Editorial Roundup: Excerpts from recent Minnesota editorials

St. Cloud Times, Aug. 7

School decisions will require cooler heads if we’re to prevail over pandemic

The answers parents, students, employers and more have been waiting for are just around the corner. Within the next week and a half, the area’s public school district leaders will decide how our corner of the world will look this fall.

It’s heavy pressure. Those leaders are in charge of a decision that will certainly alter the daily lives of thousands of us. It’s even weightier realizing that getting it wrong could be a life-and-death proposition.

How should our schools function in the shadow of COVID-19? Everyone has an opinion.

But not us. Really.

We’re just glad we don’t have make that call, with all of its complexities and potentially heartbreaking costs for our neighbors’ life and health, for our parents’ ability to continue working effectively, for our kids’ development and learning, for their social needs and their chances to make once-in-a-lifetime memories.

There have undoubtedly been more than a few sleepless nights for school administrators and school board members of late.

Within the next week and a half, the area’s public school district leaders will decide how back-to-school will look this fall in Central Minnesota.

Here is what we do have a strong opinion about: At this critical time, it’s time to back off the politicization of this pandemic, join forces like the community we are and make this school year work for children, parents, school staff, employers and residents of our communities.

That is going to take some hard work — the hardest of work: Displaying patience in the face of uncertainty and pitching in to make a decision you don’t agree with succeed anyway. Because make no mistake, of the thousands of smaller decisions involved in educating our children this year, some are going to rankle any given parent, educator or taxpayer.

So, how will we respond? “Like a Minnesotan,” we hope. Like the image of a Minnesotan we like to carry as a badge of honor: hardworking, honest, neighborly, community-minded and, above all, fair and even-keeled.

Our school district leadership, parents, school staff members, teachers, our workers, our employers, coaches, day-care providers, high school league officials and bus drivers have never done something like this before.

But the principal, the parent juggling a Zoom meeting and remote learning, the boss who’s trying to be flexible while keeping the business afloat, the coach who’s trying to develop skills in a shorter time — all of them are more than likely trying to make the best decisions they can.

We can help by thinking before reacting, finding constructive words to air concerns, walking away when the fight isn’t worth it and standing up when it is.

Above all, we need to be even-keeled, because something inevitably won’t go as planned. How we open the school year, for instance, isn’t necessarily how it will stay. Infection rates may swing districts to another model — looser or more-restrictive — throwing families, schools and workplaces into another round of adjustments.

So we have to be prepared for the plan to change as the situation changes, which it will. We should expect the plan to change as we learn, too. If we expect changes, our community’s response can be one of constructive action.

Even-keeled. Fair. Pretty basic stuff, but exceedingly rare in recent months when talk turns to masks and quarantines and infection rates.

Some of us will have to come to terms with the fact that kids aren’t perfect at social distancing. Others will have to come to terms with mandated masks, whether they agree with them or not. Some will not believe that any sports seasons are worth the potential risk of contagion; others will say students need those experiences, even if radically altered to mitigate exposure.

The message: It will be very easy to find points of contention in the coming days. What will be hard is abandoning the concrete ideological ramparts we’ve built since the virus arrived here in March, letting go of the “my side” and “the other side” lines we’ve been manning as a pandemic turned political.

So let’s be Minnesotan. Let’s pitch in, let’s be polite, let’s maybe keep our opinions to ourselves a little bit. Let’s show some grace toward the people who have to make decisions that nothing in our past has prepared them for.

Let’s be gentler with those who are bearing the burden of decisions few of us would really want to make, if we’re honest with ourselves.

We all have a stake in our community’s health. We all stand to gain from the success of our schools’ plans, and we stand to suffer from their failure.

Can we do it? Can we work together toward a common goal?

Some of that is up to fate. But most of it is up to us.

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The Free Press of Mankato, Aug. 15

Mail balloting went smoothly

Thumbs up to the state’s election system, which by all appearances ran smoothly during Tuesday’s primary election.

Election officials in local counties reported a big change in the way people cast their votes this year. About three out of four ballots were mailed in rather than cast at polling locations. That’s a big change from recent elections, in which about 25% of voters cast mail-in ballots.

Those who did show up at polls found they could socially distance and vote with a feeling of safety.

Despite the crush of absentee ballots, there was no hint of any irregularities in counting mail ballots accurately.

Tuesday’s vote demonstrated that allowing and encouraging mail ballots improves voter participation. Statewide, more than 500,000 people had already cast ballots by mail by Tuesday. That surpasses the entire turnout of nearly 295,000 voters in the 2016 primary election.

The primary was a good demonstration that relying more on mail-in ballots, particularly during a pandemic, is smart, increases participation and can be done with integrity.

Fighting isolation

Thumbs up to the organizations working toward minimizing isolation among senior citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Along with existing outreach in place before the pandemic, such as VINE’s Caring Connections program, another effort recently has been started. St. Peter’s Benedictine Senior Living is spearheading a free community connections program that aims to provide seniors with friendship and socialization during this difficult time. The care facility previously welcomed community members by hosting social activities. With that no longer an option, the center is instead calling those friends in the community to make sure they’re OK and have someone to talk to.

As the days tick by into this pandemic and many people seem to be going about the routine of their lives, even though changed, there are many others who live alone or have lost their social connections they’d relied on when life was normal. A June study by the Pan American Journal of Public Health found 42% of Americans ages 60 or older reported being lonely during the pandemic; the percentage rose to 59% for those living alone.

These local outreach efforts are invaluable in making sure people know they are not forgotten.

We’ve seen organizations and businesses come forward to offer flowers, fudge, electronic tablets and shower other attention on seniors whose lives have been so seriously curtailed during this pandemic. Keeping their needs front and center is a worthwhile effort — one we shouldn’t let fade as time goes on.

‘Birtherism’ returns

Thumbs down to the revival of “birtherism,” specifically the despicable claim that Kamala Harris is ineligible for the presidency or vice presidency because she was born to two non-citizens.

This, of course, echoes the phony and racist claims propagated by now-President Donald Trump that Barack Obama’s birth certificate was a fake.

The Harris notion was propagated this week in an essay published by Newsweek, whose editors inanely insist its attack on the validity of the 14th Amendment was not racist. It was then amplified by Trump, who has been searching this week for an effective attack on Joe Biden’s designated running mate and seems to have settled on a racist smear campaign..

The Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Even the author of the Newsweek piece acknowledges that Harris was born in Oakland, California. She is, by the clear language of the Constitution, a natural born citizen. Period, full stop

It is an argument no one would raise against a white candidate.

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Minneapolis Star Tribune, Aug. 14

There’s ‘no pain, no gain’ in college football during pandemic

Failing to rein in COVID-19 has consequences. Among them, college football.

The coaches whose whistles and shouts normally fill the air over football practice fields this time of year would rightly scoff at a player who showed up out of shape yet expected to make the team anyway.

That’s not how it works. Playing time is earned. It goes to those who spent their free time lifting weights and fine-tuning fundamentals at summer camps. Talent isn’t enough. It has to be combined with conditioning and preparation. This reality applies across all sports and to life off the field as well. Those who put in the work succeed. Those who don’t, usually don’t. That’s a good framework in which to consider the controversial but sensible calls made by some conferences and teams to postpone the fall college football season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fans are understandably lamenting a season on life support. Games, even if they were only watched on television, were a bright spot to look forward to.

The decision to delay by the Big Ten, which was joined by the Pac-12, will be felt especially hard here. This year, there will be no border battles between the Minnesota Gophers, the Wisconsin Badgers and the Iowa Hawkeyes. Yes, this pales in comparison to the losses COVID-19 has inflicted elsewhere. But autumn will feel a bit more bleak without these milestone matchups.

That’s why the “no pain, no gain” lesson from sports is so timely. The college football season had to be earned. The hard work required to resume it and so many other parts of pre-pandemic life: controlling the dangerous, easily transmissible new strain of coronavirus that causes COVID. But currently there is no cohesive national plan to contain the virus, and the lack of progress is tragic. The U.S. now ranks fourth in the world for COVID mortality per 100,000 population, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. This week, the nation reported its highest daily death count (1,499) since the middle of May, The Washington Post reported. The newspaper’s analysis also contained this grim data point: The nation is now seeing its “seven-day average of newly reported deaths remain above 1,000 for 17 consecutive days.” That’s up from 520 in early July.

The U.S. has become the entitled slacker who shows up expecting to make the team. Not doing the hard work means things we want remain out of reach. It doesn’t make sense for college athletes to travel in and out of COVID hot spots or put them at risk for long-lasting viral heart complications. “Almost nowhere else do you try to hit someone so hard that the wind is knocked out of them — usually right onto you or at least in your general vicinity,’’ said Dr. Dimitri Drekonja, a University of Minnesota infectious-disease expert.

Drekonja said all of the assessments he’s reviewed put football in a high-risk category, and he worries that some of the bigger players could be considered obese, a risk factor for severe COVID.

Arguments raised by some coaches that playing football could keep athletes safer through more frequent testing, for example, drew skepticism from bioethicist Art Caplan, a professor and founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics at the New York University School of Medicine.

Caplan said not all college programs have the resources or the commitment to do frequent testing and take other protective measures. In addition, he said, players will still be unsupervised for long stretches of time away from practice. If players get COVID, older trainers, coaches and other staff could become ill. In turn, they could infect others in their community. Postponing the season was the “right call,” Caplan said. “Asking professional athletes to take the risk … is one thing. With student athletes, it’s hard to justify.”

The failure to control COVID will likely throw for a loss other attempted returns to normality. The decision on college football raises troubling questions about the safety of returning students to campuses, for example.

A national battle plan is needed swiftly. So is broader buy-in on individual efforts such as wearing a mask and forgoing gatherings.

That locker-room lesson — “no pain, no gain” — still applies.