“No comment”

I often have no comment (at least on the blog) when it comes to politically-charged issues in Elgin. This is for two reasons: 1) I think blogging about a political issue should be something I turn to only after I’ve tried to contact politicians, attend meetings, write letters, etc. and 2) I have very little knowledge on a wide variety of issues and I don’t want to shoot off at the mouth (keyboard?) only to regret it later because I spoke before knowing exactly what I was speaking about.

I think #2 might be what I’ve done in regards to the U46 lawsuit. I read two newspaper articles about the lawsuit and one letter to the editor and formed an opinion. Now I’ve discussed it with others and done some digging for past articles and found out a whole bunch of missing information!
-This lawsuit started in 2005 and was a direct response to the 2004 school boundary change.
-The plaintiffs are charging that the discrimination was intentional.
-They are asking U46 to hand over months’ worth of emails in order to find evidence of this discriminatory intent.
-Obtaining the emails will cost U46 up to $500,000.

Hm…what I originally wrote was wrong. The intention of the people who redrew the boundary lines does matter, and appears to be what the focus is on.

This is much less interesting to me. Of course it is terrible if people intentionally discriminated. What is of interest to me is if the policy inadvertently results in discrimination, which would take objective research to determine. I still hope someone does some research like that I outlined.

I grew up in Elgin, but have only lived here recently since October–not even a full year. Probably going to go back to not sharing my opinion on politically charged events until I feel a little more sure about what I’m discussing.

Tags: blogging, blogs, Elgin, IL, Illinois, opinions, politics
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