Trouble in the back of the bus

Vignettes

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• When the media weren't looking, Michigan’s Senate voted, in one day, to dismantle the monetary protections of no-fault insurance. It’s a compassionless move that overwhelmingly favors the insurance companies while hurting the average person.

What it means: For example, if your child comes out of a car accident as a paraplegic, an insurance adjuster, not a doctor, will decide his course of care. Does that sound right to you?

It also hurts your chances of staying alive once you’re taken to a hospital for care. The bill calls for a reduction in the amount of money a hospital will be reimbursed, which means trauma units will lose jobs and lack of staffing means less care.

The no-fault bill is scheduled to be voted on by the full House this week. Google your state House rep today, call him or her and emphatically leave instructions to vote no on this bill. It’s OK if you get your rep’s assistant – they keep track of which way the calls go.

·         I’m thinking about the case of the 13-year-old African-American Bloomfield Hills student who was harassed and repeatedly called the n-word on a school bus during an outing.

The school administration, the students, parents and the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office have made much of this. Their message is zero tolerance of such behavior. The two kids who led the harassment have been suspended; the Oakland prosecutor is deciding whether to charge them and if so, with what.

It’s nice to have that kind of firepower in your corner. It’s actually quite overwhelming. One question bothers me, though: How is this student going to learn to successfully fend for himself?

Unfortunately, I doubt this is the last time the student will be faced with such an ugly situation. Hating has become a national sport. 

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Let’s not forget Malcolm X: “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”

Punishing the students who harassed the 13-year-old is one way to handle this. Another way would be to educate all students at the school about diversity and why what those two students did was wrong.

It’s education, not the prosecutor’s office, which will bring peace to this situation.