President Obama has decided to try to block the court-ordered release of pictures depicting the abuse of detainees by US troops, citing the predictable concerns for security and the potential of further riling of anti-American sentiment.
While it is far from surprising (you didn’t really expect a more transparent government, did you?), it does make sense. The knowledge of what happened is one thing; the visuals of that abuse would be much worse. Reprints of those images would make easy rallying points for Islamist extremists, and I think most would agree that is something that should be avoided.
On the other hand, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing if those pictures are released. I would hope it would show the danger of the failure of living up to the human rights standards the American government is supposed to uphold. I dare to dream that a future administration — maybe even the current one — would take the logical step and conclude that the problem goes beyond the abuse and the prisons to the constant involvement in the affairs of other sovereign countries. (I wish the “my-country-right-or-wrong-unless-a-liberal-is-President” conservatives also would come to that realization, but, well, I’m not counting on that, either.)
What’s important to remember, no matter the outcome, is that the Freedom of Information Act is the solution, not the problem. When the pictures are released, what takes place afterward, however disturbing or dangerous, is not the fault of the court that upheld FOIA. The problem was the torture. And as the government supposedly represents us, we the people should — we deserve — to know what’s going on.
Children are individuals too
May 30th, 2009 | No Comments »In the town next to mine, a seventh-grader was kicked out of his normal classes and placed in “alternative classes” [read: given in-house suspension] because he decided to don a Mohawk.
It’s definitely an eye-catching haircut, and it comes as no surprise that it would cause a stir amongst his classmates. Unfortunately, was just as predictable that school officials would react to young Vincen Velez as they did.
Velez is not completely without blame, however. According to DeHaven, Velez not only did something similar at the end of the previous school year, he was told by the school secretary that his Mohawk could get him in trouble again, which could suggest he explicitly wanted to cause a distraction. That Velez himself was quoted in the article saying “in a couple of days, school will be over anyway” doesn’t help his cause, either.
But while he knew the consequences of breaking the rules, it is more than fair to ask if the rules or the punishment were just. Perhaps Velez was seeking attention; children do those types of things at that age. Adults do those type of things. People do like to express a bit of individuality, even younger ones. If Velez pays attention in class and does his schoolwork, how he cuts his hair should make no difference to anyone.
What the school did was what is too often done whenever educators face disciplinary incidents: make the easy decision. The real problem is that the fair decision wasn’t much harder.
The superintendent of the school system, Dan DeHaven stated in so many words that “everyone was looking at him and making comments” and because of that, the teacher took Velez to the office because he was causing a disturbance.
By that logic, that means that if the children did not pay attention to his haircut, he wouldn’t have been sent away. That would tell me that the ones who should have been reprimanded are the children who where fixated on the haircut, not Velez.
Let’s take that a step farther. The Mohawk would be less and less novel in the following days, becoming less and less of a distraction. Again, the Mohawk and Velez are not the problem.
In a sense, DeHaven said as much himself, offering to allow Velez to return to his class if he dyed his hair back to its original color. Interesting. Here’s a question: What would have happened if Velez had gone to class with a plain blond Mohawk and it caused the same reaction? Would pink dye be the only thing that separated Velez from sitting in his regular classes and in-house detention? If so, Velez is being punished because of his classmates’ reaction to him. If not, Velez is being placed in “alternative classes” simply because of a haircut.
DeHaven does have a point about seventh-graders not being as mature as older students. However, the school this incident took place in is a Junior-Senior High School, so unless they keep the younger kids completely sequestered from the older ones, the junior high students see schoolmates that school officials presumably believe are old enough to handle individuality. That means that the junior high kids have likely seen others with unique hairstyles, dress and the like. In that case, if a few seventh-graders went back to their classes and started to talk about some “weird” upper-schooler they saw, what would the teacher, principal and superintendent do? In all likelihood, they would tell the seventh-graders to stop interrupting class or leave the room — which is what they should have done in Velez’s case.
I respect the idea of needing to keep an orderly classroom. However, I expect authority to be fair and use reason, not to create rules to make its job simpler, especially when it does so at the expense of others. What the school is saying is that Velez wearing a Mohawk is the same as him picking a fight or yelling at a teacher, and hence should be punished as such. I’d like those who believe “children should be taught to respect authority” to explain that to me.