THERE would be a lot more answers to social problems, if all of the time and energy spent on ignoring them or denying their existence were focused on solutions. Unfortunately, this just isn't happening. Can we stop avoiding
the big problemsThe latest example is in Williamstown, Ky. According to an Associated Press story, Somer Chipman, 17, and Chasity Glass, 18, met all of the requirements to join the National Honor Society at Grant County High School. But the two teen girls were denied membership in the prestigious club because they got pregnant.
"Participation in the National Honor Society is a privilege. It is not a right," says Suzanne Cassidy, attorney for the Grant County school board. Cassidy points out that, along with good grades, NHS members must display leadership, service and "character." Apparently, the NHS believes that you can't be that great if you end up with child.
This selectively enforced ruling is therefore:
Sexist, because it punishes teen girls, since only females can get pregnant.
This decision is also closed-minded. It proves that people and groups like the NHS would rather sidestep the fact that pregnancy is epidemic among teens (including those smart enough to get into the National Honor Society!), rather than confronting the issue head on.
This avoidance syndrome is much too easy to fall into, even in Hawaii.
Since crime plagued the Pali Lookout and other public parks after dark, HPD closed down those places so now nobody can go there at night. When players got into fist fights after high school football matches, officials banned the customary post-game shaking of hands at mid-field.
But the latest headscratcher was in late October, when Wayman Kaua held his wife hostage at a house on Waimano Home Road. Because he shot at police with a rifle, HPD barricaded Komo Mai Drive, the only road winding into Pacific Palisades, until Kaua was apprehended. Hundreds of residents were stranded during that 22-hour siege.
Instead of getting upset about the incident of domestic violence, or the drug problem which allegedly triggered Kaua's crime, guess what the area's residents demanded? A second access road into their community, in case something like this happens again.
NEED another example of this kind of avoid-the-big-issue mentality? Consider the millions of dollars spent in this last election and the continuing campaign to ban same-gender weddings or any gay partnership rights in Hawaii. Just think if all of that funding and fervor had been focused on something that had been a real scourge.
It might have led to far fewer cases of domestic abuse, or fought crime and drug use, or lessened the number of teen pregnancies. Now that would have been real progress.
Instead, gay residents who pay a significant amount of taxes and who are productive, upstanding citizens were told that they aren't as good as the rest of us. To them, 70 percent of the voters in Hawaii have a lot in common with some misguided folks over in Kentucky: Closed eyes, closed minds.
Diane Yukihiro Chang's column runs Monday and Friday.
She can be reached by phone at 525-8607, via e-mail at
DianeChang@aol.com, or by fax at 523-7863.