Oregon Daily Emerald
Wednesday, March 9, 2005
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■ In my opinion
Beat the parents?
Valerie Thompson of Utah has a
daughter with severe diabetes. Her lit
tle girl is susceptible to illness, often
hospitalized and has to wear an insulin
pump. Now she has to live with the
knowledge that her mother was thrown
in jail. Thompson was sentenced to
two days of jail time and a $500 fine be
cause her daughter missed too many
days of school because of her illness.
Jailing parents for their children’s
truancy is one of the more disturbing
trends in the fight to improve our
schools, which has been on the rise
since No Child Left Behind came into
effect. In order to be competitive,
schools need to raise their test scores,
and the best way to do that is to make
sure kids show up for class. In the
past few months, 34 people were ar
rested in Michigan, New Mexico and
Tennessee because their children were
absent so often. While most of these
parents were not thrown behind bars,
they did face fines and were sen
tenced to community service.
For younger children especially,
parents have the biggest effect on at
tendance. About 60 percent of Ten
nessee’s school attendance officers
point to neglectful parents as the lead
ing cause of truancy. However, by try
ing to punish the parents, schools are
often passing the buck. Social work
ers are overloaded, parents are not
contacted when their children are ab
sent, and many have accused the sys
tem of being racially biased — allow
ing white students to skip class
without penalty while coming down
hard on black families.
In my own school, there were many
ways of beating the system. One guy I
know checked off that his parents only
spoke Spanish on his registration form,
resulting in his parents picking up a
phone only to hear a spew of language
they didn’t understand. Another friend
JENNIFER MCBRIDE
QUASHING DISSENT
gave the phone number of a church as
his contact number. Of course, the au
tomated message couldn’t understand
the priest’s reply that he had no chil
dren, being celibate and all. I preferred
the old fashioned method of intercept
ing every phone call made to my house,
or saying the teachers must have
missed me sitting in the back, which
happened quite often because I am the
quiet, mousy type.
It’s not as if children who skip class
are automatically doomed to failure, so
any kind of criminal punishment for a
parent seems a bit extreme. Despite my
skipping, I turned out to be a quite nor
mal human being.... well, more or less.
While two days of jail time may not
sound like much, there have been
worse punishments. The American Civ
il Liberties Union reported that in Brew
ster, Ala., a parent was sentenced to 60
days in jail for not keeping children in
school. Permanent arrest records have
far-reaching implications. Jail time
threatens a parent’s employment and
community standing and, depending
on the state, can put parents under
statutes that prevent them from voting.
Jailing only happens in rare cases,
but I feel uneasy leaving a weapon of
such magnitude in the hands of school
officials who are often influenced more
by political pressure than a child’s well
being. It also makes me uneasy that the
courts have almost without exception
gone after mothers for truancy charges.
Furthermore, throwing parents in
jail may not even work. Kary Moss,
director of the ACLU in Michigan,
said, “The problem here is motivat
ing children, and I don’t believe
throwing their parents in jail will
accomplish that.”
Statistics suggest mixed results. In
Citrus County, Fla., a county leading
the way in parental-arrest rates, truan
cy rates dropped between 10 percent
and 16.3 percent since 1997, accord
ing to The Christian Science Monitor.
However, in the United Kingdom, in
creased prosecutions, fines and an
anti-truancy campaign costing mil
lions of dollars did not stop children
from “bunking off. ” It is likely we will
never find out how successful such
laws are because it will be difficult to
prove that jailing parents is the cause
of any drops in absence rates.
And where will this end? Laws
blaming parents for choices made by
children can only snowball into the
preposterous. Should my parents go
to jail if I choose to use drugs? Should
my parents go to jail if I participate in
underage drinking? Should my par
ents go to jail if they forget to make
sure I flossed my back teeth?
One day, we will decide that par
ents are responsible for all our prob
lems, from the neurotic to the physi
cal. On that day, we will abolish the
family and declare parents obsolete.
The breast of the mother becomes the
breast of the state. I can’t wait for the
pod beds and the mandatory absti
nence education preached from loud
speakers in the cafeteria. I can only
hope that the uniforms they make our
descendants wear will be sexier then
the traditional TYekkie gray jumpsuits,
because no daughter of mine will ever
be caught dead in polyester. Not even
when I’m in prison.
jennifermcbride@dailyernerald.com
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■ Editorial
ASUO acts
properly in
Constitution
Court case
The news Monday that the ASUO Constitu
tion Court ruled to boot two members of the
Programs Finance Committee, both who es
sentially declared themselves above the law at
a Feb. 1 budget hearing for the Oregon Com
mentator, marked one of the first occasions
that the editorial board could applaud the ac
tions of a branch of the ASUO. The court has
done right.
The court ruled that former PFC members
Eden Cortez, Dan Kieffer and Mason Quiroz
“acted in willful defiance of viewpoint neutral
ity,” a response to Commentator Publisher
Dan Atkinson’s petition filed Feb. 7.
The final judgment removes Quiroz from
the PFC and Cortez from the PFC and the
ASUO Student Senate. The action also affirms
Kieffer’s resignation — thankfully, he already
left his PFC post last month.
In his writing for the court, Chief Justice
Randy Derrick stated that Cortez had said: “Of
course we can look at content in determining a
group’s value. Otherwise this job could be
done by robots.” A statement Derrick wrote
says this quote “clearly demonstrates that
Cortez was considering content in his analysis
of the Oregon Commentator outside of the
bounds set by viewpoint neutrality. ”
Cortez told the Emerald he will appeal the
decision by the end of the week, saying the
court acted improperly by basing its ruling on
a quote he claims he did not say during the
meeting. He said he has reviewed minutes
from the meeting and can verify an audience
member made the statement, not he.
“That’s a false statement to be making,” he
said. “To quote me on something (they) as
sume I said ... that’s just giving wrong infor
mation from the Oregon Commentator’s part
to the Con Court.”
Atkinson told the Emerald the statement is
“not an exact quote,” but said Cortez did say
something to that effect. He said he specified
in the petition that he wasn’t quoting Cortez’s
exact words.
I was just trying to recall my own
experiences of the hearing,” he said.
While we cannot deny that the court
has made a sloppy error by falsely attributing
a quote to Cortez, we must point out
the blatantly obvious. In this case, Cortez’s
actions speak far louder than someone
else’s words.
In the meetings, Cortez willingly attempted
to defund the Commentator on the basis of
its content rather than its fiscal responsibility
— he was the physical manifestation of
the phrase “lack of viewpoint neutrality” —
a point that the court has already made in
the decision. Derrick stated that Cortez
erred because he “did not provide a
budgetary rationale for disapproving the
(Commentator’s) budget.”
If Cortez wants to appeal, he is more than
welcome, but he would be wiser to take
few shreds of dignity with him, leave his posi
tion and follow Quiroz and Kieffer out of
the ASUO.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Jennifer Sudick
Editor in Chief
David Jagernauth
Commentary Editor
Steven R. Neuman
Managing Editor
Shadra Beesiey
Copy Chief
Adrienne Nelson
Online Editor
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