Columbia Missourian FRIDAY & SATURDAY, April 9-10, 2010 — Page 5A

Write.
Reflect.
Respond.

TODAY’S QUESTION
Do you think the endorsements made by the
Columbia Chamber of Commerce affected Tuesday’s
election results?

F
or the first time in its more than 100 years of existence, the
Columbia Chamber of Commerce endorsed candidates and
ballot issues in an election.
Along with supporting Proposition 1, the school bond issue
and the home rule city charter amendments, the chamber endorsed Bob
McDavid for mayor, Gary Kespohl for the Third Ward seat and Daryl
Dudley for the Fourth Ward seat. All endorsed candidates and issues won.
The endorsement process began Jan. 15, when the chamber’s board of
directors voted to “establish an Endorsement Task Force to review and
make recommendations to the board of directors for possible endorse-
ments in the upcoming April election,” according to the meeting minutes.
Chamber President Don Laird said that the six-member task force
was “fairly representative” of the chamber’s nearly 1,170 members.
Some information about the chamber’s endorsement process was not
clear. Only five names of the members were released, and minutes from
a February meeting of the chamber’s board of directors were unclear in
showing how the vote to approve the task force’s recommendations went.
Laird said the chamber doesn’t fundraise for candidates, despite
endorsements. Former board member Tom Atkins and current board
member Larry Moore, however, mailed letters that were signed by 11 peo-
ple connected to the chamber, citing the chamber’s endorsements as a rea-
son to contribute to the candidates’ campaigns and support Proposition 1.
The municipal election saw candidates for the Columbia City Council
and Columbia Board of Education raise more than $178,000 in cam-
paign contributions, according to campaign finance reports filed with
election authorities March 29.
­— Kourtney Geers

Silent witnesses
should be ashamed
A
Japanese-Buddhist prov-
erb: “See no evil. Say no
evil. Hear no evil.”
The witness credo:
“Report no evil.”
There is an urban legend about
a woman in New York City who
was mugged — a robbery with the
threat of physical injury — and
raped in an alleyway between two
apartment buildings. There were,
according to the version I know,
at least 30 people who witnessed
the crime and did nothing. No one
called the police.
No one went to
her aid.
However, this
is not a myth.
Ignoring a crime
in progress by
a passerby or
witness is not
David limited to the Big
Apple. In August
Rosman of 2007, a woman
was mugged and
raped in the hallway of an apart-
ment complex in St. Paul, Minn. The
Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune
reported that as many as “10 people
in the building saw a man attack a
woman ­— but did nothing.”
Even closer to home, two inci-
dents clearly show that the “See no
evil — Say no evil — Hear no evil
— Report no evil” extends to the
middle of Middle America. Adam
Taylor was attacked in 2009 in a
garage in downtown Columbia. His
story was the power behind our new
ordinance concerning downtown
security cameras. However, there
was an eye-witness to the beating
who did nothing.
Watch the video on the Keep
Columbia Safe Web site and you
clearly see a witness to the crime
simply look and then walk away.
He is not a 90-pound weakling but
a muscular man, about six-feet
tall, who watched the attack and
did nothing about it. In fact, there
may be other witnesses, parking or
retrieving their cars, who have not
come forward.
The only witness that reported
anything was the cameras. Even
then, “luck” was on Adam’s side.
Five feet further into the garage
and even the cameras would have
not seen the beating.
A student called me a couple
of weeks ago to tell me that her
daughter was severely beaten at
the Petro-Mart in southeast Colum-
bia. The assumed reason for the
attack is that she is an American of
African descent. Three witnesses
worked with the police providing
the description of the person who
beat the young woman. He was
arrested.
In Adam’s case, the witness acted
immorally, without valor, by not
stepping in to help a fellow human
from further injury, or running to
the corner tavern to call for help.
The attack, at least the subsequent
attacks, could have been prevented.
Most bullies will back down when
confronted. It would not have taken
more than a few strong and loud
words to disrupt the attack.
I wondered how often incidents
like Adam’s go unreported by wit-
nesses. I called the Federal Bureau
of Investigation, the U.S. Depart-
ment of Justice and the Missouri
Department of Public Safety. The
FBI told me it does not keep those
statistics. The justice and public
safety departments have not got-
ten back to me. In fact, after two
hours of calling around the United
States and surfing the Internet, it
seems that there may be no statis-
tics of how many witnesses 1) do not
report a crime while it is occurring,
2) refuse to cooperate with police or,
3) just walk by as if nothing is hap-
pening.
I spoke with Officer Jessie Haden
of the Columbia Police Depart-
ment. She told me that a large per-
centage of witnesses who call the
CrimeStoppers tip line do not care
about the reward. They just do not
want to get directly involved.
I think one’s conscience should
heed the shame of not doing some-
thing.
There is a level of fear and or
intimidation in “foiling” an attack,
and I am not telling you to dive in
head first. However, you can at least
make the call to 911.
If you’re the guy in the video, you
owe Adam an apology for not inter-
vening. You are now the new poster
child for the “How Not To Do the
Right Thing” campaign.
Aikido Master Morihei Ueshiba
wrote “The Art of Peace.” General
Sun Tzu wrote “The Art of War.”
Both say the same thing. Bravery
in battle is valor. Valor to save
another is divine.
David Rosman is an award winning editor,
writer, professional speaker and college
instructor in Communications, Ethics,
Business and Politics. You can read
more of David’s commentaries at the New
York Journal of Books and InkandVoice.
com.
What’s ahead for city
that voted for change?
N
ow that we know how the
voting minority answered
the questions raised in the
local campaign, an even
bigger question remains. What, if
anything, does it all mean?
First, the easiest and most obvi-
ous conclusion: Our school system
has regained its hold on the affec-
tions of the citizenry. Not only did
the bond issue pass with surprising
ease but Jan Mees and Jim Whitt
were the only incumbents on the
ballot to win election. Hard-charg-
ing and big-spending Jonathan Ses-
sions becomes the first 20-some-
thing on the School Board.
Equally clear is the answer to
questions about the importance of
money and the clout of the business
community. It wouldn’t be alto-
gether fair to say that Bob McDavid
bought the mayor’s race, but his
big-bucks donors certainly got their
money’s worth in terms of votes.
Daryl Dudley’s victory as the “com-
mon man” candidate in the Fourth
Ward may be even stronger testimo-
ny to the value of campaign cash.
Even before the final results
were in, Jerry Wade sounded a
little bitter and a lot mournful as he
lamented to KFRU’s David Lile the
new importance of money in the
mayor’s race. Maybe, they agreed,
that’s just the price of politics now
that our little town has grown past
100,000. Maybe it is, and if it is,
the new reality will likely affect
not only the conduct of local cam-
paigns but even the identities of
local candidates.
Speaking of Jerry Wade and bit-
terness, the question of the effec-
DOONESBURY by GaRry Trudeau
George
Kennedy
The winning theme was
“change,” a willingness to
try somebody new.
tiveness of negative campaigning
was answered oppositely in his
race and in the Third Ward. Jerry
reached what I thought was the
reasonable conclusion that he was
really running against not only Bob
McDavid but the so-called “devel-
opment community.” In forums and
fliers, he linked the two in unflat-
tering terms. He lost by a margin
so big that a gap remains even
when you add together his and Sid
Sullivan’s votes.
The Third Ward was the only
race marked by real animus. Gary
Kespohl and Karl Skala just don’t
like each other. The outsider, and
his supporters, went after the
incumbent with what seemed to me
over-the-top accusations and under-
the-table innuendo. He won just
about as narrowly as he lost in their
first round three years ago.
So what does it all mean? Oddly,
even a little disconcertingly, Fred
Parry had an answer Tuesday
night that makes sense to me. As
we took a break from bloviating
on the radio, Fred suggested a
parallel between this election and
the national contest of 2008. The
winning theme that linked Bob
McDavid and Barack Obama, he
said, was “change” — tapping into a
broad sense of voter dissatisfaction
with those in power and a willing-
ness to try somebody new.
Locally, look at the winners.
Council members-to-be McDavid,
Dudley and Kespohl had in com-
mon, besides the Chamber of Com-
merce endorsement, a total lack
of previous involvement in city
government. The winning issue —
which drew more total votes than
the mayor’s race — was the down-
town surveillance cameras. That
issue was on the ballot because
City Council refused to support it.
Even council members not running
took a beating Tuesday.
The winning council campaigns
also had in common a couple of
spurious issues. They blamed the
incumbents for lost jobs, when in
fact Columbia has fared better in
the national recession than most
cities. And they saw a crime wave
the actual statistics deny.
Still, whatever the cause, the
effect seems certain to be change.
Will it bring more cops? More
development? Fewer regulations?
The campaigns would suggest so.
As I left the radio station Tues-
day night, I encountered City
Manager Bill Watkins. Knowing he
couldn’t say much, I asked anyway
what he made of the results. His
small smile was, I thought, enig-
matic. “It should be interesting,” he
said.
George Kennedy is a former managing
editor at the Missourian and professor
emeritus at the Missouri School of
Journalism.

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