Teens Offer A Solution Are Residents With Them?

Not many years ago, young people complained to city officials in Spokane that when they set up skateboard ramps under the freeway, the Parks Department would remove them.

Liability concerns, explained the city. Nothing to do, complained the teens.

Now, contingent on fund raising, the city is on the verge of providing a skateboard park in the same location - beneath Interstate 90 between Bernard and McClellan. Teens themselves pitched the idea and did much of the legwork to show it was viable.

Skateboarders have been using the area all along, by the way, city approval or no city approval.

Do readers consider such a facility necessary? Desirable? Feasible?

Legal precedent?

Principal Joan Davis said she’s never seen a sexual harassment complaint involving children as young as those in a recent incident at Shiloh Hills Elementary School in the Mead School District.

A fifth-grade boy had pulled down a 6-year-old girl’s skirt on the playground and the girl’s mother registered the complaint.

Such incidents have occurred before on playgrounds. It’s the sexual-harassment angle that put Davis in a quandary.

“Part of being in school is learning what is OK to do and what isn’t OK to do,” she said. “It’s not OK to do that, but we deal with it as learning rather than as sexual harassment.”

Is that still the right approach?

Mixed message

Invited to explain why candidates and campaign workers spend so much time setting up campaign signs and worrying when they get knocked over, “Bagpipes” readers drew a blank.

But one of them, Dave Laird of Spokane, shared an anecdote: “Some improvisational artist carefully redecorated about half the ‘Re-elect Steve Hasson’ signs to where they read: ‘Don’t Re-Elect Steve the Ass,’ said Laird.

“Many and many an otherwise stoic commuter making the grudge run from Loon Lake to Spokane mysteriously burst into gales of laughter, spilling their coffee and suddenly weaving all over the damn road for some unexplained reason.”

Question: Was that nice, or even fair, calling the Loon Lake-Spokane drive a “grudge run”?

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