Letters the week of 6/13/02

Wayne: Get a job

It is too bad, Wayne, that you already shot 1,200 holes in your feet before you wrote about the Karsten affair ("Fire Garcia, not Karsten," Wayne's Word, June 6). Good writing, but we are all wary of Wayne's Word being any damn thing you care to print irrespective of a fair overview of the facts.

It is never too late to start!

You put yourself out as an investigative reporter, so how about sticking to the truth and building an actual reputation?

Paul Howes, Suzanne Connolly, Darron Drapert, Lew Wallers, Lorraine Wallers, Will Reading, and most of the folks we know who read your column.

Tales of two victims

Coming as it does on the heels of your expose of how Cara Stengel was so ill-used by the local press ("What made Cara Stengel fight," cover story, June 6), your shot at Priscilla Kohn seems especially cheap ("Fire Garcia, not Karsten," Wayne's Word, June 6). If all else fails, beat up the victim! "Lynch mob hysteria" indeed!

Earl Noe/Boulder

Romper Room girls

I found your article covering the Cara Stengel incident an excellent example of how the media continues to sensationalize important issues our world is experiencing ("What made Cara Stengel fight," cover story, June 6). This incident, increased violence, is a reflection of what is happening across the country and throughout the world.

To focus specifically on Cara as a "mean girl" and how the community has become obsessed with this situation is sad. Moreover, the cover was too dramatic and inconsistent with the article. I have worked in institutions with kids who have killed their parents, other kids, and animals in vicious ways (i.e. bury cats up to their heads and run over them with a lawn mower).

This article is Romper Room compared to the degree of violence that has escalated in our culture. Violence is real. I do not mean to diminish the significance of any form of violence. However, you could have used this article as an example of teen-age violence as opposed to this incident as the main event. Focusing on why this happens (i.e. use of drugs, alcohol, inability to control feelings of anger/rage, and parenting issues) and potential solutions could be more constructive and less demeaning to someone like Cara. As we know, adolescents with the tendency to act out can be stimulated by the sensationalism of this behavior (i.e. violence on TV and movies). For them, being on the front cover is "cool" in a weird way. This has not changed much and is nothing new regardless of what the authors you cite describe. Most of their writing is theoretical and speculation based upon articles in the news rather than scientific studies.

Furthermore, the impact drinking and getting drunk had in this event was not given adequate attention. We know that all people can act "out of character" under the influence. We know most acts of violence are linked to the use of drugs and alcohol. The article is an example of what we know-people love altering their moods; inhibitions decrease, aggressive and sexual drives increase. Cara, hold your head up, and let the community and media perpetuate the gossip-a form of violence. However, if you had at all intended to make this alleged video, get to therapy.

Doug Jowdy, Ph.D./via Internet

I am a 66-year-old man. In my life I have had my own encounters with the police and am very familiar with their tactics and what they call an "investigation." What people need to remember is that a cop is nothing but another person who wants to "get ahead" and, unfortunately, getting ahead in the police department amounts to how many "cases" or convictions you make count.

This is a flaw in our system. It makes bullies out of our investigators and our prosecutors. Often police and prosecutors resort to intimidation instead fair investigation of the facts. If there is a way to "interpret" any set of facts in the negative way they will find it as in the case of Cara Stengel.

Stengel's case is, in my opinion, a classic example of this overzealousness. My heart goes out to this poor girl who will have to go through the rest of her life shouldering an erroneous burden.

Jack Passalaqua/Boulder

As I read Boulder Weekly this morning I came across the article about Cara Stengel and a freshman getting into a fight. Well, as I read on I realized the victim is really Cara Stengel. It sounds like this story has been blown way out of proportion. Stengel paid her time in jail and now the public should forget about it. Since I am a girl myself, I'm very strong about my feelings that men and women are equal. If this fight would've been with two boys, no one would've heard about it. Please Boulder, get a life, and move on.

Julie Kobechevski/Boulder

Filthy language

The article "Longmont gas station faces demolition," written by intern John Peabody (news, May 30), was very interesting and well written.

I don't agree with Mr. Sallo ("Repairing a broken world," Stew's Views, May 30). However, I do appreciate the fact that Sallo replied to those of us who protested, and to all the Boulder Weekly readers, explaining why he published the letter containing the filthy, Jew-hating language.

Jack Menkran/Boulder

Gimme a dollar

It's interesting to me that Boulder is finally cracking down on panhandlers. But the reasoning is flawed. The theory is that spare-changers scare tourists. Do we really care that much about what out-of-towners think of us? Since when? If we make it too nice for tourists, they might be compelled to move here. I don't like spare changers, and I despise apparently healthy young people who hold signs on the street medians. But if I had a choice, I'd rather put up with the street people. In the '70s, Boulder had hundreds of young transients who caused very few problems. Maybe if we fixed our sales tax problem we wouldn't be so concerned about what tourists think of us.

Joan Mack/Boulder

Close road, save rodents

Driving to Longmont the other day, I happened upon six different episodes in which prairie dogs were scurrying frantically across the four lanes of traffic on Highway 287. It seemed located between Isabel Road and Lookout Mountain Road which makes me suspect a high population of prairie dogs in that particular area. I panicked as I slowed down hoping it was enough to spare these poor critters.

As I drove on, I thought, that is way too dangerous for any creature to survive. My solution is that we close that portion of 287, at least until this drought passes and the dogs aren't scurrying so much around in search of their survival. It would only be a temporary inconvenience for us humans and think what it would mean to those families of prairie dogs.

I also want to say thanks to Boulder Weekly for allowing a forum in which to express pasquinade that describes our incapaciouis values that fill the lives of not the major, but the minor stream. Many blessings in the spirit of all good things.

Paula Logan/Boulder

Plutonium vault

South Carolina has refused to accept plutonium from Rocky Flats, and this is being called a setback for environmentalists. Hogwash. Ever since the U.S. Department of Energy decided not to resume production at Rocky Flats, environmentalists have been urging them to build a safe, secure vault for plutonium. We knew nobody would take it.

Supposedly the Savannah River Plant will process plutonium into mixed oxide fuel for power reactors. As the Union of Concerned Scientists points out, it is doubtful that mixed oxide fuel can yield a sufficiently stable, safe reaction.

For 13 years, environmentalists have demanded that the Rocky Flats site be cleaned to average background level for Colorado-however long that took. For 40 years the government employed people there to make genocide weapons. They can employ many of the same people 20 or more years redeeming the land. The absurd 2006 deadline benefits land developers and frees DOE to build its new bomb-making "campus," probably at Los Alamos. To meet the deadline the land must be called "clean" as it is.

The wildlife refuge scam is to that purpose. Remember the Rocky Mountain Arsenal has been called a wildlife refuge since the 1980s. The excuse for building a new airport halfway to Kansas was that Stapleton must not be expanded onto the Rocky Mountain Arsenal buffer.

For 25 years environmentalists have called for a study of death certificates, autopsy reports, and cancer incidence to determine the health impacts of rocky flats. Instead, DOE commissioned a "dose reconstruction" study based on data DOE said was unscientific and incomplete and on DOE's unsubstantiated "estimates."

For 50 years land developers have counted their profits and ruled politics at every level, while customers of theirs watched their children die of cancer. The more things change the more they stay the same.

Gary Erb/Boulder

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