What Price Sexual Abuse?

There was a criminal case that flew through the courts here recently. It involved a pretty disgusting man named Jon White, and I think I can use his name legally since he is now serving a 60 year jail term after being convicted on 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual battery. He was a second-grade teacher at Thomas Paine Elementary school, and the girls he abused were 7- and 8-years old.

Yeah. Pretty darn sick.

Well, of those 10 counts, only eight were related to felony actions here in Champaign County. The other two came from when White was an elementary school teacher in McLean County, which is the next county over. The sicko was fired from that job in McLean for viewing pornography on a school computer and having inappropriate communication with a fifth grader, and yet he able to obtain a letter of recommendation from the principal who presumably fired him.

When the sexual assaults became known here in Champaign County, White's recent past in McLean County became grist for the inevitable lawsuits that followed. The issue of whether or not he was guilty was never in question, apparently. He pled guilty to lesser charges in order to avoid a jury trial, which thankfully also spared the Jane Doe victims from having to testify. Several civil lawsuits against White from victims' families are pending, I think.

The real issue became the fact that the families filed numerous Jane Doe lawsuits against the Urbana School District that hired White, alleging malfeasance in the hiring process. The families claimed that whoever was in charge of hiring for Urbana schools decided to go ahead on White, even though they knew the reasons for his firing from the McLean County schools.

There must have been some logic in that argument. The local paper just reported that the first of those lawsuits was just settled for $300,000 and that there be no public admission of liability on behalf of the Urbana School District. So, the hiring manager was not liable for the actions of the person who was hired, but they're going to pay $300K for the family's pain and suffering. And now, the bar has been set for all the other Jane Does who were abused by this sicko.

Is $300K really what that deep-seated emotional scarring is worth for a little girl who has to live with that the rest of her life?

Voting Information for 4 November

Just a couple of quick links for prospective voters out there:

The WSJ this morning reported that voter information would be available via Google's mapping website, which is here: http://maps.google.com/vote. When you click on that link, Google asks for your home address, and then they provide the exact location of your polling station tomorrow. No muss, no fuss! There should be no question of where a person needs to go to vote legally, without crossing jurisdictions and/or having to cast a provisional ballot. If a person has a mobile device, like a BlackBerry or an iPhone, I assume that person could pull up this info on the mobile Google maps application.

Google also set up a temporary (at least, I assume it's temporary) website to provide full election coverage for the 2008 election. It's chock full of information on each candidate, and it worth perusing if you get the chance.

In my home county, the Champaign County Clerk, Mark Shelden, used his website to post all sorts of really good information for voters to use tomorrow. There are sample ballots, a way to check your own voter registration status, and helpful guides of what to bring to the polling station tomorrow. There are images of the electronic voting kiosks people can expect to see at some polling stations, of which this is one:





A prospective voter can print out a representative ballot, study it, make his or her decisions about who to vote for in each race, and even carry that sample ballot into the booth tomorrow before transferring the marks over to the official ballot. There's even a 32 page PDF voter's guide that contains everything a person would want to know about voting in Champaign County. So there's really no excuse for not knowing what to do or where to go tomorrow.

Honestly, this is one of the better government websites (and especially local government!) that I have seen in a long time. I applaud the webmaster that put it together. Best of all, they essentially advertised this service through the local news; I heard about the County Clerk's website on the radio on my way in to work this morning, and it was easy to find through a quick Google search.

So, make sure you find the voting information for your locality and get out the vote! No matter who you decide to vote for, the important thing is making sure you take the time to vote. Just do it!

World Class Entertainment on the Prairie

When I first told my beautiful bride that I found a new job in Champaign, IL, the first word out of her mouth was, "Where?!" Neither one of us is from Illinois originally, and I'd applied to the open position in Champaign only because the decision makers for the position I really wanted at Scott AFB (also in IL, but much closer to St. Louis) were taking so long to make a hire decision. When we were driving down from Chicago on our house-hunting trip a few weeks later, passing nothing but miles and miles of corn fields, her reaction was, "Where are you taking me?!"

I am very happy to report that we absolutely LOVE living in Champaign-Urbana!! It's home to the University of Illinois' main campus, properly titled the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, or UIUC (the main administration buildings are actually located in Urbana, which is why the smaller of the two cities comes first in the name). We've been here for a little over three years now, and we have so many incredibly neat neighbors and friends, most of whom have some tie to the university. It's a great place to raise children, too.

The other reason why we love living here is that we do get exposure to truly world-class entertainment, thanks to UIUC. Last year, I helped my Rotary club put on a concert by Sherban Lupu on violin and Ian Hobson on piano; both men are professors at UIUC, and both are renowned musicians who travel the globe giving concerts.

Last night, my wife and I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to see Nathan Gunn perform live. Gunn, I'm learning, is one of the absolute top Baritones in the world. He has his own Wikipedia page, and there's a one-on-one interview with him at this link. The performance last night was at a smaller venue, and he performed selections from various Broadway shows, Camelot, and The Magic Flute (in German!) with his wife and another world-class opera singer. There's another nice piece on him and his wife from the U of I alumni magazine here.

Left: Here's a beefcake photo for the ladies of Nathan Gunn.

We're just incredibly blessed to have these types of opportunities to experience and enjoy the high arts, living where we do. I remarked last night that we are actually very lucky to catch live performances from these artists here in Champaign simply because they do travel the world so much; many people living here had to watch The Met's opera simulcasts at local movie theaters to see Gunn perform live. My wife and I tend to skew the age demographic younger any time we attend events like this, but that's OK with us.

The only thing that makes us scratch our heads is why other couples from our generation don't also attend these performances. I know that Gunn is not Britney Spears, The Killers, Death Cab for Cutie, or any other music act that might be popular with our friends these days. Still, if you have the opportunity to see a world-class musician perform live without traveling to Chicago, NYC, or Washington, DC, wouldn't you take it?! I should add that I am no opera buff by any means. I don't like the Andrew Lloyd Webber style of music or musicals all the rage on Broadway. But I do appreciate talent in many different forms, and Gunn sings spectacularly well!