Nowhere to go but
up for Dobelle, UHThe issue: U.S. News & World Report
has ranked the University of Hawaii well
down in the third of four tiers
in higher education.The response of the new president of the University of Hawaii, Evan Dobelle, to this year's low ranking of UH-Manoa was refreshing. "We're at rock bottom," he said. Too often in the past, critical reports on education, business, newspapers, politics or just about any other aspect of life here have been smugly brushed off as the work of ignorant mainlanders who didn't understand Hawaii. Dobelle did the community a service with his candor.
At the same time, the magazine's ranking of the university serves the new president's own purposes. It reflects not on him but on his predecessors and the political leaders in the governor's office, the Legislature and the educational establishment who have permitted the university to languish in mediocrity, with a few notable exceptions. The rank sets a floor, a low base line against which Dobelle's performance can be measured.
The magazine put UH's academic rating at 2.6 on a scale of 5. Princeton, the top school, was rated 4.9 while the top state universities, such as California at Berkeley, Virginia and Michigan, all ranked over 4.
Equally telling, only 30 percent of the UH freshman class had been in the top 10 percent of their high school classes, meaning 70 percent of the best and brightest went someplace else. Then 20 percent of the freshmen dropped out after one year. Perhaps most devastating, only slightly more than half of those who started at UH, 54 percent, eventually graduated.
Conclusion: The University of Hawaii is not serving the young people of this state nearly so well as it should.
Dobelle, who took office in July, has gotten off to an exciting start. He has tossed out ideas and visions almost one a minute and his intellectual reach has been stimulating. He has demonstrated political savvy by making the right gestures toward the powers-that-be and won plaudits by promising not to ask for an increase in funds until he has been here for 18 months.
Even so, the findings of the magazine's report should be taken as a caution. The first priority of UH should be to nurture a demanding level of undergraduate education that would prepare the young people of Hawaii to be thinking citizens. All else -- graduate degrees, scientific research, football teams, new schools, training in medicine, the law, or tourism -- should be secondary.
Producing thinking citizens should be the task to which President Dobelle directs his most serious attention.
Parents need to track
kids’ Internet useThe issue: A Kalihi librarian faces
federal charges for allegedly luring a
14-year-old girl from Oregon into a sexual liaison.THE sharp increase in home computers requires greater oversight by parents to determine how their children are using the Internet. Authorities say that an Oregon couple discovered, in what may have been the nick of time, that their 14-year-old daughter had been lured online into a sexual liaison with a 30-year-old library worker in Kalihi. That family's experience should put others on the alert for Internet pedophiles.
According to the FBI, librarian assistant Lando Millare -- dubbing himself "Silver Knight" -- carried on a correspondence with the girl, claiming to be 17 years old and discussing sexual intercourse. He allegedly bought her a plane ticket and accompanied her from Los Angeles to Honolulu. She told her parents she would be staying with a friend and the friend's father in Honolulu.
When the Oregon girl didn't call home, the girl's father contacted police, who arrested Millare on June 19 at his Kalihi apartment. Millare faces federal charges of travel with intent to engage in a sexual act with a juvenile. (Hawaii's age of sexual consent was not raised from 14 to 16 until July, when the Legislature overrode Governor Cayetano's veto of the bill raising that age.)
Predatory conduct like that alleged in the Millare case has become more widespread with the growth of the Internet. More than half of the households in the United States now have at least one computer and more than 40 percent are connected to the Internet, according to a Census Bureau report. The survey found that 65 percent of children ages 3 to 17 had access to a home computer, and 30 percent of the children logged on to the Internet. Nearly 90 percent of the children used computers in school.
Pedophiles commonly lie about their ages in trying to lure children into their grasp. Parents may think they are adequately protecting their children by monitoring the web sites they have visited, but they need also to talk with children about their e-mail correspondence and their participation in chat rooms.
Honolulu police Detective Letha DeCaires, a coordinator for CrimeStoppers Honolulu, says parents should discuss Internet usage with their children fully. "Open discussion is the best preventive tool," she says. "The process we're trying to teach teen-agers is to be problem solvers and to integrate values they've learned throughout their lives."
Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.Don Kendall, President
John Flanagan, publisher and editor in chief 529-4748; jflanagan@starbulletin.com
Frank Bridgewater, managing editor 529-4791; fbridgewater@starbulletin.com
Michael Rovner, assistant managing editor 529-4768; mrovner@starbulletin.com
Lucy Young-Oda, assistant managing editor 529-4762; lyoungoda@starbulletin.com The Honolulu Star-Bulletin (USPS 249460) is published daily by
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