Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/286200
Greg Stevens, Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor Editorial Board How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500 words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151 ext. 112 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FaCEbook.CoM/ rbdailynEwS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @rEdbluFFnEwS It isn't o\en the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is unanimous on a matter involving civil liberties, let alone in lock step with the conservative U.S. Supreme Court. But such is the case with compul- sory DNA samples. The appellate court last week upheld California's 5-year-old law allowing police to collect DNA samples from anyone ar - rested for a felony. Civil liberties advocates who had challenged the law were predictably dismayed, but the court made the right call. As the U.S. Supreme Court earlier ruled in a similar case in Maryland, the collection of DNA samples is no more intru - sive than fingerprinting sus- pects. And California's stat- ute protects the innocent by al- lowing people who are never charged or are cleared of charges to have their DNA ex- punged from the system. DNA collection in this state alone has resulted in more than 20,000 hits in criminal cases, based on Department of Jus - tice figures. Nationally, DNA has freed many people wrongly accused of crimes, including a number on death row. It is an incredibly valuable tool on both sides of the scales of justice. No wonder 28 states now have these statutes. The 9th Circuit said civil lib - erty groups can go back to lower courts to raise narrower claims about the California law, so they probably will. But if it is struck down on a technicality, at least the Leg - islature should be able to fix it. The causes of public safety and justice should be well served. Editorial DNA court ruling will catch criminals Cartoonist's take They're battling in court- rooms, and could one day meet over a bargaining table. About the only things the two sides in the debate over big-time college athletics agree on is that things are changing. Schools bringing in hundreds of millions in bloated television contracts. Coaches making the kind of salaries that late UCLA legend John Wooden wouldn't recognize. Athletes insisting on basic rights, if not outright cash. And now a union for football players at Northwestern that would previously have been un - thinkable in college sports. A ruling Wednesday that the Northwestern football team can bargain with the school as em - ployees represented by a union may not by itself change the way amateur sports operate. But it figures to put more pressure on the NCAA and the major confer - ences to give something back to the players to justify the billions of dollars the players bring in — and never see. There's huge money at stake — nearly $18 billion alone just in television rights for the NCAA basketball tournament and bowl games. Already fighting a flurry of antitrust lawsuits challenging its control of college athletics, the NCAA can't afford too many more defeats. "This is a colossal victory for student-athletes coming on the heels of their recent victories," said Marc Edelman, an associate professor of law at City Univer - sity of New York who specializes in sports and antitrust law. "It seems not only the tide of public sentiment but also the tide of le - gal rulings has finally turned in the direction of college athletes and against the NCAA." For the NCAA, the timing of a National Labor Relations Board opinion allowing a union at Northwestern couldn't have been worse. In the middle of a tourna - ment that earns schools close to $1 billion a year, it is being taken to task not only for not pay- ing players, but for not ensuring their health and future welfare. Add in embarrassing reve- lations like Florida coach Billy Donovan's new $3.7 million-a- year contract and the $18,000 bonus that Ohio State athletic di - rector Gene Smith got for one of the school's wrestlers winning an NCAA title, and it gets harder for some to sympathize with the NCAA's contention that every - thing it does is for the benefit of athletes who play for the glory of their schools. "Fifty years ago the NCAA in- vented the term student-athlete to try and make sure this day never came," said former UCLA line- backer Ramogi Huma, the des- ignated president of Northwest- ern's would-be football players' union. "Northwestern players who stood up for their rights took a gi- ant step for justice. It's going to set a precedent for college players across the nation to do the same." Maybe. Maybe not. The play - ers currently at Northwestern may have graduated by the time the team gets a chance to bar- gain — if it ever does. The uni- versity is appealing the ruling to the full NLRB, and the idea that football players are university employees is one that the NCAA will almost surely continue to fight. "We frequently hear from stu - dent-athletes, across all sports, that they participate to enhance their overall college experience and for the love of their sport, not to be paid," the NCAA said in a statement. It was that love of the sport that drew outgoing Wildcats quarterback Kain Colter — as well as a scholarship that uni - versity officials value at around a quarter million dollars. But Col- ter, backed by lawyers with the United Steelworkers union, be- gan the union push after grow- ing disenchanted with the time demands placed on him in foot- ball that forced him to drop his plans to go to medical school. Colter also worried about the long-term health risks of foot - ball long after players have left school. Players have said they want more research into concus- sions and other traumatic inju- ries, and insurance and guaran- tees that they will be covered for medical issues later in life. They also want money for continuing education and for schools to offer four-year scholarship deals in - stead of year-to-year pacts. "If we are making sacrifices like we are, we should have these basic protections taken care of," Colter told ESPN. "With the sac - rifices we make athletically, med- ically and with our bodies, we need to be taken care of." One day that could mean money, over and above the $2,000 extra annual stipend that NCAA President Mark Emmert proposed but failed to get im - plemented over the objections of small-budget schools. There's plenty to go around, with a $10.6 billion contract for television rights to the NCAA basketball tournament and a recent $7.2 bil - lion deal for football bowl games. The NLRB ruling described how the life of a Northwestern football player is far more reg - imented than that of a typical student, down to requirements about what they can eat and whether they can live off campus or purchase a car. At times, play - ers put 50 or 60 hours a week into football, the ruling said, qualifying them to be treated as employees of the university and eligible for a union. By itself, the ruling could be little more than an irritant to private universities and the NCAA. But combined with the antitrust lawsuits — one filed just last week by a prominent at - torney called the organization an "unlawful cartel" — they present a clear challenge to the unique way college sports operates. The model of coaches and ad - ministrators making millions while the athletes providing the labor are paid in room and board and books is one that could be difficult to defend in court even if those benefits are valued at $50,000 a year or more. One of those suits, filed by for - mer UCLA basketball star Ed O'Bannon, is scheduled for trial June 9 in California and is be- ing carefully watched by those on both sides of the issue. O'Bannon, who led his team to the national championship in 1995, sued af - ter seeing his likeness in a video game licensed by the NCAA with- out his permission. "It's never been about mone- tary gain," O'Bannon told The Associated Press earlier this week. "It's all about changing the rules and making sure the play - ers, both present and former, are represented as well." The two sides are dug in. And the battle over the future of col - lege sports is well underway. Tim Dahlberg writes for The Asso- ciated Press. tim dahlberg Union ruling comes at a bad time for the NCAA Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. bee allergy!! bummer... Mary davidson: Comment on story about big rig that crashed aer a bee flew into cab Sweet bust all the crack heads....lock up crack heads.. dave Cleveland: Comment on story about surveillance cameras at River Park "Education Spring"—the rise of public education advocates against the business-backed privatization movement—is spreading across the country and has finally reached Wash - ington. But if you're wonder- ing why standardized testing is causing such a stink these days (after all didn't we manage OK with the SAT, ACT and other tests?) all you have to do is go back to where this all started in Texas. Providing cautionary tales to the rest of the country is a public service we provide here. You're welcome. Here's the rub: No Child Left Behind, an outdated law begging for replacement, re - quires every eighth grader to pass a standardized test in math. Texas also requires stu- dents taking Algebra I to pass a state standardized test, and many children take Algebra I in the eighth grade, which means many Texas eighth grad - ers have to pass two math tests, only one of which actually counts. The other is just to sat- isfy NCLB, which was based on an earlier Texas law in the first place. The state education agency asked the federal education agency for permission not to double-test eighth graders. Texas is where high-stakes testing was born, so when Texas is asking for relief you know things have gotten a little out of hand. But this month Sec. Arne Duncan denied the re - quest, which means next month hundreds of thousands of Texas 14-year-olds will learn an im- portant lesson, but not one about math. Giving one child two tests in the same subject to satisfy a federal law that never worked and no one wants anymore is a bi-partisan failure. Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama are fundamentally wrong that we can use standardized tests as a measuring stick to make our children, in effect, taller. The only thing we accomplish by double-testing eighth grad - ers is revealing not just that the emperor has no clothes but he's sleeping off a bender in a dump- ster. Everywhere you look Educa- tion Spring is breaking out. The anti-test rebellion that started in Texas two years ago has spread to other states. The Na- tional Conference of State Leg- islatures reports that 179 bills dealing with K-12 testing have been introduced. A biparti- san bill in the Virginia Assem- bly backed by teachers unions and the new governor, would cut the number of tests from 34 to 26. New York has capped how much time schools devote to testing while Missouri re - duced it. And in California, state offi- cials won a standoff with Sec. Duncan over their insistence that it made no sense to collect data that compared the apples of an old test to the oranges of a new test. March was a big month for the pushback against high- stakes testing as it finally breached the walls of congress. On Mar. 6, Reps. Chris Gibson (R-NY) and Kyrsten Sinema (D- AZ) introduced a bill to move from annual testing to "grade- span" testing, or testing once every few years. This would save millions of dollars, reduce testing abuse, and free class - rooms to innovate new ways to educate children. Obviously, it has no chance of passing. Another Arizona Democrat— Rep. Raúl Grijalva—became the first to support the Network for Public Education's call for con - gressional hearings into the "misuse and abuse of standard- ized tests." Since the federal ed- ucation budget rivals what we spend on defense, it might be nice to examine what we're get- ting for all our tax dollars. But none of that is what is grabbing the national headlines with it comes to education. That honor goes to Hillary Clinton, who just announced she will at - tend a higher education confer- ence early this week with ex- Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sec. Duncan at the George W. Bush presidential library. The public education advocates opposing test-based reforms are going to need a lot more firepower to convince Hillary she's hanging out with the wrong crowd. Even so, few expected the mutiny against high-stakes testing to get this far. But if an - gry parents can convince Texas legislators to offer testing re- lief where they previously only preached the empty gospel of rigor, then anything is possible. It's been a long, cold winter, and at long last Education Spring might be arriving. Jason Stanford is a Democratic consultant who writes columns for the Austin American-Statesman and MSNBC. He can be reached at stanford@oppresearch.com and on Twitter @JasStanford. JaSon Stanford Don't look now, but 'Education Spring' is near Giving one child two tests in the same subject to satisfy a federal law that never worked and no one wants anymore is a bi-partisan failure. "if we are making sacrifices like we are, we should have these basic protections taken care of." — Kain Colter, Wildcats quarterback OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Saturday, March 29, 2014 » MORE AT FaCEbook.CoM/rbdailynEwS AND TwiTTEr.CoM/rEdbluFFnEwS a4