It would have been easy for Durango School District administrators to overreact to a senior prank that ended up causing more damage than one might have imagined. Instead, the punishment given to a group of students who spread hay inside Durango High School ended up fitting the crime.
The students, according to the Durango Herald, will apologize and complete volunteer service. But they will graduate on time and won’t be required to pay the estimated $200,000 in cleanup costs.
The hay, some 30 bales of it, released mold spores that so permeated the building, the school had to be closed for four days while it was scrubbed down. We doubt the kids had any idea of the damage it would cause. We’re glad school officials employed some reason and compassion for the foibles of youth in penalizing them.
Undercover means just that. It’s astonishing to us that Aspen-area officials are irritated because federal agents didn’t let local law enforcement in on an undercover drug operation.
Seriously?
Aspen and Pitkin County law enforcement are renowned for their lax attitudes when it comes to illegal drugs. Undercover drug stings? The locals aren’t conducting them, or doing much in the way of enforcing drug laws. So it seems odd, to say the least, that locals would be complaining about the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s raid in which 10 people, six of them from Aspen, were charged in connection with cocaine trafficking.
Should they have put an item in the town newsletter? Undercover means secret and clandestine. There are no guarantees their operation would have been if the feds had let it be known they were conducting a bust.
So mooning is out? Extending one’s middle finger at a law enforcement officer probably isn’t the brightest thing to do, but illegal? Hardly.
We were surprised to see a 35-year-old man was facing a misdemeanor criminal harassment charge in Jefferson County Court for the indiscreet gesture, and are relieved to hear that charges were dropped on Friday afternoon.
Shane Boor, 35, was driving to work in April when he saw a trooper pull over another car. When Boor drove past, he did the deed. Another trooper tracked down Boor at work and issued a summons.
It would be nice if Boor had conducted himself in a civil manner, but in our free society, it’s not compulsory, nor should it be.
A tip of our cap to . . . the Denver Center airspace controller who was able to help an airplane passenger stabilize a small craft when the pilot, her husband, became incapacitated. Controller Charlie Rohrer was able to talk the wife through procedures to bring the plane to a lower altitude and turn on auto pilot. That allowed the husband, who was suffering from oxygen deprivation, to recover enough to land the plane in New Mexico. Bravo.
Short Takes is compiled by Denver Post editorial writers and expresses the view of the newspaper’s editorial board.
