Sorry, gang...
I didn't mean to get people ruffled up by that last post, I should've let everybody know at the outset that it's supposed to be A **JOKE**. It had me going for a bit too, until I realized that "Starsniffer" can't be anybody's real name, so I looked it up on the net and found other posts of it that made clear it's supposed to be a joke, not to mention the thing that takwish also found, namely that there's no "Starsniffer" on the schoolboard.
The reason I posted it was to suggest that anybody COULD take it seriously, because that's just the kind of place Berkeley is. If they'd posted that about another town, say, Sacramento, or Boston, or Peoria, would it have been as credible? Well, I could be wrong but I don't suspect so.
All that said, it's certainly the case that Berkeley, being the kind of place it is, would also engender a large protest of a school board vote like that, with pickets of parents and kids, and letter-writing campaigns to the Daily Planet, the school board, the government, and anybody else who might listen (the Daily Planet op-eds would have a lot of wrangling and hand-wringing in them, and there'd be people who'd ardently take up and argue both sides). The school board would eventually back down in the face of popular pressure, because by and large, that's what Berkeley city officials DO. They come up with a "brilliant" idea, and are forced by a vocal and active group of people to abandon it.
Sometimes that's a good thing (as it would be in this case), sometimes it's not (as in the cases where a group of neighbors have used the Zoning & Adjustment Board as a stick to beat on another of their neighbors with).
Anyway, no need to break out those pens and picket signs yet. But we must remain eternally vigilant. ;)
The reason I posted it was to suggest that anybody COULD take it seriously, because that's just the kind of place Berkeley is. If they'd posted that about another town, say, Sacramento, or Boston, or Peoria, would it have been as credible? Well, I could be wrong but I don't suspect so.
All that said, it's certainly the case that Berkeley, being the kind of place it is, would also engender a large protest of a school board vote like that, with pickets of parents and kids, and letter-writing campaigns to the Daily Planet, the school board, the government, and anybody else who might listen (the Daily Planet op-eds would have a lot of wrangling and hand-wringing in them, and there'd be people who'd ardently take up and argue both sides). The school board would eventually back down in the face of popular pressure, because by and large, that's what Berkeley city officials DO. They come up with a "brilliant" idea, and are forced by a vocal and active group of people to abandon it.
Sometimes that's a good thing (as it would be in this case), sometimes it's not (as in the cases where a group of neighbors have used the Zoning & Adjustment Board as a stick to beat on another of their neighbors with).
Anyway, no need to break out those pens and picket signs yet. But we must remain eternally vigilant. ;)