stature is compatible with his cost-cutting ideas.
At issue is a directive from Mr. Fingerhut that could require small colleges — those with fewer than 5,000 students — to share “back shop” services, such as information technology, human resources and health insurance.
In a meeting with the Dayton Daily News editorial board earlier this month, Mr. Fingerhut spoke admiringly of coalitions of campuses that operate under one administration. He said he could envision the state’s smallest universities banding together in a similar way, or perhaps partnering with a larger state university. In Central State’s case, the obvious choice is its neighbor, Wright State University.
In a later interview, Mr. Fingerhut said he was not suggesting that this vision necessarily applies to Central State, which has a student body of 2,300. That’s a relief, because Central State needs its own president and chief fundraiser. The college is too different to be put on a path to effectively becoming a branch campus.
Central State has a goal of having 6,000 students by 2017. It’s receiving special funding to recruit more students and build up its campus, which has been shamefully underfunded by the state for decades. This history has been part of the reason that Central State has had difficulty attracting students who can comparison shop when choosing their college.
Another problem for Central State is that most colleges today are aggressively seeking out minorities. That move is a positive development for students and society, but it does complicate Central State’s work.
President John Garland said he has no doubt about the state’s commitment to his campus. Mr. Fingerhut is right, he said, to redirect as much spending as possible to universities’ core mission.
The president adds, “What the chancellor is proposing is a nudge in the right direction.”
With the state’s budget getting tighter seemingly every month, that “nudge” will become more forceful.
“Not wasting money on administrative costs and instead investing in new faculty, programs and facilities is the best way to guarantee the long-term viability of Central State University,” Mr. Fingerhut said.
Ohio is right to pressure its small — and big — colleges to treat every dollar preciously. And Central State should be no exception. At the same time, the Greene County college is a tremendous asset for Ohio, serving mostly low-income students at a nurturing place with special services that can make all the difference in whether young people graduate.
That mission, that goal, can’t be compromised, even in tough times.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Higher Ed, Scott Elliott
Editorial: Region needs to use airport to land jobs
This news might sound alarming: Dayton International Airport is making less money from its core business of serving airlines and freight companies, and the trend is expected to continue.
Here’s the back story — a tale of a smart business strategy that has the potential to pay important and lasting economic development dividends.
“Our mission is not to show profit,” said Iftikhar Ahmad, the director of aviation at the city-owned air-. “Our is to be an economic engine for southwest Ohio.”
The industry jargon for the fee that airlines pay to the airport for each traveler who boards an airplane is the “enplanement” cost. That charge is a primary source of revenue for the airport. Since 2006, Dayton has driven that fee down dramatically to $4.50 per passenger from $14. Mr. Ahmad wants to cut it even more.
The lower airport cost has made Dayton a more attractive destination for airlines serving the Dayton-Columbus-Cincinnati triangle of about 5.1 million people, and probably also has resulted in lower ticket prices for travelers. Even with the recession, consider that there was a solid jump in the number of airline passengers who traveled through Dayton in 2008.
The fee structure is the core of Mr. Ahmad’s strategy to leverage the airport as an economic development tool. The lower the costs are here, the more attractive Dayton is to fly in and out of, and the more sensible the region looks as a location for businesses that depend on air travel or air freight.
While pushing down Dayton’s costs means less revenue to operate the airport, Mr. Ahmad has a plan he hopes will compensate. Earlier this month, Dayton announced it would allow commercial development on about 400 acres of airport land — a chunk of land that is less than 10 percent of its property and is located away from runways.
Commercial tenants with longterm leases would bring new income to the airport, income that’s not coming from the airlines or their passengers.
Another goal is to upgrade parking and restaurant space. That, too, represents a different revenue stream.
Mr. Ahmad’s strategy is showing signs that it’s working. The airport director says he was in talks last year with an airline about possibly bringing a hub to Dayton, making the airport a central switching site for travelers changing planes. U.S. Airways was the last airline to have a hub here, and it was closed in 1992. The more passengers who travel through the airport, the more attractive it becomes for ancillary services that pay the airport to rent space.
The hub talks cooled as the economy dived, but Mr. Ahmad isn’t giving up.
More ambitious ideas for the future call for connecting the airport to nearby railways, which would allow air cargo to be quickly moved out by truck or rail.
Good air travel options are a must for cities like Dayton, said Joe Tuss, assistant Montgomery County administrator.
“Half the goal with recruiting and retaining business is about having an overall positive climate and environment,” he said. “If you don’t have good air service, it creates a large hurdle.”
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Economy, Editorials, Local Business, Scott Elliott
Academy’s snub of Sr. Dorothy movie is disappointing
Sr. Dorothy Stang
The nominations for the Academy Awards are out but, surprisingly, the documentary They Killed Sister Dorothy about the murder of Dayton native Sr. Dorothy Stang in Brazil was not among the finalists for best documentary.
I really don’t know what more the Academy could ask for. The best documentaries don’t just tell a story, the affect change. This film helped lead to the arrest of the alleged mastermind of Stang’s murder. It’s exactly the kind of filmmaking that ought to be recognized and honored with an Academy Award.
For the film, which was among 10 in the running before finalists were announced, not to be even among the last films standing for the award is a big disappointment.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Religion and Faith
Holbrooke will be envoy to Pakistan, Afganistan
Richard Holbrooke
Well, this is a fair consolation prize.
Richard Holbrooke, the architect of the Dayton Peace Accords, was not named secretary of state by President Obama, as the DDN editorial board had advocated back in November. But today Obama announced he was tapping George Mitchell as a special envoy to the Middle East and Holbrooke as envoy to Afganistan and Pakistan.
On its face, it might seem like Mitchell got the sexier gig, but in truth the geopolitics surrounding Pakistan are every bit as high profile and important to the world as the Israeli-Arab conflict. Make no mistake, this is a very challenging job and in Holbrooke Obama has made an excellent choice.
Holbrook is rightfully remembered for solving the European crisis in Bosnia as the U.S. lead in the negotiations that took place here at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Those talks resulted in a liveable, if not universally loved, compromise that brought a lasting peace that continues today after an ugly ethnic conflict that threatened to destabilize its region.
Here’s what we wrote in November, urging Obama to pick Holbrooke as secretary of state:
Holbrooke looks the best from Dayton
In 2004, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke was a front-runner for secretary of state in a John Kerry administration.
Mr. Holbrooke campaigned hard for Sen. Kerry. He is widely respected in Washington and in capitols abroad. He had a long career in highlevel diplomacy, including as ambassador to the United Nations, which is one path to the secretary job.
He even had something like superstar status, resulting from his fathering of the Dayton peace talks that ended the Bosnian war in the mid-1990s. None of his competitors had anything so concrete to point to.
In 2000, too, Ambassador Holbrooke had been a front-runner for secretary of state.
This year, not so much. This time the discussion has focused on politicians. Sen. Hillary Clinton has emerged as the front-runner after a speculation season that included Sen. Kerry.
Ambassador Holbrooke, 67, has always had his detractors. He is not your image of a soft-talking diplomat. “Hard-charging” is a term used about him by those trying to be neutral. “Abrasive” by those not trying. A critic or two is thought to have the ear of President-elect Barack Obama. And maybe Sen. Obama simply wants somebody he knows better.
Some have speculated that if Sen. Clinton is secretary, Ambassador Holbrooke might be her deputy.
He’d be a good choice for either position.
His work on Bosnia demonstrated expertise and creativity that nobody else has demonstrated in the diplomatic realm in a long time. He recognized an opportunity to achieve peace, conceived a pathway, then took charge and bulldozed the extraordinarily complex process through to completion.
How do you bulldoze through complexity? First, he made sure that the Dayton negotiations happened — getting three presidents to attend and getting a free hand from his own president. He isolated the negotiators from the outside world at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Then he stuck through three weeks of painful negotiations that could have collapsed many times.
He has not been shy about keeping the memory of his accomplishment alive. He wrote a book about it, and he has come back to Dayton repeatedly, always with nice words to say about the community. That abrasive side hasn’t been particularly visible here.
But he hasn’t overused the Dayton example. He hasn’t proposed a new “Dayton” every time an international problem arises. He expressed skepticism about the approach being applied in Iraq in the darkest days there, for example. His position has been that sometimes an international problem cries out for knocking heads together, and that such opportunities must be seized — not that all the problems of the world can be resolved if government leaders are simply willing to talk.
To this day, the word “Dayton” is widely used in diplomatic, political and journalistic circles. If Ambassador Holbrooke were named secretary of state, that would get this community into the news in a pretty big way. “Dayton” would be used in every report on his background and qualifications.
Even after being nominated, on every issue he would confront, somebody would raise the question: Is it time for another “Dayton”?
That would be a nice little thing for Dayton, the community.
Sadly, this consideration might not be the top one for President-elect Obama.
So how about this: By picking Ambassador Holbrooke, he could make a statement about the boldness he is looking for, about his willingness to reward concrete accomplishment, and about the administration’s general approach — even as he gets a brilliant career diplomat.
And there’s this: Ambassador Holbrooke isn’t married to Bill.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: National Politics
Editorial: Court sets wrong bar on public records
Open government — including the tenet that public records are owned by the people who have a right to inspect them — is one of the bedrocks of American democracy.
Ohio’s open-records laws are generally good, allowing citizens to see everything from personnel records for public employees to notes written on paper scraps by elected officials.
That’s why the Ohio Supreme Court’s approval in December of new rules governing the openness of court records is so concerning. As part of a completely justifiable effort to protect Ohioans from identity theft, the court overreached. The new rules run far afield of their original purpose, totally reframing how courts must look at requests to conceal information.
Before these changes take effect in May, the court should reverse course.
About a year ago, the court formed a commission to address a real problem. As courts put more and more information online, they have to be concerned about personal information, such as Social Security numbers and bank account numbers, getting into cyberspace.
But as the commission began to craft rules, it took an alarmingly broad approach. Some of the worst ideas were eventually dropped after media organizations complained.
Still, in the end, the rules endorse a titanic shift in the basic assumption about the openness of court records.
Under the state’s long tradition of access, courts generally required those who wanted documents withheld from public view to make a case to keep the records secret. Now the burden will shift. The rules allow judges to seal records unless someone can show cause why they should not be.
To overturn a judge’s ruling to limit access, an appeals court would have to find that the interests of the party that wanted the information to be made public outweighed the interests of the side that wanted it kept secret. That’s a high bar that favors secrecy over public access.
Some experts believe the court has overstepped its authority. Critics say that the Legislature, not the court, has the power to make laws regarding what information can be kept from the public. The counter is that the judicial branch has wide latitude to police itself.
“Whether we like it or not, the court has adopted rules, and we are not sure where there is any recourse,” said Frank Deaner, president of the Ohio Newspaper Association.
The Supreme Court doesn’t seem worried about the impact of these changes. It voted 6-1 to approve them. A court spokesman said critics are alarmists who should wait and see if problems occur.
But the historical approach — the public-spirited approach — has been to assume that courts function best when their documents and proceedings are open and available to all. The complaint that Ohio’s justices are backing away from that tradition isn’t an exaggeration.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Law Enforcement and Public Safety, Scott Elliott
Sports money not getting to classrooms: Athletic Scholarships III
(This is the third in a series of columns about athletic scholarsips. Others are below.)
“A March report from the NCAA concludes what many have long feared about the real costs of college sports: The vast majority of athletics departments operate in the red.” č The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 23, 2008
Some people assume that the best case for athletic scholarships is that high-profile collegiate sports programs bring in money č via ticket sales, television contracts, alumni gifts and whatnot č that can then be applied to academic programs. Wrong.
The report noted above is about Division I schools, the big ones. It represents the first effort by the NCAA to systematically analyze where sports programs get their money.
The word “red” means that schools must give money to the athletic departments, as opposed to receiving money.
The report doesn’t present information about individual schools. But it does offer some clues.
Says the Chronicle, “Just 17 of the more than 300 athletics programs in all of Division I ╔ earned a net profit between 2004 and 2006. ╔ Sixteen of those ╔ were from the elite Division I-A level, or what is now called the Football Bowl Subdivision.”
In other words, if your conference gets automatic invitations to bowl games, you might make a profit.
The overarching financial problem for college sports, says the report, is that, while income has been rising, expenses have been rising more.
Think about those incredible salaries for coaches. (It’s not just football and basketball. The median salary for hockey coaches in the top division is a quarter-million.)
Also, there are sports that, unlike big-time basketball and football programs, bring in virtually no money, but can cost a half-million a year, or more. Track and field is one.
Actually, even if athletic departments did bring in money for academic programs, that wouldn’t be an overwhelming case for athletic scholarships. After all, who’s to say there wouldn’t be a way to make money on sports without paying the athletes?
Athletic scholarships have become an American institution because of competition between schools. If your competitors give scholarships, then you want to.
But what if your competitors didn’t?
A school as big as Ohio State University would presumably be able to put up a very watchable basketball or football team without scholarships if it didn’t have to compete for athletes with schools that do give scholarships.
If there were no athletic scholarships, maybe some athletes would find an alternative to school, say a minor-league team or semi-pro team, if such options sprang up. But there’d be plenty of other athletes who’d want to go to college.
If arguments about the role of profit in college sports don’t seem particularly powerful to somebody who has qualms about athletic scholarships on principle, neither do the arguments about grades, graduation rates, test scores and all that.
The arguments have been beaten to death. You may have heard them. An attempt at a summary:
Just last month the Atlanta Constitution looked into the situation at the colleges in Georgia. It found that the SAT scores of athletes in the high-profile sports (the paper didn’t look at other sports) run several hundred points below the average that prevails at any particular school.
Of course, some of those athletes are on scholarships.
Defenders of the system say test scores are not the right stat to look at; what matters are graduation rates.
Of course, the big-time colleges have come in for much flak on that score, too, over the years. But they’ve made progress. They note now that graduation rates among, for example, black athletes is slightly higher than for black students in general. In response, some say that graduation rates (and grades) are not necessarily the right measures, if athletes are taking easy courses or getting special treatment. There has been no systematic study of that.
What we’re left with at bottom is what we started with:
People are getting scholarships to play games, and the suspicion cannot be put to rest that the same money could instead go to other students, on the basis of grades, test scores, need or some other worthy measure.
Of course, the issue of race must be confronted. At a Division I school, blacks are likely to be four times more represented among scholarship athletes than in the student body as a whole. So just flatly, simplistically ending sports scholarships would represent a step backward in a realm where progress is still needed. But there are plenty of minority students who aren’t athletes who need some help to go to college and who could perform well in the classroom.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Post your comment | Categories: Higher Ed
Can the Air Force deliver a shuttle?
Former DDN Staff Writer Tim Gaffney offers this case for why the Air Force museum should get one of the three shuttles that NASA is expected to retire in 2010.
We also published an editorial saying some of the same things. The National Air and Space Museum’s Tom Crouch (a Dayton guy) thinks Dayton should get one as well.
Former U.S. Sen. John Glenn reportedly has written a letter to NASA in support of Dayton. I asked for a copy from Ret. Gen. Charles D. Metcalf, director of the museum, but he said he didn’t have it. You’d think that he’d want that letter out.
Can the Air Force museum organize a big and broad enough coalition that NASA can’t refuse — and raise the needed money? What do you think?
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Local History, Wright Patterson Air Force Base
Editorial: Strickland has yet to address tough questions
Ohio has a seemingly sensible policy on students with special needs and those from low-income homes. The state sends school districts a little extra money.
So it certainly sounds scandalous that the Education Trust, a respected Washington, D.C., think tank, argued in a recent report that the Ohio kids in need are not the ones who benefit from the extra money. Instead, the report says, that extra money ends up benefiting schools with relatively little need.
Gov. Ted Strickland should be tackling this sort of issue if he intends to make real and lasting change with a school funding reform plan that he has promised to deliver in the first half of 2009. So far there is no evidence that he will.
Under today’s system, the state calculates an aid premium on top of the mandated per-pupil state aid amount (currently about $5,700) for each poor or special education student. It’s up to the district to decide how the extra money is spent.
Where the money goes is affected by union contracts. School employees get higher pay as their seniority grows. Contract rules also typically require open jobs to be awarded to the most senior school employees who apply.
Therefore, the most senior — and highest paid — workers naturally gravitate toward the most “desirable” work environments. Since poor children and those in special education bring extra challenges, senior employees tend to snap up open jobs at schools that have fewer of those children.
This creates an imbalance. Even within a poor school district, the Education Trust found the most experienced and best paid staff congregate in the schools with the least poverty, leaving the least experienced and lowest paid teachers to start out in the schools with the biggest poverty challenges.
To the Education Trust and others, this seems backward, to say the least. Shouldn’t the most experienced staff be paired with the most challenging students?
At a time when some reformers are pushing the idea of “hazard pay” — significant extra compensation for those who agree to take jobs in the poorest inner city schools — should school districts really maintain a staff-assignment system that routes the most experienced teachers away from those schools?
And, to the Education Trust’s point, isn’t extra money for higher pay for experienced staff in a poor school district coming in part from a state subsidy designed to help needy children — the very kids from whom teachers are fleeing when they transfer away from the poorest schools?
These are troubling questions. Lawmakers should move quickly to adopt the Education Trust’s most basic recommendation and require school districts to report expenses at the school level. That would make it easier for policymakers to evaluate how tax money is spent.
The report’s other big recommendation — charmingly titled “implement ‘fair’ school funding” — falls under the category of “easier said than done.” Like most states, Ohio has struggled for decades to find ways to making school funding more equitable.
It’s not clear that the Education Trust’s favored school funding method — sending aid for students with extra needs to their schools, rather districts — would necessarily solve the problem. Schools complain that too many strings attached to funding can limit their ability to target funds in the most effective ways.
The report says policymakers also must re-evaluate the current staff assignment process. That would require a sticky debate involving a host of interests.
Even so, that is the conversation that must be had first. Now is the time, if, in fact, Gov. Strickland is serious about major school funding reform.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
Scott Elliott: Lottery winner’s advice really works for everyone
The first time I met Richard Board, he was clutching a $24 million check in the glare of bright television cameras wearing the smile of the happiest man on the face of the earth.
The last time I saw him, he was staring down into his wife’s coffin, gently stroking the state patrol patch on her shoulder as he spoke in the soft voice of a man struggling to hold it together.
The Ohio Lottery changed Richard’s life. So when a group of Piqua city workers won $207 million in the MegaMillions drawing last month, I thought of him. What would he tell the new millionaires after 12 years as a lottery winner?
Here’s his answer:
Get a good lawyer and find a bank you trust. Learn everything you can about managing money so you will know what questions to ask. Get used to being asked for money. Say yes only when you really want to, and be sure you’ve checked out the story you’ve been told because most people who ask are lying.
But there’s another, unspoken bit of advice in Richard’s story, too: Appreciate all you have in life that has nothing to do with money.
Before he was handed that check in January 1997, Richard was exactly the sort of person everyone believes should win the lottery. After growing up poor and quitting high school, he had eked out a modest living as a uniform salesman. For 27 years, he was up at 3 a.m. to start his route, returning home to his small Springfield house and dozing off in an easy chair from exhaustion most nights. He was 48.
Not long after hitting the jackpot, he bought a restored 1957 Chevy and a sprawling farm in Miami County with a barn and horses that Becky, his wife, loved. A year after their big win, I visited the couple at their farm to write about them for the Springfield News-Sun. What a year they had.
Their final payout was $7.4 million after they elected to take the lump-sum option. Besides the car and the farm, they paid off bills and bought homes for their closest relatives and had what they called their “best Christmas ever.”
Becky in particular seemed to be thriving. The two met when Richard delivered uniforms to the driver’s license examination station where Becky worked. They had married in 1992. Three years before the win, a stroke had left Becky mostly paralyzed on one side and horribly damaged her heart.
Becky couldn’t afford to continue her physical therapy after her insurer, concluding that the 39-year-old wasn’t getting any better, stopped paying.
But living on her dream farm and unencumbered by the stress of their former life, Becky regained strength. Sadly, it wouldn’t last. Just months after my visit, her heart gave out and she died. Richard sold the farm and struggled with depression for five difficult years.
But he’s doing well now. He moved back to the Springfield area because it felt more like home to him. He bought a house he loves and moved his money from a national bank to a locally owned one. And he’s connected with a local charity that his lawyer recommended.
He likes to travel occasionally with close family members, and he’s found comfort in a beloved pet — Rockie, the cat that used to sit on Becky’s lap while she rode a tractor around the farm. He’s trying to prepare himself because Rockie is getting old, and he dreads losing one more physical link to Becky.
Richard still plays the lottery. In fact, when he and Becky were on the farm, he bought lottery tickets at the grocery where the Piqua folks hit it big. He knows what they’re feeling right now, how they’ll be tempted to spend money like they never have before.
They should listen to Richard. Slow down. Get good advice. Focus on what really matters, and use your resources in ways that will make a difference in the long run.
Come to think of it, that’s good advice even if you haven’t won the lottery.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Scott Elliott
Could unemployment reach 10 percent in Ohio?
That’s what one state report predicts for 2009. Currently, unemployment is at about 7 percent here. A three-point jump may not sound like much, but the effects of having one in 10 Ohioans out of work would be very damaging. It would strain already stressed state services and reduce tax revenue significantly.
This is part of the reason why Gov. Ted Strickland is aggressively seeking stimulus funds from the federal government. Anything that can be done to create jobs here, Ohio needs.
What else can the state do to keep people working? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Here’s a few other items from today’s news you may find interesting:
Time to chow down: Restaurant Week in Dayton (coming up Jan. 25-30) just keeps getting bigger every year. This year 57 area restaurants, including many excellent ones, are participating. You get a three-course meal for $20.09. That is a great bargain. My wife and I have gone twice — once to Jay’s Restaurant downtown and once to Fleming’s Restuarant at the Greene. In both cases we got fabulous meals for a great price and the great atmosphere of a top quality restaurant. You can’t beat that!
If you want a little “taste” of what this will be like, Mark Fisher reports on his blog that several of the participating restaurants will offer dishes they plan to serve on Restaurant Week at an event Wednesday.
Puzzling Ohio Politics: Think you know a lot about state politics? Then try your hand at this crossword puzzle that I found through the Carnival of Ohio Politics. It looks pretty challenging.
Who gets to vote by mail?: So here’s a question — should mail-in ballot voting only be made easy in wealthy counties? It’ looks like that’s what happened on Election Day in Ohio.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Economy, Ohio politics
Bad landlords, Senate hopefuls and conservatives have their say
Here’s five quick links from today that are worth you time to check out:
Bad landlords: Over at DaytonOS they examine in detail who owns nuisance homes on a single street in Dayton and finds the landlords don’t fit the stereotypical profile.
Senate hopeful: Well that was fast. Rob Portman has made it official that he is running for Sen. George Voinovich’s Ohio senate seat in 2010.
Guess who’s coming to dinner: Wow. I really wish there was video of this. Last night, President Elect Barack Obama had dinner at the home of columnist George Will and was joined by a host of conservative commentators, including David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol.
Give the money and leave it alone: Dick Morris, the conservative political consultant famous for his personal scandals while advising then-President Clinton, says Congress will stifle growth if it attaches too many strings to the federal bailout money it is giving to banks and big business.
Something leftover that you can touch: Conservative blogger Hugh Hewitt recalls how government money built libraries in his Ohio hometown and others and asks, will there be any physical reminders of Barack Obama’s trillion-dollar stimulus? And can he survive politically if the answer turns out to be no?
Update: Apparently, Obama also met with liberal commentators this morning.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: National Politics, Ohio politics
Athletic Scholarships Not Part of Natural Order
A column in this space last week dealt irreverently with “athletic scholarships.” It questioned the wisdom of having institutions of higher ed giving people money to play sports.
And it questioned the very phrase “athletic scholarships,” as if a student is being given money to study sports, as in “music scholarship.”
The case for my views is overwhelming. But it is not open-and-shut. So, part II:
Most striking about the feedback has been the refrain that it is incredible that somebody has this idiotic view. Some people seem to be shocked.
Maybe that is partly because athletic scholarships have always been with us. They seem a natural, inherent part of American life, no more debatable than traffic lights or, indeed, sports themselves.
So let it be reported here that athletic scholarships are an act of mankind. They don’t exist in nature. Somebody has to create them.
In most places, nobody creates them.
In England, for example, they don’t exist, though athletic skill may be taken into financial account for students with a sports-related major.
Get on the Internet and try to find information about athletic scholarships in Europe, and you will keep finding sites about how European students can get athletic scholarships in the United States.
Now, to point out that most countries don’t do things our way is not to offer that as proof that we are wrong. It’s just to say that there is an actual choice to be made here. And, yes, it’s to suggest that perhaps some attention is owed the fact that our approach hasn’t exactly swept the world.
Maybe it is worthwhile to open our minds to the possibility of change.
Or maybe not.
Change, after all, is not going to happen. Forget it. This piece is argument gratia argument. Tilting at windmills.
Nobody messes with the sports fans.
The problem is even bigger than that. Athletic scholarships used to go almost exclusively to men. In recent decades, that has changed. The change is widely counted as a major success of the women’s movement and of equal-rights legislation.
The result: now the mainstream feminist organizations are defenders of athletic scholarships.
Add them to the traditional sports fans, and to those who see athletic scholarships as a way up for racial minorities, and you have a coalition that is just simply beyond challenging.
The coalition is politically skillful. Anyone who questions athletic scholarships risks being portrayed as a Scrooge who is against helping poor people go to college. In truth, of course, most skeptics of athletic scholarships suspect that the money could be better used on other students, with more emphasis on actual scholarship and on financial need.
The whole debate can get complicated. Besides the issues of gender and race, there’s the money that some sports bring in for schools, and that other sports don’t, even if they have scholarship athletes. There are issues of grades and graduation rates.
There’s the whole sports mentality. Tomes have been written about the impact of sport on the quality of higher education. Some close observers say sports dominates everything on some campuses, diminishing the college experience, which, after all, is supposed to be about growth, not about immersion in pre-college interests.
The issue is alive even at small schools where athletes don’t get scholarships but are recruited and can get help and preference, even to the point, allegedly, of lowering academic standards.
Typically, the people writing on this subject don’t call for actually banning athletic scholarships. They just want to somehow get the system under control, to end abuses.
The abuses — alleged and real — do have to be measured in any discussion of the merits of athletic scholarships. After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?
Unless you think the very idea of “athletic scholarship” is broken.
It’s not hard to imagine other ways for athletes to make some money after high school. Professional sports leagues could fund minor-league teams, rather than having their training costs borne by colleges.
Businesses could support adult teams of serious athletes, much as they now sponsor children’s teams. That used to be common.
But now colleges suck much of the life out of such possible alternatives.
Bottom line: What is now hasn’t always been and needn’t always be.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Post your comment | Categories: Higher Ed
Ohio GOP chairman opposes Blackwell
The Cleveland Plain Dealer is reporting that Ohio GOP chairman Bob Bennett is not endorsing Ken Blackwell, former Republican candidate for governor in Ohio, for the job of national party chair. Bennett wants to stick with current chair Mike Duncan instead.
That’s gotta hurt for Blackwell. It’s hard to figure how he would launch a bid for party chair without knowing he had the support of the leader of the state party behind him. The PD story said Fairborn’s Kevin DeWine is the remaining undecided Ohio delegate. It will be interesting to see where he comes down.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: National Politics
Voinovich hitting the road: Who’s next?
Tuesday’s editorial looks at Sen. George Voinovich’s decision to retire in 2010 in context of the wholesale turnover in political leadership in Ohio over the last few years.
The natural next question is who will replace Voinovich? There is at least one early list already out speculating about who will be in the race.
Do you have a hunch who the ultimate contenders from both parties will be? Share it in the comments.
UPDATE: Rob Portman tells Talking Points Memo he is leaning toward running for Voinovich’s seat in 2010.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: National Politics
Editorial: Cash demand puts Dayton in a tough spot
Just about the time the U.S. Department of Justice came to town two years ago to look into concerns about the lack of minorities in Dayton’s police and fire departments, the city itself established a diversity committee.
That committee was just one of countless initiatives that have been made over decades, all aimed at getting more blacks into these jobs.
The committee chairman, City Commissioner Dean Lovelace, welcomed the folks from Justice, hopeful that perhaps their legal clout would help force certain changes.
Then came the December news that the Justice Department wants the city to pay $1.5 million to minorities who were passed over for promotion or not offered jobs because of allegedly discriminatory hiring practices. That was a chilly bucket of ice water over the head.
City Manager Rashad Young is scrambling to close a $13.5 million budget deficit, so it’s not like he has $1.5 million just waiting to be put to good use.
Of course, these sorts of demands don’t get settled quickly. Mr. Young says that the $1.5 million is a starting figure for talks between the city and the Justice Department, talks that may stretch through 2009. The cost to the city of a settlement is too far off to speculate about, he said.
Mr. Lovelace, who is recuperating from health problems, still believes the Justice Department is the “hammer” that can force the city to finally solve the vexing headache of minority under-representation.
At issue is a civil-service exam and hiring process that has led to a work force in which 6 percent of firefighters and 8 percent of police officers are black in a city with a black population approaching 50 percent.
City leaders have acknowledged all along that those numbers are too low, although they deny that there’s a pattern of intentional discrimination.
While Mr. Lovelace has been off the job, he has kept up on Justice’s demands. He said it was not a complete surprise that the department asked for compensation for people who allegedly were shortchanged. But the demand puts the cashstrapped city in a tough spot.
“They came in with some very heavy demands” Mr. Lovelace said. “But I welcome the notion that they are urging us to find justice for some of these persons of color —; African-American officers, men and women — who were slighted. I thought there would be a cost to achieve justice. But it’s a tough time to be asking for $1.5 million.”
Mr. Young said the city is working on a formal response, and his staff’s recommendations for changing the hiring process won’t be ready for a couple of months. The city and civil service board hope to evaluate the testing procedures and determine how they can be changed.
Then negotiations on a settlement could follow. Any payments could be made over time.
“From where I sit, the result the Justice Department wants is to see the same results we want to see — a diversified public safety staff that is somewhat reflective of the demographics of the city,” Mr Young said.
Both the feds and Dayton are pursuing the right goals. The main objective has to be getting a hiring process in place that truly is fair and identifies qualified candidates. The potential payout is secondary.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Civil Rights, Scott Elliott
Editorial: Tough laws, peer pressure can curb DUI
In Dayton, 2009 got off to an awful start when just after midnight on New Year’s Day a single-car crash cost five people their lives.
Test results aren’t back yet, but all indications are that alcohol played a role in what police described as one of the worst accidents they’d ever seen. It was a painful reminder about the dangers of drunken driving, and the need to perpetually discourage it, notwithstanding all the discouraging that’s already been done.
Interesting enforcement ideas are out there, but none would have guaranteed a different outcome in this case.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Law Enforcement and Public Safety, Scott Elliott
Editorial: Beating Michigan is good enough
If John Cooper were still here, Ohio State University football fans might be marching in the streets, calling for his head.
The Buckeyes have just lost their third consecutive bowl game, with Texas pulling out a last-minute comeback and winning 24-21. It’s been a painful run, and a reversal of the early bowl success of the Jim Tressel era, when his teams won four of their first five post-season tries.
As Thursday night’s Bowl Championship Series finale pulled the curtain on the 2008 college football season, it’s a natural moment for assessment. Three straight defeats are a letdown for a program that’s become accustomed to sustained success. During this slide, an old, familiar pattern has re-emerged — regularseason success and Big Ten achievement, followed by a capstone of disappointment.
Remember that Mr. Cooper, Coach Tressel’s ill-regarded predecessor, to this day remains the second-winningest Buckeye coach, behind legendary Woody Hayes. And yet a disappointing final bowl game loss that triggered his firing in 2001.
That no one is asking about Mr. Tressel’s job security can be explained in the one word that represents the genius of his approach: Michigan.
Like Coach Tressel, Mr. Cooper’s teams won often enough to be a national contender nearly every year. They won three league titles. But nearly every season also ended in disappointment. Mr. Cooper was 2-10-1 against the Wolverines and 3-7 in bowl games, with no national titles in 13 seasons.
Mr. Tressel bettered that record on all fronts until the recent bowl skid. His teams have five league titles in his eight years and scored a national title in 2002, something Mr. Cooper could never accomplish. But the big difference from a fan perspective comes each November in the Michigan game. With a 7-1 record against “that school up north,” as Mr. Hayes famously used to call it, and a rivalry record of five straight wins, Mr. Tressel has delivered.
The series has become so lopsided that Michigan was sent searching for a radical change. It hired new Coach Rich Rodriguez, who installed his newfangled option offense. But Mr. Rodriguez’s first season was a bumpy ride that resulted in one of Michigan’s worst records in its storied history.
Working over the great nemesis each year like clockwork earns a lot of goodwill from fans. So if some are grumbling in the wake of the Fiesta Bowl, they’re doing so quietly. For sure, managing expectations is among the hardest parts of Mr. Tressel’s job. In reality, leading Ohio State to three national championship games in eight years alone ought to earn him job security.
But even better is to keep a heavy focus on early November and repeat this mantra to his players: Beat Michigan.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Scott Elliott, Sports and Recreation
‘Athletic scholarship!’ Yeah, right.
As to whether the football program at Ohio State University is adequately successful, no opinion is offered here. Instead let us go back to basics.
Is anybody else up for reconsidering this whole “athletic scholarship” thing? I mean “athletic scholarship”! Gimme a break.
Some phrases are just such fun. Books have been written on “Jewish gangsters,” just because the very phrase strikes some people like “gay Republicans.” (One Jewish-gangster book is titled, “But He Was Good to His Mother.”)
“German comedian” is seen by some as an example of the genre. Those people are on their own to defend the point.
It must be admitted that there is no actual contradiction between the words athletic and scholarship. Let us not deal in absurd, insulting stereotypes. Athletes can be good students.
That being settled, the fans and administrators of college sports must now admit there’s no connection between the words either.
Nobody even makes an attempt at a connection. Consider: A music scholarship is kind of like an athletic scholarship. You get a reward for showing talent and training, the ability to do something. But the idea is that you will actually study music, not just travel to Ann Arbor and music bowls to entertain and compete.
You don’t get a music scholarship and then major in real-estate marketing. Most of the time, anyway.
This is not to say that scholarship athletes should be required to major in phys ed. I have no idea how many phys ed grads the country needs.
The point is simply that there’s no connection.
Certainly athletes are not the only scholarship students who don’t get told what to major in. But most other scholarship students get their scholarships for demonstrating some, uh, scholarship.
To attack the idea of athletic scholarships is not to attack the idea of sports, or even college sports or even big-time college sports. In a world that had no athletic scholarships, a school like Ohio State could still field a heck of a football or basketball team, just because of the size of the enrollment. The team could be well worth watching, as college teams were before the age of scholarships. And the team’s genuine amateurism and genuine localness could stir a lot of fan interest.
The quality of campus life would not diminish.
If a particular school thought that its interests required fielding good teams (so as to get attention and thereby attract students and faculty and alumni money and television money, or whatever) it could approach the goal by hiring the best coaches, having the best facilities and developing a certain reputation.
Might there be downsides to banning athletic scholarships? Of course. We’d be tearing down a system and building a new one. That always hurts somebody.
Some people not getting to go to college, though they are worthy? Possibly. Loss of income to the big-money schools? Maybe.
But the best guess is that a system could be devised that would work better for more people. After all, the current system was never designed as a system. It just evolved. At the very least, if we can’t get rid of athletic scholarships (replacing them with other kinds of scholarships), couldn’t we at least come up with another phrase, something more honest?
Colleges are about the quest for insight and truth. But “athletic scholarships”?
How about calling them “athletic stipends,” signaling that they are payment for certain work? Or “athletic internships,” signaling the recognition that some of the recipients are being scouted for their suitability for professional status.
Other suggestions welcome.
The idea here is not a war on the jocks. Putting them in a pool with other seekers of loans, scholarships, internships, part-time jobs and other ways of financing an education doesn’t seem like an act of war.
And, OK, if an athlete could show financial need, maybe some form of help that is somehow connected to athletic skill would be appropriate — so long as we don’t start him or her out on a journey of intellectual dishonesty by calling it an “athletic scholarship.”
Permalink | Comments (20) | Post your comment | Categories: Higher Ed
The case for the Bush presidency
Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host who runs a right-leaning blog at TownHall.com, makes his case at Politico.com that Bush’s presidency was a success.
Hewitt argues that Bush actively and effectively reshaped the post-Sept. 11 world by taking on terrorism, which is the primary reason there have been no attacks on U.S. soil. He compares him to Andrew Jackson — a president who had his ups and downs and left office reviled by many but today is remembered for a host of significant accomplishments alongside his mistakes.
Hewitt is almost certainly right that, given time, Bush will be more fondly regarded by public opinion. Currently every living ex-president has an approval rate above 50 percent and Jimmy Carter, who was tossed from office by an angry electorate, is above 60 percent.
It’s often remarkable how politicians can rehabilitate their images given time. Consider Richard Nixon, who actively campaigned to repair his reputation in his post-presidency years.
The conventional wisdom today is that Bush will find a place with Nixon and James Buchannan among the worst presidents of all time. What do you think? Is that where he belongs? Or is Hewitt right that anger and disappointment over Bush’s big mistakes are overshadowing a list of accomplishments that will eventually be appreciated?
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: National Politics
Dayton deserves a shuttle
Of course, the Air Force museum should have one of the three shuttles that NASA is going to retire in 2010, says Dayton native son Tom Crouch.
After his National Air and Space Museum, the Air Force museum is in the best position to claim one of the three, Crouch said Jan. 7. The Wright brothers biographer is the senior curator of the Division of Aeronautics at the Smithsonian’s air and space museum.
Crouch pointed to the Air Force museum’s size and draw, which are among the points we make in an editorial published Jan. 11. He also said the museum has a “demonstrated ability to raise money and come up with new space.”
“Community support will be really important,” he said.
Will the selection process be political?
“Are you kidding?” Crouch laughed. “This is all about politics. NASA’s chief concern is doing this in a way that makes sense and is fair, while staying away from the nearest pot of boiling water.”
With a new administration coming in to office, and the space program’s priorities up for debate in Congress, Crouch said this is a “really touchy time.”
“First and foremost, NASA will want to stay out of trouble.”
Crouch was particularly complimentary of the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force restoration staff, saying they’re known for getting it (exhibits) on the floor in a great way.”
Crouch noted that NASA will be cognizant of its partnership with the Air Force, saying the shuttle “looks the way it looks because of Air Force involvement.”
Crouch cautioned that NASA does have “some dogs in this fight.” “I’m sure there are NASA folks in Huntsville, and NASA folks in Houston, and NASA folks at the Cape” who would love to have a shuttle at their museums.
Dayton, he said, needs to “marshal all the forces and go after it.”
Permalink | Comments (11) | Post your comment | Categories: Local History, Wright Patterson Air Force Base
Editorial: Killers underestimated the power of individuals
Why work for social change? Can one person really make a difference?
That was the question a highschool student posed to a panel at Chaminade-Julienne High School in March 2006.
Actor and activist Martin Sheen and Sister Rebeca Spires, a Notre Dame de Namur nun, were reassuring.
“This is really the fundamental question for all of us,” Mr. Sheen said. “How do you make a difference, and what difference does it make? This has to be highly personal. The only thing you can change is you.”
On that day, Mr. Sheen had come back to his hometown and alma mater to unveil a painting he commissioned of fellow Daytonian Sister Dorothy Stang, who was murdered in 2005 for her effort to protect the Amazon rainforest and help poor Brazilians farmers.
What has happened since is inspiring and helps answer the young student’s question about the value of individuals.
Since Sister Dorothy’s death, her brother David Stang has been a driving force for justice in her case. He was there in 2007, when the two men accused of pulling the trigger in her murder were convicted and sent to prison. But the bigger challenge was to bring to justice the wealthy landowner who prosecutors say ordered the killing.
Sister Dorothy’s murder could easily have sent the wrong message to the people of the remote region where she had spent her life. Having avoided criminal charges, the rancher suspect, in recent months, had begun to press a claim to land that Sister Dorothy had helped persuade the government to set aside for poor farmers. Brazilians are all too familiar with the story of the wealthy having their way and getting away with murder in the process.
But Mr. Stang’s activism caught the eye of Daniel Junge, a documentary filmmaker, who accompanied him to Brazil for the trial of the triggermen. The resulting Oscar-contending film, “They Killed Sister Dorothy,” provided new evidence that shattered the alibi of the rancher, Regivaldo Pereira Galvao, who is now finally facing charges. Mr. Sheen, who has stayed involved, serves as the narrator for the film.
The case, with all its twists and turns, is not yet over. But Mr. Galvao’s arrest is a big step in the right direction. And it might not have come but for the individual efforts of Mr. Stang, Mr. Junge and Mr. Sheen.
If, in the end, a wealthy Brazilian is brought to justice, poor farmers earn a chance to make a stable living and a small slice of the rain forest is preserved, it will be a lesson that change can come even to places where corruption is thought to be intractable.
And it will be the cumulative efforts of individuals — a nun, a brother, a filmmaker, an actor — that made a difference and set an example for others.
Perhaps that’s why Sister Rebeca, who worked alongside Sister Dorothy in Brazil, left C-J hopeful almost three years ago after an hour of earnest student questions about the struggle for social justice in the world.
“I want to thank you today,” she told the young people. “I am inspired by you. I am happy you exist. And we are really counting on you to carry on.”
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Dayton Peace Accords and Other Peace Initiatives, Editorials, Religion and Faith, Scott Elliott
An Ohioan finally makes Obama’s team!
OK, so it’s not a cabinet-level job, but right after a the DDN raised alarms about the total lack of Ohioans among those named to key positions in the Obama administration, finally someone living in the Buckeye State was announced.
It’s Pete Souza, who was plucked from the faculty of Ohio University to be the official White House photographer.
OK, so Souza, a Massachusetts native, is fairly new at Ohio U., having gotten to know Obama while photographing him through the years when he was working as a photographer at the Chicago Tribune. But we’ll take what we can get!
This is a nice nod to the quality of Ohio’s best journalism school at OU, although Obama’s gain is the university’s loss. Souza also gets to hire a staff of photographers, so I imagine his colleagues and students in the photography department are being REALLY nice to him right now.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: National Politics
Some places to look for progressive ideas
There’s nothing like finding a new, smart, interesting writer focused on something you are interested in. And with the Obama election and the ascendancy of progressives in general, there’s a lot of new intellectual energy on the left.
Over at the liberal blog Talking Points Memo, blogger Andrew Golis has listed Ten Young Progressive Intellectuals to Watch. If you lean left, you’ll probably enjoy discovering these emerging folks and read about their ideas. In fact, moderates and conservatives who like to consider a lot of points of view my find interesting reading on this list, too. Check it out.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: National Politics
The good and bad of standardized testing
Over at the DDN’s education blog, Get on the Bus, I’ve posted a commentary looking at two very different views of the value of the SAT. Are standardized tests for college admission a force for good or a force for evil? Take a look and share your thoughts.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Education
