Note: The Lawrence Times runs opinion columns and letters to the Times written by community members with varying perspectives on local issues. These pieces do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Times staff.
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This letter is written to voice my objection to the military jets that flew over Lawrence before the first home game on Aug. 23. Their noise ripped the atmosphere. And they seemed so close, as if they were mere feet above the roof of my apartment.
My first thought was that they were bombers; it could happen in today’s America. That shook me, and I don’t mind telling you that I wept a bit right there in the kitchen.
My second thought was how terrified all the animals must’ve been, both domestic and wild. Such an immersive, shocking, and invasive racket; so loud, so unnatural. I ran out to be sure the monarch caterpillar on my milkweed hadn’t been vibrated off its leaf. It hadn’t.
My third thought was all that fuel burned for a stunt to open a college football game.
As 21st-century humans, everything we rely on — our supermarkets; our meds; our air conditioners and heat pumps; our vehicles; our medical equipment; our tillers and irrigators; our infant car seats; our smartphones; our air conditioners and forced-air heat — does damage.
What we don’t rely on is military aircraft performing ear-splitting flyovers in the name of intercollegiate sports.
In these days of fierce competition for the earth’s dwindling resources, would it be such a bad idea to give that sort of frivolous damage up?
— Randi Hacker, Lawrence
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Tom Harper/Lawrence Times
Max Kautsch: In loco parentis, or just plain loco – Surveilling Kansas students doesn’t make sense (Column)
“The outcome of the case will depend largely on whether the district can show that implementing software designed to monitor students the way it did was closely related enough to an important government interest — namely, student safety — to justify Gaggle’s intrusion into the students’ lives,” Max Kautsch writes in this Kansas Reflector column.
