No Heroes Here

by Holly Hughes

As the last Thanksgiving holiday came and went, the social media sites were busy reminding us all that we have much to be thankful for. A lot of postings were put up honoring our military. Those brave men and women who literally sacrifice their lives so that we might be free. They are heroes. They should be honored, remembered and thanked every day that we breathe the air of freedom and enjoy all the rights afforded to us by this great country of ours.

Then my thought turned homeward. As proud as I am of our fighting men and women, I am equally appalled and embarrassed by what is happening on our college campuses across the country. We call them institutions of higher learning. The young people attending them are supposed to be our best and brightest. What a sad state of affairs. What exactly are we teaching these young people? Certainly not honesty, integrity, decency or compassion. Arguably, a well-rounded individual would be encouraged to learn and grow morally and spiritually as well as intellectually.

Instead, what has come to light, shockingly, is a hierarchy that values the reputation of a football program over the physical and psychological well-being of children. As we watch the Penn State Pedophilia Scandal unfold it becomes increasingly aware that multiple adults were aware of what Jerry Sandusky was doing and yet, not one stepped up to do the right thing. Despite the fact that Pennsylvania has mandatory reporting laws, the head-coach, the graduate assistant, the janitor, the janitor’s co-worker, the janitor’s supervisor, the head of finance and the head of business decided to disregard those laws and allow a pedophile to continue abusing children unchecked. We have all heard the expression that it takes a village to raise a child. All it would have taken here is one man. Just one to step up, to “man up” as it were. 

Instead, we see conspiracy of silence carried out by the very people who are supposed to be setting examples for our young people. Most, if not all, of these men knew that Sandusky had six adopted children and took in foster children. Not to mention, the hundreds of children he had access to through his “charity”, The Second Mile. Can any of these men argue with a straight face or a clear conscience that they thought pedophilia was a one time event? Part of the Penn State Alma Mater reads “may we do nothing here that would bring shame” or words to that effect. They have certainly failed miserably in this instance. The example they have set is one of dishonesty, deceit and disregarding the law if it might affect their bottom line. There are no heroes here.

Next, we turn to the Syracuse mess. Assistant coach Bernie Fine has been accused publicly of molesting at least two young boys with a third recently raising new allegations. At first blush, this case seems distinguishable. There was not a long grand jury investigation which unearthed multiple victims. We had no eyewitnesses to this alleged abuse. Or, so we thought. In a sick twist we now find out that not only did coach Fine’s wife know about what was happening, but she even made jokes about it with one of the alleged victims. She admits in a 2002 recording that she “knew everything” that coach Fine did to this young boy. In fact, she tells him, she looked through the window one time and watched while she was pretending to take out the trash. In my humble opinion the trash she should have taken out of her home was not the sack of garbage she was carrying. 

Here again, we have a coach, an authority figure, who not only betrayed the young boys he is accused of molesting but every student to whom he held himself out as a role model. Then we turn to the wife, who is, incidentally, still married to this man. The same man who she explained on the 2002 tape “had no interest in me and vice versa." The same man she told the alleged victim could only get satisfaction from boys and not her. A mother of three children herself, not only did she not rescue this young boy from the abuse, but she herself engaged in a sexual relationship with him when he turned 18. The woman with the power to stop this situation, instead exacerbated it. There are no heroes here.

Another disturbing university incident comes to us out of University of Florida, A & M. This past year a young man, a 26 year old died as a result of hazing. Which fraternity, you might ask? None. This was the band. Yes, the band. In the wake of this death we are now hearing an alarming number of parents coming out to the press and saying they had lodged numerous complaints about the hazing in the past. Some authorities at the school have come out in defense of themselves blaming it on certain students. They claim they strongly discouraged hazing and taught that it was a prohibited practice. But, ultimately, doesn’t the buck stop with the leaders? If they knew there were “rogue” students out there continuing to engage in this practice, why weren’t they dismissed from the band? Could it be, again, the reputation and monetary advantage to having them remain untarnished? I don’t know. What I do know is that a young man is dead and it could have been prevented. There are no heroes here.

Lastly, I turn to the events at UC-Davis. A group of peaceful protestors, sitting cross-legged on the ground with their arms intertwined were sprayed full-on in the face with pepper spray by the university police. I am a huge proponent of law order. As a felony prosecutor for ten years I got to know a lot of police officers and have enormous respect for them and the job they do. But, having said that, I cannot support the decision here to pepper spray a bunch of college students in the face for exercising their right to free speech. In all the reports released on this incident there is no claim that these students were threatening, verbally or otherwise. There is no allegation that any of them had weapons. No hint that the crowd standing around was rushing at the police or being intimidating in any way. Once again, the people in authority have failed to act appropriately. The people with the power to set a good example, instead used excessive force simply because they didn’t get their way. There are no heroes here.

It has been a sad and disturbing year for colleges in the news. Hopefully, these terrible tragedies will cause those in power to review their policies and their priorities. An acknowledgment that being charged with the molding of America’s youth is not a challenge to be taken lightly. We must not only tell them to do the right thing, we must set an example by doing it ourselves. If we trained our college students like the military is training our troops, with honor and a sense of duty we might turn out some heroes of our own.

Photos:

Striking Photography by Bo;

Marsmet551 

Lisa Ann Rogers 

NicoMachus

Tweet

About Pepper Spray

By Deborah Blum

One hundred years ago, an American pharmacist named Wilbur Scoville developed a scale to measure the intensity of a pepper’s burn. The scale – as you can see on the widely used chart to the left – puts sweet bell peppers at the zero mark and the blistering habenero at up to 350,000 Scoville Units.

I checked the Scoville Scale for something else yesterday. I was looking for a way to measure the intensity of pepper spray, the kind that police have been using on Occupy protestors including this week’s shocking incident involving peacefully protesting students at the University of California-Davis.

As the chart makes clear, commercial grade pepper spray leaves even the most painful of natural peppers (the Himalayan ghost pepper) far behind. It’s listed at between 2 million and 5.3 million Scoville units. The lower number refers to the kind of pepper spray that you and I might be able to purchase for self-protective uses. And the higher number? It’s the kind of spray that police use, the super-high dose given in the orange-colored spray used at UC-Davis.

The reason pepper-spray ends up on the Scoville chart is that – you probably guessed this - it’s literally derived from pepper chemistry, the compounds that make habaneros so much more formidable than the comparatively wimpy bells. Those compounds are called capsaicins and – in fact – pepper spray is more formally called Oleoresin Capsicum or OC Spray.

But we’ve taken to calling it pepper spray, I think, because that makes it sound so much more benign than it really is, like something just a grade or so above what we might mix up in a home kitchen. The description hints maybe at that eye-stinging effect that the cook occasionally experiences when making something like a jalapeno-based salsa, a little burn, nothing too serious.

Until you look it up on the Scoville scale and remember, as toxicologists love to point out, that the dose makes the poison. That we’re not talking about cookery but a potent blast of chemistry. So that if OC spray is the U.S. police response of choice – and certainly, it’s been used with dismaying enthusiasm during the Occupy protests nationwide, as documented in this excellent Atlantic roundup - it may be time to demand a more serious look at the risks involved.

My own purpose here is to focus on the dangers of a high level of capsaicin exposure. But as pointed out in the 2004 paper, Health Hazards of Pepper Spray, written by health researchers at the University of North Carolina and Duke University, the sprays contain other risky materials:

Depending on brand, an OC spray may contain water, alcohols, or organic solvents as liquid carriers; and nitrogen, carbon dioxide, or halogenated hydrocarbons (such as Freon, tetrachloroethylene, and methylene chloride) as propellants to discharge the canister contents.(3) Inhalation of high doses of some of these chemicals can produce adverse cardiac, respiratory, and neurologic effects, including arrhythmias and sudden death.

Their paper focuses mostly, though, on the dangerous associated with pepper-based compounds. In 1997, for instance, researchers at the University of California-San Francisco discovered that the “hot” sensation of habeneros and their ilk was caused by capsaicin binding directly to proteins in the membranes of pain and heat sensing neurons. Capsaicins can activate these neurons at below body temperature, leading to a startling sensation of heat. Repeated exposure can wear the system down, depleting neurotransmitters, reducing the sensation of the pain. This knowledge has led to a number of medical treatments using capsaicins to manage pain.

Its very mechanism, though, should remind us to be wary. As the North Carolina researchers point out, any compound that can influence nerve function is, by definition, risky. Research tells us that pepper spray acts as a potent inflammatory agent. It amplifies allergic sensitivities, it irritates and damages eyes, membranes, bronchial airways, the stomach lining – basically what it touches. It works by causing pain – and, as we know, pain is the body warning us of an injury.

In general, these are short term effects. Pepper spray, for instance, induces a burning sensation in the eyes in part by damaging cells in the outer layer of the cornea. Usually, the body repairs this kind of injury fairly neatly. But with repeated exposures, studies find, there can be permanent damage to the cornea.

The more worrisome effects have to do with inhalation – and by some reports, California university police officers deliberately put OC spray down protestors throats. Capsaicins inflame the airways, causing swelling and restriction. And this means that pepper sprays pose a genuine risk to people with asthma and other respiratory conditions.

And by genuine risk, I mean a known risk, a no-surprise any police department should know this risk, easy enough to find in the scientific literature. To cite just three examples here:

1) Pepper Spray Induced Respiratory Failure Treated with Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation

2) Assessing the incapacitative effects of pepper spray during resistive encounters with the police.

3) The Human Health Effects of Pepper Spray.

That second paper is from a law enforcement journal. And the summary for that last paper notes: Studies of the effects of capsaicin on human physiology, anecdotal experience with field use of pepper spray, and controlled exposure of correctional officers in training have shown adverse effects on the lungs, larynx, middle airway, protective reflexes, and skin. Behavioral and mental health effects also may occur if pepper spray is used abusively.

Pepper spray use has been suspected of contributing to a number of deaths that occurred in police custody. In mid-1990s, the U.S. Department of Justice cited nearly 70 fatalities linked to pepper-spray use, following on a 1995 report compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union of California. The ACLU report cited 26 suspicious deaths; it’s important to note that most involved pre-existing conditions such as asthma. But it’s also important to note a troubling pattern.

In fact, in 1999, the ACLU asked the California appeals court to declare the use of pepper spray to be dangerous and cruel. That request followed an action by northern California police officers against environmental protestors – the police were accused of dipping Q-tips into OC spray and applying them directly to the eyes of men and women engaged in an anti-logging protest.

“The ACLU believes that the use of pepper spray as a kind of chemical cattle prod on nonviolent demonstrators resisting arrest constitutes excessive force and violates the Constitution,” wrote association attorneys some 13 years ago.

Today, the University of California-Davis announced that it was suspending two of the police officers who pepper-sprayed protesting students. Eleven of those students were treated by paramedics on scene and two were sent to a hospital in Sacramento for more intensive treatment.

Undoubtedly, these injuries will factor into another scientific study of pepper spray, another acknowledgement that top of the Scoville scale is dangerous territory. But my own preference is that we start learning from these mistakes without waiting another 13 years or more, without engaging in yet another cycle of abuse and injury.

Now would be good.

Tweet