Editorials from around Ohio

Recent editorials of statewide and national interest from Ohio newspapers:

College trends should alarm us all

Akron Beacon Journal

Nov. 23

We’re becoming a country more to the liking of fictional Judge Elihu Smails.

Smails, portrayed by the inimitable Ted Knight in the 1980 movie “Caddyshack,” had a memorable answer when teenage caddie Danny Noonan lamented that, without a scholarship, “my folks won’t have enough money to put me through college.”

“Well,” Smails retorted, “the world needs ditch diggers, too.”

Regrettably, it seems more and more young Americans agree, at least about the relative importance of a college education.

A poll conducted by The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research revealed that 45% of Americans ages 13-29 say a high school diploma is good enough preparation for future success.

The facts say otherwise.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2017 the median earnings for young adults with a master’s degree or higher were $65,000; for those with bachelor’s degrees they were $51,800.

For those with high school diplomas? $32,000. And for those who did not finish high school? $26,000. Unemployment rates jumped with each step down the educational ladder, too.

Moreover, those differences were not dependent upon other factors.

“This pattern of higher earnings associated with higher levels of educational attainment also held for both male and female young adults, as well as for White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian young adults,” the NCES reported.

Compounding that disparity over a lifetime of earnings is dramatic.

A Census Bureau study in 2002 concluded the lifetime earnings of an employee with a bachelor’s degree in 1999 was expected to be $2.7 million. For those without a bachelor’s degree it was 75% less.

Since 1999, that gap has grown to 84%.

To be sure, there are some relatively well-paying and important occupations - plumbers, technicians in medical fields, patrol officers, etc. - that do not require four-year degrees, although special training and/or an associate degree is needed for the majority of those.

Still, the best way to a better financial future clearly is a college education. And yet, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, enrollment at U.S. colleges has decreased for eight consecutive years.

Why?

The main reason almost certainly is the skyrocketing cost, which on an annual basis grew by nearly 260% between 1980 and 2014, compared to a 120% increase in all consumer items. According to the NCES, in 1980 the average annual cost of a college education - tuition, room and board, and fees - at a four-year college was $9,438. By 2016 it was $26,593.

By 2030, it’s projected to be $44,047.

Which is why no one should be surprised that total U.S. student debt ballooned to a staggering $1.4 trillion this year. By comparison, U.S. credit card debt this year is $1.08 trillion.

Bluntly put, a college education is rapidly moving beyond the financial reach of many young Americans.

And that should be unacceptable to all of us, ditch diggers or not.

Online: https://bit.ly/2OkVrRg

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Will criminal charges in OU death prompt change?

Columbus Dispatch

Nov. 24

Whatever else Ohio University students learn this year, one of the most important lessons was delivered Monday by Athens County Prosecutor Keller Blackburn in the form of nine indictments.

Blackburn’s willingness to take evidence to a grand jury in the death last year of Collin Wiant in a fraternity’s unofficial off-campus house has the potential to teach many more than just the members of Sigma Pi fraternity that hazing must stop.

Certainly nothing else has sufficiently gotten the attention of countless fraternity, sorority and non-Greek organizations on college campuses from coast to coast. Too many don’t see that allowing and even encouraging risky behavior as a pathway to coveted brotherhood or sisterhood is dangerous and can no longer be tolerated.

In last week’s indictments, seven members of the now-expelled fraternity and two others were charged with various crimes related to Wiant’s death. The charges range from involuntary manslaughter and reckless homicide to drug charges and hazing.

No one goes to college to get a criminal record along with a diploma, or worse yet, to end up in prison without a degree. But maybe it will take a few students suffering that outcome to prevent more senseless deaths.

Wiant, 18, of Dublin, was a freshman pledge of OU’s Epsilon chapter of Sigma Pi when he collapsed on the floor of the fraternity “annex” on Nov. 12, 2018. His cause of death was ruled to be asphyxiation due to nitrous oxide ingestion after inhaling a canister of gas, also known as a whippit.

A Dispatch investigative podcast series, “Broken Pledge,” detailed Wiant’s life and death and hazing practices with Sigma Pi pledges.

Slowly but thankfully, the tide may be turning to use the criminal justice system to try to stem the behavior that has resulted in too many deaths on college campuses across the country - at least 80 in the past 15 years, according to Hank Nuwer, a Franklin, Indiana, college professor who tracks fatal hazing incidents.

A Dispatch investigation in May found only five hazing charges in the past 25 years had been filed in municipal courts near the state’s largest universities.

Since then, 18 members of Delta Tau Delta fraternity at Miami University were indicted in early October on charges of assault and hazing related to a March incident that The Dispatch and other media covered. A student had filed a complaint about paddling that caused lacerations and bruises with pledges also being forced to consume large amounts of alcohol and marijuana, causing the university to suspend Delta Tau Delta for 10 years.

Assault is a fourth-degree felony punishable by up to 18 months in jail but hazing is still a misdemeanor, as it has been since 1983, although 11 other states have made it a felony crime.

While The Dispatch applauds county prosecutors who are willing to consider other felony charges when appropriate in hazing cases, we encourage the Ohio General Assembly to upgrade the toolbox to send the message that hazing is inappropriate and by itself is criminal conduct worthy of felony penalties.

Hazing now is punishable by a fine of up to $250 and up to 30 days in jail. If it were raised to a fourth-degree felony, as Gov. Mike DeWine has advocated, the maximum penalty of a $5,000 fine and 18 months in prison surely would get the attention of those who have so far just winked at the potential consequences.

Such shameful tactics as physically assaulting and emotionally shaming students who want to be accepted into any collegiate organization certainly is not the best pathway to creating healthy relationships for the long-term good of those groups, whether they are fraternities, sororities or marching bands.

In the meantime, it is appropriate for prosecutors to lead the way to changed behavior.

As Blackburn said in Athens, “What needs to happen with this case is a nationwide discussion about what we want to be.”

The question the prosecutor asked is worth repeating: “What are we going to do about the use of drugs here and everywhere else on college (campuses) and what are we going to demand out of these organizations like the one Collin Wiant wanted to be a part of?”

If collegiate institutions truly want to model often-stated values of leadership, service and character development, they should stop trying to mask poor behaviors behind codes of secrecy and focus instead on positive ways to bring new members into their ranks.

Online: https://bit.ly/37wnFjH

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It’s not enough to reprieve Collinwood High. A realistic plan to save it is needed.

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Nov. 22

Collinwood High School has won a temporary lease on life from the Cleveland schools after the district withdrew its recommendation that it close and said it would make another attempt to save it. Plaudits to the school system for recognizing the deep harm that closing Collinwood High would do to efforts to revitalize the sprawling Collinwood neighborhood in the city’s northeast and save its historic commercial center.

But let’s throw about five caution flags on this proceeding that add up to years of failure to find the right formula to save Collinwood High, a striking landmark that also contains an Olympic-sized pool and large recreation center.

Is the Cleveland school district able, willing or daring enough to make the needed investments and adjustments? There can be no half-measures now. The need to find a way to save the high school has become a crisis. And now that it’s decided to try, the school district has to resolve to do it right, despite the discouraging record:

(asterisk) Collinwood High has been living on borrowed time for years. A 2015 study by the Cleveland Leadership center failed to identify a way to save it academically, or to find any group or individual willing to step forward to revamp it or parts of it as something other than a school, to help keep it and its surrounding commercial hub going.

(asterisk) The “new tech” academic programming at Collinwood High is a project-based learning model that is highly successful on the West Side but has failed to take hold at Collinwood, neighborhood advocates say. The school has lost so much other programming, including band and vocational education that are popular with students, that most of the more than 1,000 high-school-age students thought to live in Collinwood already go to other schools.

(asterisk) Cleveland Councilman Mike Polensek, who represents Collinwood on City Council, has been calling for years for vocational education at Collinwood High, without success. Why weren’t his calls answered?

(asterisk) A structure originally built to house about 4,000 students is down to just over 200. That’s not enough to support the minimum programming that can sustain it, according to Cleveland schools CEO Eric Gordon, who warned our editorial board earlier this month that if the current situation continues, the school “will close itself.”

(asterisk) Because the Cleveland schools have been investing in Collinwood despite its declining student numbers, the sprawling structure is in good physical shape. But has the school district waited too long to take radical action?

Step One should be to survey area students to find out what would bring them back to Collinwood High, as we urged in a recent editorial.

The numbers suggest that the main draw has been nearby Shaw High School in East Cleveland, where popular programs like band, a successful football program, and vocational education, including cosmetology, are available. The Cleveland school district says 244 Cleveland young people attend Shaw High; the data don’t say where they live, but likely many come from nearby Collinwood.

Significant numbers of Collinwood kids also appear, from district records, to attend Glenville High school, Ginn Academy, specialty programs in the Cleveland schools and private and charter schools.

The Cleveland school district understandably eschews vocational programs that lead primarily to low-paying jobs, and it apparently groups cosmetology in that category. But cosmetology can also be an avenue to small-business ownership. A survey would at least identify what appeals to large numbers of students now going to other high schools.

Step Two should be for the schools to build a real partnership with Polensek, Glenville councilman Anthony Hairston and Jamar Doyle, the energetic and relatively new executive director of the Greater Collinwood Development Corp., to bring their considerable local expertise and passion to bear on a possible solution.

The Collinwood neighborhood retains huge assets, from its long lakefront to its status as a major transportation hub and its Waterloo arts and culture center that beckons younger residents and young families. But critical to keeping it all together is the vitality of the historic hub known as “Five Points,” where three major arteries meet: St. Clair Avenue, East 152nd Street and Ivanhoe Road. The area, originally a destination for European immigrants, received a major facelift in the late 1970s to counter white flight, and has held on as a center of commercial activity — largely thanks to Collinwood High.

Allowing the high school to close would do more than upend the neighborhood’s commercial center. It would also be a declaration of abandonment of a part of Cleveland where thousands of minority youth live. It would be a betrayal of the Collinwood residents who turned out five years ago to support the Cleveland schools’ $200 million school construction bond, in part on the promise it would help Collinwood High survive.

Eric Gordon and the Cleveland schools now must go the extra mile and do all that’s possible to save Collinwood High School.

Online: https://bit.ly/2siZ0Pt

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No more half measures for Lake Erie

Toledo Blade

Nov. 24

Lake Erie is in dire need of some progress when it comes to the pollution rolling out of the Maumee River watershed and fueling annual toxic algae blooms. But does that mean any program that may deliver a little progress is good enough?

The executive director of the Ohio Environmental Council has endorsed Gov. Mike DeWine’s $172 million H2Ohio plan, which will offer incentives for farmers to reduce the amount of agricultural pollution running off their property.

“I am in favor of things that make progress,” Heather Taylor-Miesle said.

And after many years of no progress toward the goal of a 20 percent phosphorus reduction in 2020 and a 40 percent reduction by 2025, Ms. Taylor-Miesle said she can get behind a plan that might finally make some.

The problem, though, is that H2Ohio may encourage agricultural operations to do a better job applying fertilizers and handling manure and preventing runoff, but it includes no mandates. It does not require a pollution inventory to discover exactly how much runoff is coming from where. And it sets no pollution limits.

Ohio has tried voluntary measures before. Under Mr. DeWine’s predecessor, John Kasich, there were voluntary plans. After five years and $3 billion spent, the governor admitted that voluntary measures made no measurable impact on the amount of phosphorus pouring out to Lake Erie.

Also important to consider is the impact of a federal lawsuit now before U.S. District Judge James Carr, who also is concerned about a lack of any real progress in cleaning up Lake Erie.

The judge is allowing the case filed by environmental groups seeking to force a cleanup to proceed. The judge noticed that the state is “essentially delaying, and intends to continue to delay indefinitely” any plans to impose pollution limits.

Ohio doesn’t even have a good plan, the judge said.

As state Rep. Mike Sheehy (D., Oregon) has said, if Ohio is not willing to step up with its own plan for setting pollution limits and then enforcing those limits, the state risks federal intervention - something it should avoid if possible, he believes.

“What we really need is some enforcement,” Mr. Sheehy says. And he is right.

There is one path forward to saving Lake Erie and it doesn’t involve any more detours with voluntary measures, no matter how well funded.

If the DeWine administration wants to save Lake Erie - or even if it just wants to avoid unpalatable federal oversight - the governor needs to have pollution limits backed by the force of law. Without them, Lake Erie may be doomed.

Online: https://bit.ly/35wnbIr