THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2017
FRIDAY EXCHANGE
5A
Supporting Dreamers
I
am puzzled by President Don-
ald Trump’s desire to rescind
Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals (DACA). It does not make
good business sense. From a strictly
selfish point of view, the U.S. has
already put the time, money and
effort into the Dreamers. It seems
counterproductive to send them
away. We have educated these
young people. We have invested
in enculturating them to be good
Americans. It makes economic
sense to benefit from the contribu-
tions they can make to our country.
From a strictly personal point of
view, I support immigrants. I have
no choice, I am third, fourth and
fifth generation from Ireland. I must
add that the reception some of my
Irish immigrant ancestors received
was less than cordial. My personal
support of the Dreamers comes
from that heritage.
I have called my representatives
in Congress, and asked them to sup-
port DACA from both a business
and a personal position. I hope you
will, as well.
KATHLEEN ADAMS
Hammond
Saving Baby
K, folks, I’m going to lighten
things up a bit with a huge
shout-out to a Warrenton business.
Our cat, Baby, fell ill to the point
we knew we were losing her. Our
good friend, Stephanie Hellberg,
works at Safe Harbor Animal Hos-
pital, and suggested we take Baby
in to see Dr. Melanie Haase, which
we did. Best move ever.
When we pulled up, we saw
“large, manicured and clean.” If
you’re going to judge a book by its
cover, so far, so good. We grabbed
Baby’s carrier, and honestly didn’t
know if she was coming home with
us. When we walked in, Steph was
behind the desk, and we were never
so glad to see anyone. She’s an
awesome lady.
The reception area is large,
immaculate and tastefully decorated
in tones of “calm.” You don’t have
to sit hip-to-hip, and your animals
aren’t tangled, and in each other’s
space.
The doctor’s assistant took Baby
back to be examined, and Baby
trusted her. She doesn’t trust any-
one. When Dr. Haase came in, we
were immediately at ease. She’s
comfortable, compassionate and
very professional. Much like hav-
ing a friend who’s a vet. Thank you
for that.
And then comes that flinch
while they’re adding up the bill,
and OMG, we can still make the
rent. And Baby is recovering. Life
is good. Thanks to all of you at Safe
Harbor Animal Hospital.
STEPHANIE CARPENTER
Brownsmead
O
No need to steal
T
he staff of the Ocean Park
(Washington) Food Bank would
like to remind the person who broke
into our outdoor cooler on Sept. 6
that we are open four days a week,
and do not deny a generous vari-
ety of food to anyone who comes in
during our normal business hours.
Since we rely solely on local
donations, we cannot afford to have
anyone like you take a larger por-
tion of food than we make avail-
able to our everyone. You obviously
must be desperate for food. Please
come in Tuesday through Friday,
10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and we will be
happy to serve you. You can even
come in twice a month.
MICHAEL GOLDBERG
President, Ocean Park Food
Bank
Ocean Park, Washington
Elderly abuse
e want to thank all who
helped get our geese home.
They were found in Cullaby Lake,
and were stolen from us 2 1/2
months ago. They are family pets,
and have been here for over six
years. Hopefully, they will get over
the trauma they have endured.
We are elderly, and in our 80s.
We get so much enjoyment from
the geese. Thank you again.
DICK AND DAPHNE SCOTT
Astoria
W
Watershed thinning
hile I agree with some of the
points made by Mr. Gary
Durheim regarding the recent tim-
ber harvest in the Astoria watershed
in his letter (“Thinning in water-
shed,” The Daily Astorian, Sept. 1),
the issue of harvesting “less than 25
percent of the growth” should be
explained.
It does not mean that all tim-
ber will be harvested in four or five
years. Growth, as it relates to for-
ests, is usually expressed as a per-
centage of standing volume (forest
inventory) in thousand board feet
W
(MBF). The Astoria watershed is
about 3,700 acres in total. Subtract-
ing from this the nonforested acres
(roads, impoundments, streams,
fields, buildings, etc.) which, con-
servatively, is 700 acres, that would
leave 3,000 acres of forest of differ-
ing age groups.
An average volume, again being
conservative, of 40 MBF per acre
would yield a total standing volume
of 120,000 MBF. Using a very low
range growth rate of 3 percent, the
watershed is growing about 3,600
MBF per year. Twenty-five per-
cent of this growth would equal 900
MBF.
Therefore, Public Works Direc-
tor Ken Cook’s statement that the
recent harvest totaled 700 to 800
MBF is somewhat less than 25 per-
cent of growth (“Astoria keeps
close eye on timber in Bear Creek
watershed,” The Daily Astorian,
Aug. 29). Stated another way, the
Astoria watershed is growing 75
percent more volume than is being
harvested.
The statement that it’s “not
about the money,” when followed
up by the statement by a city leader
that a new fire truck was purchased
with the proceeds from the sale of
timber (with some left over) would
make a casual observer think that
it, at least partially, is about the
money.
The article also states that the
“thinning” looks like a traditional
clearcut, and seedlings will soon
be planted. I’ve been in the for-
estry business for nearly 50 years
and have never seen a thinning that
looks like a clearcut.
It is one, or the other. Calling
this harvest a thinning is a bit dis-
ingenuous, however necessary for
removing disease prone or non-na-
tive trees.
BUD HENDERSON
Knappa
More drugs, more crime
nce again, the Legislature here
in Oregon has proven just how
out of touch they are. During this last
session, they decided to make her-
oin and other hard drugs just a mis-
demeanor, instead of a felony. Gov.
Kate Brown jumped for joy, and
signed it into law.
Let’s take a look at the Nether-
lands, which made these drugs legal
to possess. One of the main propo-
nents of that legislation 20 years ago,
now says that was the worst thing his
country has done. He stated the crime
rate shot up because mafia-style
groups now control most of the drugs
that are being sold. Are we ready to
start building more prisons? Trust
me, we will have to do just that.
When I first started working with
the Oregon Department of Correc-
tions 28 years ago, the Eastern Ore-
gon Correctional Institution in Pend-
leton had about 400 inmates. Within
two years, we housed 1,400 inmates.
Within 10 years, we built the Snake
River Correctional Institution in
Ontario, and Two Rivers Correc-
tional Institution in Umatilla. Snake
River houses 5,000 inmates, and Two
Rivers houses 3,500. How many
more will we need?
Given that the heroin death rate,
caused by overdoses, is now the
leading cause of death in most coun-
ties in Oregon, are we going to help
more people find an early grave?
Let’s take a look at a larger prob-
lem of making hard drugs a misde-
meanor. More violent drug gangs
will be bringing more drugs across
the Mexican border. What are we try-
ing to do? Turn our state into a law-
less drug haven?
It’s time we stand up and teach
our elected officials how to become
house-broken. They keep making
messes on the carpet. We need to rub
their noses in the mess they made,
just like we do with a new puppy,
O
and put them outside where they
belong.
I remember back in the 1970s,
when Portland was the most liv-
able city in the country. Now it’s the
weirdest city in the country, with a
very bad crime rate. Help me make
this once great state, great again.
JIM HOFFMAN
Chairman, Clatsop County
Republicans
Gearhart
Equine exhaust
have owned a place in Seaview,
Washington, for over 19 years. It
has been my policy to pick up my
dog’s waste after she relieves herself.
We walk on the beach in all kinds of
weather, and the presence of horses
is quite obvious by their exhaust
plumes.
Today, as we walked on the
beach, near the water’s edge, a herd
of horses came at us expecting us to
move for them. I am unable to walk
on the soft sand due to a very bad
knee. Because we would not move,
the horses surrounded us and one
“gentleman” was rude to me because
I wouldn’t get out of the way. I don’t
hate horses, I dislike their owners.
The horse owners are using pub-
lic areas for private, monetary gains,
and do nothing to clean up the
messes their money machines make.
How would you like your kids or
grandkids playing in the water as
the tide sweeps the equine exhaust
and its microbes around your kids?
I wouldn’t. You see the parades
clean up after horses leave a stink-
ing trail of half digested hay — why
shouldn’t these folks be required to
do the same for aesthetic, as well as
health reasons?
You make money, clean up your
messes.
EDWARD MERRILL
Seaview, Washington
I
Liberalism and the campus rape tribunals
By ROSS DOUTHAT
New York Times News Service
ast week Betsy DeVos,
the secretary of education,
announced that the Trump
White House
would be revising
the Obama admin-
istration guidelines
for how colleges
and universities
adjudicate accu-
sations of sexual
assault.
There were protests outside her
speech and spittle-flecked rants on
Twitter, but overall the reaction
felt relatively muted, at least by the
standards of reactions to anything
Trump-related or DeVos-driven.
Perhaps this was because
enough people read The Atlantic,
which chose last week to run a
three-part series by Emily Yoffe
on the sexual-assault policies in
question. The series demonstrated
exhaustively what anyone paying
close attention already knew: The
legal and administrative response to
campus rape over the past five years
has been a kind of judicial and
bureaucratic madness, a cautionary
tale about how swiftly moral out-
rage and political pressure can lead
to kangaroo courts and star cham-
bers, in which bias and bad science
create an unshakable presumption
of guilt for the accused.
It’s also a cautionary tale with
specific implications for cultural
liberalism, because it demonstrates
how easily an ideology founded on
L
the pursuit of perfect personal free-
dom can end up generating a new
kind of police state, how quickly
the rule of pleasure gives way to the
rule of secret tribunals and Title IX
administrators (of which Harvard,
Yoffe notes in passing, now has
55 on staff), and how making
libertinism safe for consenting
semi-adults requires the evacuation
of due process.
Rape and sexual assault are
age-old problems. But the particular
problem on college campuses these
days is a relatively new one. For
ideological reasons, the modern
liberal campus rejects all the old
ways in which a large population of
hormonal young people once would
have had their impulses channeled
and restrained — single-sex dorms,
“parietal” rules for male-female
contact late at night, a general
code emphasizing sexual restraint.
Meanwhile for commercial reasons
as well as liberationist ones, many
colleges compete for students
(especially the well-heeled, full-tu-
ition-paying sort) by winkingly
promising them not just a lack of
adult supervision but also a culture
of constant partying, an outright
bacchanal.
This combination, the academic
gods of sex and money, has given
us the twilit (or strobe-lit) scene in
which many alleged sexual assaults
take place — a world in which both
parties are frequently hammered
because their entire social scene
is organized around drinking your
way to the loss of inhibitions
required for hooking up. It’s a
social world, just as anti-rape activ-
ists and feminists have argued, that
offers an excellent hunting ground
for predators and a realm where far
too many straightforward assaults
take place. But it’s also a zone in
which it is very hard for anyone —
including the young women and
young men involved — to figure
out what distinguishes a real assault
from a bad or gross or swiftly
regretted consensual encounter.
This reality made many colleges
shamefully loath to deal with rape
accusations at all. But once that
reluctance became a public scandal,
the political and administrative
response was not to rethink the
libertinism but to expand the defi-
nition of assault, abandon anything
resembling due process and build
a system all-but-guaranteed to
frequently expel and discipline the
innocent.
A few years ago the injustice
of this approach was defended on
various grounds. Anti-rape activists
suggested that false accusations of
sexual assault were as rare as uni-
corns, that alleged victims almost
never lied or exaggerated or made
mistakes of memory and judgment.
Reasonable center-left types argued
that broadening rape’s definitions
and weakening men’s rights could
instill a necessary sort of fear, a
kind of balance of terror between
male sexual privilege and a female
right to accuse and be believed. A
few of my fellow social conserva-
tives agreed: If unreasonable rules
and unfair proceedings discouraged
men from pursuing promiscuity and
treating women badly, so much the
better for both the women and the
men.
None of these defenses looked
persuasive once the new order took
hold. False rape accusations are
rare in many contexts, yes, but bad
systems generate bad cases, and a
system designed to assume the guilt
of the accused has clearly encour-
aged dubious charges and clouds of
suspicion and pre-emptive penalties
unjustly applied.
Meanwhile any balance of ter-
ror, as Yoffe points out in the third
installment of her series, has turned
out to be racial as well as sexual,
since it is a not-much-talked-about
truth that minority students seem
to be accused of rape well out of
proportion to their numbers on
campus. So setting out to strengthen
women’s power relative to men
has created a cycle of accusation
and punishment whose injustices
probably fall disproportionately on
black men.
As for whether the unjust system
might nonetheless have some sort
of remoralizing effect on male
sexual behavior, I stand by what I
argued a few years ago. Offering
young men broad sexual license
regulated only by a manifestly
unfair disciplinary system imbued
with the rhetoric of feminism seems
more likely to encourage a toxic
male persecution complex, a misog-
ynistic masculine reaction, than
any renewed moral conservatism or
rediscovered chivalry.
Or to put it in the lingo of our
time: That’s how you get Trump.
Having gotten him, liberals
lately have been arguing that any
madness or folly or ideological
mania on their own side pales in
comparison with the extremism at
work in Trump-era conservatism.
This argument has force: With
Trump in the White House the
know-nothing side of the right has
much more direct political power at
the moment than the commissars of
liberalism.
But it is also important to
recognize that the folly of the
campus rape tribunals is not just an
extremism isolated in the peculiar
hothouse of the liberal academy.
The abandonment of due process on
campus was encouraged by activists
and accepted by administrators, yes,
but it was the actual work of the
Obama White House — an expres-
sion of what a liberalism enthroned
in our executive branch and vested
with the powers of the federal
bureaucracy believed would defend
the sexual revolution and serve the
common good.
It wasn’t a policy from the
liberal fringe, in other words. It was
liberalism, period, as it actually
exists today and governed from the
White House until very recently.
And any reader of The Atlantic who
experiences a certain shock at what
has been effectively imposed on
college campuses in the name of
equality and social justice will also
be experiencing a moment of soli-
darity with all of those Americans
who prefer not to be governed by
this liberalism, and voted accord-
ingly last fall.