EDITORIAL
EYE ON ARKANSAS
Judicial politics
Voucher hooey
P
romoters of school vouchers argue tiresomely that voucher-school students do better academically than public-school students. It’s untrue, as every study shows. Wisconsin has the oldest private-school voucher program in the U.S. The most recent study shows that students participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program scored proficient or advanced on standardized tests at a rate of 34.4 percent in math and 55.2 percent in reading. Students in Milwaukee public schools scored proficient or advanced at a rate of 48.7 percent in math and 59 percent in reading on the same tests. 6
MARCH 27, 2014
ARKANSAS TIMES
BRIAN CHILSON
J
udicial politics in Faulkner and Conway counties was a colorful, if smelly, business in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. A gang of judges, legislators and county officials regularly used the courts to advance the interests of themselves and their deep-pocketed friends, and they did it more or less openly as well as lightheartedly. Critics were called “naive” and “radical,” even occasionally clapped in jail when they got too bothersome. Those proponents of good, honest courts in the area included the state’s largest newspaper and Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller, the first Republican to hold the office in a century, a fighting liberal too rich and too honest to be corrupted. Over time, death and loss of office diminished the old bunch. But apparently there’s a would-be successor. A public-spirited blogger has exposed the questionable dealings of Circuit Judge Mike Maggio, a Republican but not the Rockefeller sort. With strong party and business support, Maggio had been running for the state Court of Appeals, until the blogger, Matt Campbell, revealed Maggio’s highly questionable receipt of funds from rich defendants in Maggio’s court. Maggio has now dropped out of the race and faces further investigation. Around the country, rich right-wing groups have been pouring money into state judicial races they never paid attention to before, believing that in this way they can change laws that don’t favor the fortunate 1 percent. Retired Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Brown has, on the other hand, warned against the danger of Arkansas courts being corrupted by specialinterest money. He has made modest proposals to inhibit the wealthy ideologues who’d do it. And for this, he has been attacked by the state’s largest newspaper of today, a much different entity from the one that opposed corruption in the courtroom years ago. Vigilance is required of those who believe the courts are for everyone. We can’t have as much money as the radical 1-percenters. We can try to be as alert. We can be more patriotic.
DERBY NIGHT: The Breakneck Brawlers and Sisterhood of Steel met for a roller derby bout Saturday at the UALR Fieldhouse.
Open the closets
E
quality is winning, even when the victories seem like losses. Increasingly, gay people are being accepted into society’s mainstream. Legal barriers remain, but they are falling. There are setbacks — teachers fired from parochial school jobs and petty harassment of people like Taylor Ellis, a junior at Sheridan High School. The Yellowjacket yearbook staff wrote profiles of six students with personal challenges. One was Ellis, who’d made the decision, with some trepidation, to come out as gay. He found fellow students generally welcoming and is happier living openly. He’s joined the National Guard and will go to basic training this summer to serve his country. Schools administrators decided his story was unsuitable for a student publication, despite a state law that severely limits the occasions when school officials can censor student work. (Mostly they may act only to prevent libel, invasion of privacy or inciting of illegal acts.) “Too personal,” said the principal. Superintendent Brenda Haynes said the censorship was “consistent with the mission” of the district. She didn’t explain how. The Arkansas Times broke the news in Arkansas after a student press organization wrote about it. TV stations picked up the story. The Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization headed by Arkansas native Chad Griffin, a former Sheridan elementary student, rallied to the cause. The yearbook has gone to press. Some civil libertarians think a First Amendment lawsuit, should the student journalists file one, could force the district to print and distribute a supplement. Hannah Bruner, who wrote the profile and has stood upright beside Ellis, needs no court validation of her integrity. Her article on Ellis has now reached tens of thousands, reprinted first in the Arkansas Times and then many other places with enormous reach. Publication or no publication, lawsuit or no lawsuit, Taylor Ellis and Hannah Bruner have won. They have won, as countless others have won. People
who step out of the closet and into the sunlight have made America understand that gay people are our friends, neighbors, colleagues and relatives. It is easy to fear and loathe the unknown. It’s harder to MAX despise real people, though undeBRANTLEY niably Sheridan and the rest of the maxbrantley@arktimes.com world number many still eager to condemn. The national media attention inspired some backlash against Ellis from classmates. But, increasingly, it is the condemnatory who are being driven into closets. Just the other day, the CEO of Chickfil-A acknowledged that little good had come of having his fast-food chain identified as a symbol of intolerance toward gay people. For every person waving a chicken nugget in support of discrimination against gay people, the spectacle left others with little appetite for the chain’s unremarkable chicken. The world is nearly at the point that gay epithets are as unacceptable in polite company as racial epithets. Taylor Ellis and people like him have made that possible. See, too, the steadily rising poll numbers for equality, in employment and in marriage. Holdouts, including the Sheridan school superintendent and some brutish kids, remain. But even in small town Sheridan, with powerful conservative churches, the high school tells the story. The kids know Taylor Ellis is gay. Most of them say, “So what?” A civil liberties lawyer who’s battled bullying among children says the situation hardly surprises her. Most bullying cases aren’t a problem because of kids. School officials are the problem. They either tolerate bullying by a few or, worse, they are bullies themselves. The Sheridan school superintendent decided that Taylor Ellis wouldn’t be allowed to talk about who he was in HER school district. But if this bully thinks she won it’s because her only source of information is the censored Sheridan High Yellowjacket yearbook. The worldwide web went to press before the yearbook did.