WHAT ELSE?
President Obama speaking today about the Penn State child sexual assault scandal and protecting children in general:
“And I think it’s a good time for the entire country to do some soul-searching—not just Penn State. …our No. 1 priority has to be protecting our kids. And every institution has to examine how they operate, and every individual has to take responsibility for making sure that our kids are protected.” … “you can’t just rely on bureaucracy and systems in these kinds of situations. People have to step forward, they have to be tapping into just their core decency.” … “all of us have to step up, we don’t leave it to somebody else to take responsibility.”
To bar the Eastwood Mileground site, the ball is now in the West Virginia Supreme Court.
It’s worth repeating:
The Court can do the right thing now, before it is too late for any victims. The Court can protect Monongalia County Schools and the School Building Authority from themselves. The Court can protect all the children before any are hurt, injured, poisoned, or killed. At Penn State it is too late. In West Virginia it is not too late, but only if the people in position to meaningfully act do so now.
United States Education Secretary Arne Duncan reinforces the underlying imperative: “Schools and school officials have a legal and moral responsibility to protect children and young people from violence and abuse.”
West Virginia state Rule mandates:
“For the safety of students, [any and every] new school site shall be located away from hazards and undesirable environments, such as: a. … arterial highways, heavily traveled streets, traffic and congestion b. Noise, toxic gas escapes from … odoriferous plants or industries … e. … bulk storage plants for flammable liquid, and property zoned as industrial f. Situations where a combination of factors such as those presented above could contribute to the possibility of human entrapment…”
The intended Eastwood Mileground site is an egregious mass violation of multiple site prohibiting provisions above. The site is a dangerous, potentially lethal, even predictably lethal mass of insoluble violations. The WV state and county school officials have no right to risk the lives of children at the Eastwood Mileground site.
“433 wrecks, 30 weeks, 8 sites” – first 30 weeks of 2010:
New Woodburn Community School 
November 29, 2011 at 2:14 pm
While I support your goals here, comparing the building of a school to the violent sexual abuse of children is absurd. You’re undermining your own goals by doing this sort of thing.
November 29, 2011 at 2:46 pm
Did you think about the comparison for more than one second? You are wrong to think that the comparison is between sexual assault and “the building of a school.” The comparison is clearly between the violence of sexual assault and the violence done to children by elevated rates of vehicle exhaust pollution (a daily poison) and the elevated threat of vehicle crash dangers; both types of violence are potentially fatal. By blocking a school from that site, we are trying to prevent a wide variety of harms to young children, including so-called “INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER” – a criminal offense involving fatality. The comparison is apt, to say the least.
November 30, 2011 at 5:53 am
These are not remotely comparable levels of violence, unless you’d like me to believe that sexual assault and pollution are somehow similar things. We both know that they’re not.
November 30, 2011 at 11:34 am
Rape and homicide are not remotely comparable? That’s what a fatal car crash in those Eastwood school-side arterials would amount to: “involuntary manslaughter” aka homicide. Daily poisoning by pollution is an added bonus. Or do you think the state mandates prohibiting new schools in West Virginia from being located near arterial highways and other hazards are just feel good regulations with no substance? It’s a potentially lethal site for a school. The officials have no right to gamble with children’s lives. This would be true even without the existing mandates. But in West Virginia it’s codified. These children’s lives are not to be put at potentially lethal traffic crash risk. Let alone daily doused – for 7 years, pre-k to 5th grade – in a soup of poison.