Letters to the editor for Feb. 13

Hazing is learned behavior

The Legislature is currently reviewing House Bill 1751 and HB 1758 that address hazing problems in our youth.

Most people think hazing is bad because of the potential for emotional and especially physical harm. When school kids are caught hazing peers, the perpetrators are punished and there is usually a large public outcry as to why this sort of behavior exists among young people.

Well, one reason might be that they are simply mimicking us. Think about it: How many times have you seen players on a football team dump a large bucket of icy Gatorade on a winning coach after a big game victory? Or how about in baseball when a player gets a walk off win and that person gets severely pummeled by their teammates for this feat? These acts are hazing, pure and simple, yet they are completely embraced by society as a perfectly acceptable expression of the success and happiness from winning.

Personally, I’ve never really understood hazing rituals. Why is it desirable or fun to humiliate freshman, rookies, pledges or whatever just because they want to emulate you? And why is it acceptable to beat down someone who has accomplished a great feat for your team?

Whatever becomes of the Legislative bills, it should be understood that hazing is a learned behavior. If you want to stop hazing in our youth, it must first be universally stopped throughout all society. Young people do not think up most of the things they do, they just learn it from us.

Steve Shanewise, Olympia

Declare the pandemic over

Denmark has declared the pandemic over. That is great news for the citizens of Denmark! Their government has decided it is now the responsibility of the citizens to either mask up, social distance or just live life.

Meanwhile, Washington state is currently under totalitarian rule by a governor who does not believe the adults of this state are smart enough to know how to stay safe.

Today I wish I was a Dane so I could be trusted as they are.

Dennis Zech, Olympia

Flying under the radar

Flying under the radar, the aviation industry, Washington state Department of Transportation (WSDOT) and Commercial Aviation Coordinating Committee (CACC) are looking for a new airport site and commercial aviation expansion in Western Washington and the Puget Sound region (outside of King County), including in Thurston County and Olympia, by the end of this year.

Just as a heads up: Airport communities decline.

Normandy Park, Des Moines, Tukwila and Beacon Hill are the airport communities to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SeaTac). They have long battled with the decline of their communities.

Tufts University scientists conducted pollution research around Los Angeles and Boston Logan international airports. And so did King County Department of Health, supported by the University of Washington and others, on SeaTac. The study establishes the causal link in airport communities between pollution, poor public health, and economic inequity.

Yet the information is excluded from decisions by WSDOT and the CACC. Potential airport communities have the right to hear the good and the bad and protect themselves.

For the SeaTac airport communities, it is seemingly too late, but do we have to spread the same pollution and inequity to a new community?

Let the aviation industry clean itself up. Once it has viable quiet and clean propulsion, then we can talk about commercial aviation expansion again.

Ursula Euler, Olympia