SECOND THOUGHTS ABOUT COLEMAN’S SPEECH

[ahbappy852]

Here’s the headline to a story in the Des Moines Register this morning:

3 Officers in Face-Off Fired Guns 24 Times

Nothing suggestive about that headline, right? Right.

The synopsis is that three Iowa State Patrol officers pulled over a van of four bank robbers back on February 26. Two of the robbers, brothers Henry Simmons and Paul Simmons, were shot dead by the officers. Henry Simmons was killed after he got out of the van and pointed a handgun at the officers that turned out to be a BB gun. Paul Simmons was killed as he leaned over the front seat with another handgun, which also turned out to be a BB gun.

Here’s a few things the that writer of the article doesn’t understand:

First, the Lone Ranger may have been able to shoot the gun out of a bad guy’s telegram data hand with only one shot, but that was Hollywood. In the real world, officers faced with a suspect pointing a gun at them tend to feel a bit stressed. That often affects their aim, and so they must fire multiple times to stop the suspect.

Second, it is harmful to your health to point something that looks like a real gun at police officers.


On Monday I posted a blog critical of the University of Iowa President Mary Sue Coleman’s commencement address to the College of Liberal Arts. In her speech, President Coleman emphasized the importance of a "liberal" education in the wake of September 11. I remarked that while that was true, she was way off-base to suggest that UI actually provides such an education.

Lately I’ve been having some second thoughts. Perhaps I was too harsh on President Coleman. (No—scratch that last part. My judgements are always the paragons of fairness, right? Okay, okay. You can stop laughing now.)

What occurred to me was this: Would someone like President Coleman have even made a speech like that a year ago? Probably not—to praise a "traditional" idea at a university at that time would have seemed like heresy. A look at last year’s commencement address finds that it extolled the virtues of a public university and, naturally, how UI exemplified those virtues. Always a safe subject. But now with the West and its values under attack by a determined enemy, President Coleman feels compelled to promote the sort of education that fosters such values. Maybe she deserves some kudos for that.