Former University of Tulsa linebacker George Clinkscale died on Wednesday night at a local Tulsa hospital after being transported from a boxing match where he fell ill. Clinkscale was taken to the hospital following the first round of a one minute round, three round unsanctioned boxing match at a local Tulsa “church.” Clinkscale was conscious and walked to the ambulance that was called to the church after an off-duty Tulsa police officer requested medical assistance for Clinkscale, who was described as suffering from a possible concussion.

Even if Clinkscale’s death is found to be unrelated to his boxing activities, it’s sad that a “church” would go so far as to sponsor an unsanctioned, and thus illegal, boxing match. The church claims to have had an experienced referee along with medical personnel onsite along with Tulsa police and church security. There was, however, no ambulance on site as required by law and the participants seem to have not had the required pre-fight physicals.

The “church’s” pastor posted a photograph of the event which he described as “Spontaneous cheers, laughter, & relentlessly punching – a gr8 night!”:

For the record, I’m also morally opposed to this one.

They did it. His final words:

The incident that took place that night was not my fault. I did not have a gun. [Addressing the victim's family] I did not personally kill your son, father, brother; I am innocent. Look deeper in this case, so you can find the truth. To the people who are about to take my life: May God have mercy on your soul. May God bless your soul.

Before last Thursday, the city of Tulsa had not received any measurable rainfall in the month of September. Following Saturday’s storms, which delayed the football team’s home opener until after midnight, the city has received just over one inch of rain for the month. Even with the complete lack of rain–the area continues to stay in a serious drought–the University of Tulsa has found it necessary to mow the grass in at least part of Mayo Village four times since the second of this month. The lawn was first mowed on the second, then a week later on the ninth, followed five days later on the fourteenth, and now on the twentieth. The mowing doesn’t include the weed-wacking (weed-eating in Oklahoma parlance) and leaf-blowing that regularly follows the mowing and is as unnecessary.

Besides being loud and distracting, the mowing and weed-wacking kicks up an incredible amount of dirt and allergens that make Oklahoma’s already unbearable allergy seasons even worse. I’ve tried to think of reasons the University would mow as much as it does, but nothing seems to explain it. It could be that the University is overly obsessed about looks.  Given that the campus is manicured to look like a country club smack in the middle of 11th street that could be a fair conclusion. Then I realized no one but students sees this courtyard and over-mowing is as bad for looks as under-mowing. The only other explanation I’ve got is that the University gives their physical plant employees what amounts to busy work or they’ve got non-sensical policies that mandate mowing regardless of whether it’s warranted or not. None of these reasons reflect well on the University–I am after all accusing them of being so grossly incompetent that they can’t mow the lawns correctly.

Lovely piece by Goldsmith:

It seems an appropriate response to a new condition in writing: With an unprecedented amount of available text, our problem is not needing to write more of it; instead, we must learn to negotiate the vast quantity that exists. How I make my way through this thicket of information—how I manage it, parse it, organize and distribute it—is what distinguishes my writing from yours.

The prominent literary critic Marjorie Perloff has recently begun using the term “unoriginal genius” to describe this tendency emerging in literature. Her idea is that, because of changes brought on by technology and the Internet, our notion of the genius—a romantic, isolated figure—is outdated. An updated notion of genius would have to center around one’s mastery of information and its dissemination. Perloff has coined another term, “moving information,” to signify both the act of pushing language around as well as the act of being emotionally moved by that process. She posits that today’s writer resembles more a programmer than a tortured genius, brilliantly conceptualizing, constructing, executing, and maintaining a writing machine.

Also of importance is the paragraph on “patchwriting,” or plagiarism most students do all the time:

His essay is an example of “patchwriting,” a way of weaving together various shards of other people’s words into a tonally cohesive whole. It’s a trick that students use all the time, rephrasing, say, a Wikipedia entry into their own words. And if they’re caught, it’s trouble: In academia, patchwriting is considered an offense equal to that of plagiarism. If Lethem had submitted this as a senior thesis or dissertation chapter, he’d be shown the door.

It’s not amazing that kind of thing happens, but rather the extent to which most students seem totally unaware that their work is plagiarism. I’m sure some of them are claiming stupidity when they in fact realize it’s plagiarism, but many seem to truly believe the work may not be the best they’ve ever written, but it’s assuredly not plagiarism.

Connecticut Post:

A city man who claimed Viagra made him masturbate on two female customers at two different Fairfield department stores was granted a special form of probation Monday.

These people are involved (embiggened version):

Grant McCarty, the lone student, is the current Student Association President.

Found in my inbox this morning:

Dear Jared,

I messed up. I owe you an explanation.

It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. Let me explain what we are doing.

For the past five years, my greatest fear at Netflix has been that we wouldn’t make the leap from success in DVDs to success in streaming. Most companies that are great at something – like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores – do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us). So we moved quickly into streaming, but I should have personally given you a full explanation of why we are splitting the services and thereby increasing prices. It wouldn’t have changed the price increase, but it would have been the right thing to do.

So here is what we are doing and why.

Many members love our DVD service, as I do, because nearly every movie ever made is published on DVD. DVD is a great option for those who want the huge and comprehensive selection of movies.

I also love our streaming service because it is integrated into my TV, and I can watch anytime I want. The benefits of our streaming service are really quite different from the benefits of DVD by mail. We need to focus on rapid improvement as streaming technology and the market evolves, without maintaining compatibility with our DVD by mail service.

So we realized that streaming and DVD by mail are really becoming two different businesses, with very different cost structures, that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently.

It’s hard to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary: In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to “Qwikster”. We chose the name Qwikster because it refers to quick delivery. We will keep the name “Netflix” for streaming.

Qwikster will be the same website and DVD service that everyone is used to. It is just a new name, and DVD members will go to qwikster.com to access their DVD queues and choose movies. One improvement we will make at launch is to add a video games upgrade option, similar to our upgrade option for Blu-ray, for those who want to rent Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 games. Members have been asking for video games for many years, but now that DVD by mail has its own team, we are finally getting it done. Other improvements will follow. A negative of the renaming and separation is that the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com websites will not be integrated.

There are no pricing changes (we’re done with that!). If you subscribe to both services you will have two entries on your credit card statement, one for Qwikster and one for Netflix. The total will be the same as your current charges. We will let you know in a few weeks when the Qwikster.com website is up and ready.

For me the Netflix red envelope has always been a source of joy. The new envelope is still that lovely red, but now it will have a Qwikster logo. I know that logo will grow on me over time, but still, it is hard. I imagine it will be similar for many of you.

I want to acknowledge and thank you for sticking with us, and to apologize again to those members, both current and former, who felt we treated them thoughtlessly.

Both the Qwikster and Netflix teams will work hard to regain your trust. We know it will not be overnight. Actions speak louder than words. But words help people to understand actions.

Respectfully yours,

-Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO, Netflix

A few things:

1. The service not only lacked humility, but it lacked any communication at all. I never received an email alerting me to the upgrade. That’s just bad business anyway you cut it.

2. Secondly, the company really needs to learn to stop digging. If it wasn’t bad enough that the price for the service doubled, we’ll now have to use two Web sites for one company. It’s one step forward, four steps back.

3. Clearly Netflix wants to destroy their DVD business quicker than even they thought, because why else would they name the business “Qwikster,” if it’s not meant to join Napster and Friendster in Internet purgatory.

After a three hour delay for lightning in the area, the University of Tulsa and Oklahoma State finally kicked off at 12:14 in the morning. The fact that the game kicked off so late may actually be a violation of some rules.

For one, when the game goes past one the noise of the game will easily violate the University’s own quiet policy which bans excessive noise after that point. The rule is meant to provide “the opportunity [for students] to exercise primary rights to sleep and study in their rooms and apartments,” and generally targets loud parties, stereos, and other disturbances within the apartment and residence hall communities. ¹ The housing policy exempts approved University functions, but the University should be mindful of the fact that the stadium’s sound system and marching bands can be heard across much of the campus and the surrounding residential areas.

More importantly though, the fact that the game even kicked off could be a violation of NCAA bylaws:

There is an NCAA bylaw that prohibits athletic activity between 12 AM and 5 AM. There is an exception for games that start before midnight.

Specifically that bylaw would be 17.1.6.6.3 ² which reads:

The game, which was schedule to start at 9PM (a later than usual start in the interests of television), never officially got under way before the severe storms rolled into the area. Due to the requirement that teams wait thirty minutes from the last lightning strike, the teams  were only able to take the field for  another round of warm-ups at 11:50. Unless the NCAA includes warm-ups in the official game start time (which it’s hard to imagine they do) or if there’s a waiver for weather-related delays in the NCAA’s bylaws that I missed, it’s hard to see how the game isn’t a violation of the NCAA’s rules.

At any rate I’m just glad I don’t have to work in the morning because I can clearly hear the noise from the stadium inside my apartment that’s a third of a mile down the street.

I had been given a copy of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol shortly after it came out, but getting a general vibe that the work wasn’t that good (my copy came from my mother, who loved the Da Vinci Code but only got two chapters into The Lost Symbol), I shelved the book with the numerous other titles I plan to read at some point. After spending a few days willing myself through Brown’s work, I truly wish i had picked another title out instead of The Lost Symbol.

I’ve read both the DVC and Angels & Demons and I got that the writing was bad in them, but they were at least highly enjoyable stories. The Lost Symbol is just a bad book with really bad writing. The book heavily embraces the formula for other Langdon novels (scary villain involved in weird stuff, grizzly public display, Langdon–and hot babe–sprinting around city over the next 24 hours), but it also ends up delving into cheesy mid-1980s Reagan territory. I won’t spoil the plot line as I’m not nice, but much as the secrets of the novel are hidden in plain sight, Brown’s moral is old religious reinterpretation coupled with Reagan’s “Morning in America” ad. Literally.

Outside of the terrible ending, The Lost Symbol suffers mostly from the fact that Brown uses adjectives and italics like teenage girls use emoticons and exclamation points. The characters don’t think, they either rehash something or exclaim Holy Shit!, all in italics. Yet it’s the fact that Brown doesn’t trust the reader, as renowned Dan Brown critic Geoffrey K. Pullum wrote for New York Magazine:

Consider the episode in chapter 47 where (plot spoiler coming!) Katherine Solomon is being chased around by an evildoer who cannot find her inside a gigantic pitch-dark warehouse. The attacker suddenly spots the faint glow of her cell phone at about waist height and hurls himself at it with arms wide apart — absolutely certain of where she is, and convinced that he will be able to grab her. And as a result he injures himself very painfully. His head crashes into a steel beam and he collapses to the floor with a cry of pain. Dan describes what happens next thus:

Cursing, he clambered back to his feet, pulling himself up by the waist-high, horizontal strut on which Katherine Solomon had cleverly placed her open cell phone.

Cleverly. Dan just couldn’t resist explaining that to us. Could we not have realized — had he merely said the phone was on a wall strut — that the phone would be open? (We were explicitly told two pages earlier that it glowed only when open.) Could we not also have figured out that the strut must have been about waist-high, and horizontal (so the phone could be placed on it, you see)? And that Katherine (whose surname is still Solomon, as it had been on previous pages), the only other person in the warehouse with the evildoer, had placed it there? And (above all) that she had acted cleverly by doing this?

The rest of the book is pretty much more of the same. Splash in some teaching scenes which one envisions Brown wrote while fantasizing being Robert Langdon and you’ve got The Lost Symbol. Brown says he has enough material for at least eleven more Langdon books, which will more than likely end up being a wonderful catalog of how to not write fiction. Even if it’s formulaic, cheap mystery thrills airplane fiction.

Holy Shit!

Color me amazed:

Lodging teams on nights before home games is nearly a universal practice. Of 120 major college football teams, only Arkansas State, Boise State, Fresno State, Louisiana-Monroe, Tulane and Western Kentucky do not stay in hotels before home games, according to Register research.

Tabs for Iowa and Iowa State came out to over $200,000 combined. The money obviously comes out of athletic funds so it’s not like blowing $120,000 on home hotel stays over the course of the season means taking away scholarships from English majors, but how does this affect the whole debate over exploiting athletes for the school’s gain? That’s a lot of money that could be going to pay for something else in athletics, like boosting scholarship amounts.

Oh, and if you buy into the notion that distractions on campus would cause the teams to do poorly the next day, check out one of the teams listed as not having getaways. Boise State, who also happens to have the best win percentage over the last decade.

From a Tulsa World story on TU’s upcoming home opener:

Note: OSU, like Tulsa, is expected to stay at a local hotel.

I’ve heard of TU’ basketball team using hotel rooms on a few occasions, namely when they play ORU across town or when the Conference USA tournament was held in Tulsa, but this is a first for the football team. Reading that left me with a variety of questions: why? how much does it cost? does the team do this for every home game?

This just seems like a giant waste of time and money. We’re paying for hotel rooms for students that have on-campus housing that the University is more than likely paying for on top of their one-night getaway. For student-athletes who are supposedly exploited for the University’s gain this seems to be a comfortable day.

Interesting article on Turnitin.com, a Web site professors and universities use to (hopefully) catch students passing off plagiarized work. Unfortunately the service has a variety of issues, the biggest of which is that it offers a (paid) service for students that tells them the parts of their papers that will get flagged should it get run through turnitin.com by their professor.

Well not illegal in the traditional get charged with a crime sense, but if you happen to go to the Mall of America and take pictures (or even simply forget a cell phone on a table) you’re liable to end up in the basement getting interrogated. Once you’re released (it’s one of those you’re not detained but you can’t leave kind of things), have your photographs potentially deleted, the report on your “suspicious activity” will be forwarded to any number of agencies and will end up being stored for potentially decades. NPR and the Center for Investigative Reporting have a wealth of data on this quasi-criminalizing of normal behavior.

None of this is new if you’ve followed what’s happened since 9/11, but it’s important to note just how encompassing this idea of protecting ourselves has become and what it actually means for people. I’m just glad I didn’t take any pictures of the Mall the one time I went (and oddly bought the 9/11 commission report at the Mall’s Barnes & Noble).

Charles Simic on his “high school reunion” with boredom following Hurricane Irene:

Even so, looking back now, I realize how much I owe to my boredom. Drowning in it, I came face to face with myself as if in a mirror. I became a spectator of my own existence, which by turns struck me as being either too real or totally unreal. I recall one day being absolutely sure that time had stopped, despite the loud ticking of the clock in my room. Everything stood still. Walking through a museum, years later, I recalled that moment in my room as I passed the statues of Greek and Egyptian gods. They looked to me as bored as I had been.

Photos from the inside Gadhafi/Gaddafi/Qaddafi/Khadaffy/Daffy Duck’s spy operation. Any bets on how close this is to the NSA/CIA/FBI?

Beyonce’s announcement that she’s joining the billions of other moms on the planet managed to draw more Twitter responses than killing a guy the US (and others) had spent trillions trying to catch over the last ten years.

Via.

Wonderful “Reading Life” essay on the well-read book as a thing of beauty:

Eventually, I finished this impressive volume. It went from being a new and unread book to one that was very evidently used and read. I left it lying around for a few days, enjoyed looking at the transformation it had undergone, struck by the mysterious transfusion of knowledge in which this object had played such an important — and historically tried-and-tested — role. The changes wrought upon the book were fairly discreet but, at the risk of projecting my own feelings of satisfaction at having made it to the end, I am tempted to say that it looked fulfilled. Like the youth in “The Red Badge of Courage” (bought Dec. 28, 1987, Cheltenham), it had, after an ignominious beginning (cowardice/remaindering), accomplished its purpose. Together, it and I earned a Read Badge of Shared Achievement.

Front page New York Times article from yesterday on the fact that Tulsa’s BOK Tower is basically a smaller version of the Twin Towers. It should be noted that the tower will become the second tallest building in Oklahoma upon the completion of the Devon Tower in Oklahoma City.

Bobby Valentine, the city’s public safety director, will be in Arlington, Texas, broadcasting a Major League Baseball game when what could be one of the worst storms in decades blows into Stamford Sunday.

I wouldn’t blame Bobby for skipping town during Irene, after all he expressly told Stamford city representatives that he couldn’t be in town on Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays, and he still got the job. He’ll be back in town on Monday (hopefully).

Valentine’s suggestion for Irene? Set up a twitter account.

If it wasn’t bad enough that schools felt the authority to tell you what was good and not good for your child to eat, some are now telling you what you can and cannot pack your kid’s lunches in. Deemed ecologically (no waste) and economically (reduces their waste hauling costs) various schools districts are now banning lunch waste, i.e. plastic bags, bottles, etc. Should you choose not to follow the rules, your kids may end up having meltdowns from the fear of being shamed for having to throw something out at lunch.

While a child’s mental status is obviously the biggest concern for a parent, the new zero-waste policies make the classic mistake any government regulations makes, it assumes we’re too dumb to make decisions on our own. One administrator at a private school in the Phoenix area attempts to pass off the new policy as a way to reduce costs for parents, you’ll pay higher upfront costs, but in the long run one reusable container beats a bunch of plastic bags. Assuredly every parent knows this, and thats why many choose to use reusable containers without being ordered. However, those who choose to stick with disposable aren’t backward idiots. Parents who go with disposable undoubtedly weighed the pros–reduced costs over time–with the cons–time needed to wash the containers, any increase in the water bill from those washings, potential to forget dirty containers in lunch boxes, or the fact that their child will probably lose numerous containers over time–and decided the reusable containers weren’t worth the savings.

At this point I’d add some snarky comment about what’s next in the ever-expanding “we’re doing it for your own good” school regulation parade, but I’m honestly out of ideas about what else the schools could regulate. Maybe types of cars parents buy for their high schoolers (that is if they can actually get their license)?

Damaris Johnson, by far TU’s best player and the NCAA’s all-time leader in all-purpose yards, is now suspended indefinitely following his girlfriend’s arrest on embezzlement. News on 6 with more:

According to the original police report, on August 20, [Johnson's girlfriend Chamon] Jones rang up merchandise at Macy’s that totaled $1596.09 and Johnson allegedly paid $12.91 for the merchandise with Jones’ debit card.

The report also states that on August 25, Jones rang up merchandise that totaled $1,238.75 to which Johnson allegedly paid $0.34 for the merchandise.

Johnson was questioned in relation to the incident but has not been charged with any crime. Jones was released on $2,000 bond and has a court date a week from today on the second of September. Jones’s arrest report can be found here.

Wonderful essay on Oklahoma’s growing crop of tribal commercials (example for anyone living outside the friendly confines of Oklahoma) and how they may not have the affect tribe’s hope.

Wonderful essay by Charles Simic on the New York Review of Book’s blog.

…If I seem to stress the reader’s interest rather more than the pure urge of the writer, it is because, for me, the reader is the essential other half of the writer. Between them is an indissoluble connection. If it takes two to make love or war or tennis, it likewise takes two to complete the function of the written word. I never feel my writing is born or has an independent existence until it is read. It is like a cake whose only raison d’être is to be eaten. Ergo, first catch your reader.

–Barbara W. Tuchman, “Biography as a Prism of History,” in Telling Lives.

Incidents I encountered in just one day:

• A student cutting off a car at a four way stop so she could cross the intersection and ride on the sidewalk down 8th street.
• A student cutting my car off attempting to turn from Delaware onto fifth street.
• A student riding their bicycle down the middle of Delaware completely ignoring the designated bike lane on the side of the road.
• A student riding a bike on the sidewalk of Delaware, ignoring the bike lane in the road.

Those four incidents can be added to the other times I’ve either been run off or clipped on sidewalks by bicyclists, been forced to slam on the brakes because a bicyclist refused to follow the rules of the road and actually stop at a stop sign and instead blow right through the intersection, regardless of the fact that I had already entered the intersection.

I’m not fully sure of why TU’s students are so terrible about riding bikes, and I’m sure it’s not solely an issue confined to TU students. Maybe it’s a result of the students being raised in standard suburbia where parents drill kids to ride only on sidewalks and never teach them how to actually ride a bicyclist (i.e. bicyclists are suppose to act like cars and follow all the rules of the road). Or maybe it’s because the students who cause the problems are either idiots, inconsiderate, or a combination of both. At any rate most students riding bikes on TU’s campus would fail any test given to them on the subject.

Truthfully I’d love to create restrictions on where and how students can ride their bicycles, but given the University’s parking enforcement record I doubt any rules would do much good. If the university is unwilling to regularly ticket illegally parked cars, I doubt they’re going to ticket students for riding their bikes on the sidewalks instead of the roads where they belong.

In the end, my best bet is to curse at fellow students when they act like idiots and hope I don’t end up hitting one that decides to fly into the road and my car’s path.

Indianz:

As announced in a personal video posed on his Russell Means: Freedom website, the political activist, actor, writer, producer, and sometimes musician was recently diagnosed with terminal esophageal, or throat, cancer and has decided against aggressive and standardized medical procedures that could optimally prolong his life – choosing instead to face this “white man’s disease” through the spiritual connectedness held with his Lakota people, both past and present.

A snip of an email received on August ninth, sent by LeAnna Lamb, director of parking at the University of Tulsa:

You are encouraged to pick up your permit either before Monday, August 15, 2011 or on the first business day you return to campus. Campus Security’s enforcement of authorized parking will be in effect on that date beginning at 8:00 a.m. In addition, New Student Orientation check-in begins on August 15th.

I’d like to know where security is actually enforcing those parking violations. I’ve looked at numerous cars in Mayo Village’s lot and haven’t seen any car (besides mine) to actually have a valid parking permit on display. Of all those unlicensed cars I’ve only seen one car to actually get a ticket, and I’m not wholly sure they were ticketed in Mayo Village. Maybe the cars have parking permits and haven’t picked them up, but even then, don’t the rules require display of the permit rather than simply having bought one?

Of course, even if the University enforced the parking violations, it’s hard to actually get people out of the parking lot who are chronic violators:

Designation as a “Habitual Parking Violator” occurs after five parking citations have been issued on the same person or parking permit within an academic year. Vehicles that are improperly parked by Habitual Parking Violators are subject to towing at the owner’s expense.

Upon issuance of fifth parking citation , the Department of Campus Security will provide written warning to the registered parking permit holder (or person in possession of an unregistered vehicle) that they have been designated as a Habitual Parking Violator and that their vehicle is subject to being towed upon any subsequent violations.

Five violations until someone will be towed. I’ve actually run into people who’ve bragged about being able to avoid paying for a parking permit for a whole year simply because of the number of times the University will ticket before they consider towing.

Why is the University giving students five chances before we even consider towing their cars? Isn’t one ticket a good enough warning to tell students they’re parked illegally and either need to buy a pass or stop parking in the lot? Absolutely. So allow me to propose a no-nonsense parking enforcement plan:

Ticket One: Student is issued a standard $25 ticket (or non-monetary warning within the first ten days of a school year).

Ticket Two: Student is issued a $50 ticket and price for a parking permit doubles to $100 dollars. Student is warned their car will be towed upon next violation

Ticket Three: Student’s car is towed and ticket raises to $100 dollars and student loses the ability to buy a parking pass for the reminder of the semester. However the student can buy a pass that would allow them to park in an on-campus commuter lot.

Ticket Four: Student’s car is towed and ticket doubled again to $200 dollars. Student loses car privileges for the rest of the academic year, including being able to buy a commuter lot pass.

Ticket Five: Student’s car is towed and ticket is doubled to $400 dollars. Student’s housing license is revoked for the remainder of the year.

Ticket Six: Car towed, ticket doubles, and student loses campus parking privileges for the remainder of their stay at TU.

Any Further Tickets: Car towed, tickets continue to double, student is expelled and trespass charges filed with the Tulsa Police Department.

Draconian? Possibly, but at the same time parking permits aren’t hard to come by and aren’t exactly expensive so there’s little reason to not have a permit. That being said, with the opening of the Fisher West Suites last year the university may need to consider changing how (and if) freshmen can have cars on campus. The reason for the change is because with the addition of the suites (and the restriction of the lot to (supposedly) suites’s residents means that freshman from Fisher South almost exclusively park in Mayo Village, taking away spots from apartment residents. However, any changes to freshman parking privileges should come after the university starts enforcing their regulations.

Teen drivers have come under increasing scrutiny and restrictions when it comes to their ability to drive. Many states restrict when teens can drive, limit who and how many people can be in the car for certain periods after the license is issued, among other restrictions. As a result of the laws teenage driving deaths are down 30 percent since 2007, which prompts Courant pundit Rick Green to proclaim, “The right policies and laws, backed by research, can change dangerous behavior.”

Unfortunately teenage driving deaths aren’t in decline because they’re getting better training and supervision, rather teens are bypassing getting a license because the new regulations make getting the license isn’t worth the increased price and hassle. The percentage of sixteen year-olds getting their licenses dropped ten percent (29% from 39%) while seventeen year-olds had a similar decline (57.9% down to 48.7%). So the laws aren’t actually making safer teen drivers, they’re just putting fewer on the road, and for Green that’s a good thing.

Sadly it’s not a good thing. For one, unlike the general feeling, not all teenager drivers are bad drivers. Teen drivers do account for a higher number of crashes than other driving groups, but onerous restrictions punish all teens, whether they deserve it or not. More importantly though, the restrictions just kick the can down the road. Instead of giving sixteen year-olds licenses two years before they head off to college and away from most parental supervision, many are now getting it much closer to when they leave for college. Thus we’re putting new teenage drivers out on the road with far less supervision and control, something that probably makes parents far more nervous than their sixteen year-old driving to school.

The restrictions also reduce teenage independence. Many teens who bypass getting their license because of the restrictions will also likely bypass getting a job because they’d either be unable to get their or the hassle of getting there would outweigh the money they earned. Not having a job in high school isn’t a black mark on someone’s permanent record, but it certainly causes teens to lose out on valuable experiences and reduces connections that can be useful when they apply for college or jobs while they’re there.

While the laws decrease independence, they increase the bias teen drivers face while they’re on the road. Teen drivers aren’t the only dangerous drivers, yet they’re the ones who get most of the attention. Teens can be pulled over and questioned for being out after a specific time at night, or for having people in the car. Even if the teenagers are following the law, a traffic stop could open them up for other problems. I once drove around in my parents’ car for two days without realizing there was a twelve pack of beer on the floor in the backseat. Who knows what would’ve happened if I had (legally) had someone else in the car and been pulled over by a cop.

States have every right to regulate who can and cannot drive, and I count myself among those who find some increased level of control over teenage drivers a reasonable thing. The issue arises when the control goes beyond sensible protections and moves towards burdensome government control. It’d be one thing if teenage driving deaths decreased because teens were making smarter decisions, instead we’re claiming victory through a de facto ban on teenage drivers. So yes Rick, the decline in teen driving deaths is a good thing, but it’s not a good thing that we’re railroading kids off the roads.

University of Florida President Bernie Machen, the chairman of the league’s presidents and chancellors committee, said the group met Sunday and “reaffirmed our satisfaction with the present 12 institutional alignment.”

“It’s not you, it’s me.”