Mayor’s Row…….by Ned Mitchell

             You know we are going to you know where in a hand basket when you pull up to a new elementary school and see that it is surrounded by a chain link fence complete with barbed wire security along the top.  This is the same type of fence surrounding the recreation area at the Franklin County detention center.  We are so sophisticated that we cannot call it a jail; it is now a detention center or some other politically correct name. During the course of my work I deal with a variety of people in the public sector.  Some are bankers, farmers, factory workers, school teachers, retirees, all kinds of people.  A recent visit to a new school in Carrier Mills found me staring in awe at the security fence surrounding the building with only one entrance.  I subsequently visiting an elementary school in West Frankfort and found the same thing.

            Have we let things get so far out of hand that we are now resorting to fencing our schools with security fence?  Sad to say, the answer to that question is yes.  For the past week I have read in local papers about a teacher being attacked in West Frankfort, a coach in Christopher arrested for DUI, possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia, and the entire campus at Mt. Vernon High School being shut down due to a fight.

            Of course there is plenty of blame to go around.  Parents in Mt. Vernon are filing charges against the police saying they were too rough in arresting the two 16 year olds that were fighting.  A student in West Frankfort is being charged with a felony for attacking a teacher.  All of this goes back to a lack of discipline at home and that in my opinion means we as parents are not only failing our children, but we are failing society now and in the future.

            We see it here in Sesser, the general lack of respect for police officers.  We can expect to see that out of someone who has had too much to drink but to see it from kids who are not even teenagers is very disturbing.  We have documents instances where 11 and 12 year old kids give a police officer a good cussing before throwing something at them.  It is even worse when mom or dad take up for the kid instead of lighting in to their backside.  Parents these days seem to have no respect for others let alone police officers and that bad attitude is being passed down to their children.

            I’ve written before in this column about former Sesser school teacher Albert Dale and his notes where he explained there was not much need for discipline in the classroom as that was mostly taken care of at home.  Another teacher friend of mine told me last week she was glad she retired when she did. You see she could still use the paddle when she retired and was glad of it.

            It is a common sight now to have a human resource official at each school which is really just a nice way of saying we have a cop on duty at our school.  There is plenty of grant money around for hiring extra police officers for school.  We have looked at it here in Sesser but I am just really not happy about having to put a police officer in the school to maintain the peace.  We have taken discipline away from the teachers and parents are too busy to handle it at home.  We are raising and educating a whole new generation of thugs who have no respect now for others and it will only get worse in the future if we do not turn things around in this country.  Mr. Dale said it right when he wrote that he did not have a need for discipline at school and that the parents took care of that at home.  Parents need to start being parents and handle the discipline at home and wake up to the fact that little Johnny and Susie might not be the angels they think they are.

            SIU not only has one black eye they have now witnessed the other one badly bruised.  The reputation at that school looks like I would if I spent 30 seconds in the ring with Mike Tyson.  We are now witnessing the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, St. Louis Post Dispatch and Springfield Register Journal and many other large newspapers reporting the scandal concerning President Glenn Poshard’s alleged plagiarism of his masters and doctors thesis papers.  Now the Sun Times has broken a story about Poshard calling a minister and requesting that minister email his friends and ask them to vote in a public opinion poll at another newspaper asking if Poshard should stay or go.  Talk about stacking the deck!

            Poshard mouthpiece Dave Gross admitted Poshard had called the minister and asked for help but he called the minister “over zealous”.  Way to go Dave lets just blame it on the other guy instead of facing the music.  This whole episode has been undermining the credibility of SIU and has turned into to a huge political football.  But what can we expect when we hire a politician to run a major university?  The hiring process was a scam from the get go.  No smarter than I am I predicted that Poshard would be hired as president shortly after he resigned from the Board of Trustees.  Why on earth would the board waste over $100 thousand dollars doing a nationwide search when the die had been cast to hire Poshard no matter what?

            Has Glenn Poshard done good things in his career of public service?  Absolutely, and he has also been paid handsomely by the tax payers for doing good deeds.  His pension for the rest of his life is way beyond what the average Joe can expect to see.  A lot of other folks have done their share of good deeds; many paid a lot less than Poshard. 

            The only way the air can be cleared in this situation is to get an impartial look at the accusations.  Appointing a committee of professors at SIUC who work for SIU is a farce.  The Board of Trustees cannot claim to be impartial in this matter as they publicly claimed they supported Poshard even before the committee was appointed much less released their findings.  Not too long ago Poshard was Chairman of the Board of Trustees, the very same board that hired him after he resigned from the board and now we are to believe they are impartial.  Hogwash! 

            This situation is getting worse by the minute at SIU and their reputation is going down fast in the academic world.  The only real way out for Poshard and the Board of Trustees is to resign, all of them.  We need to start over at SIUC and have an outside committee of educators look at the situation and if Poshard is cleared then so be it.  To keep stacking the deck from a political angle as they are doing now will do irreparable damage to not only former graduates of SIU but those in future generations to come.  It is time to drag out the sword and fall on it and get this behind us!

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