Letters to the editor (March 11, 2020)
Performing arts center
Over the past 25 years, I’ve become a passionate promoter of our community. I’m proud of our progress and a huge believer in our potential to achieve even more as a hub for business, an arts and culture center and an engaged network of caring humans.
And how might we best seize the future successes our region deserves? In my opinion, it is through understanding and betting on our strengths. So what should we do with the incredibly valuable territory on the east side of the Arkansas River that forms our regional core?
As we debate about buildings — concrete and steel — we can’t lose sight of the more important matter: The world-class, pride-worthy performing arts and community gatherings that the site has hosted for the last 50 years.
As CEO of Wichita Festivals, Inc., and chairman of the Century II Citizens Committee studying our performing arts needs, I was privileged to get an in-depth view of these community treasures. Our performing arts organizations have achieved incredible things despite where we’ve housed them. And our community festivals — including Riverfest, one of the 40 largest outdoor events in the world — have persevered even as they’ve been shoehorned into inhospitable spaces in and around Century II’s enormous footprint. (It’s two and a half times bigger than performing arts needs, plus flanked by unwelcoming expanses of concrete.)
Even hampered by clunky facilities, these vital community assets have served generations well. We deserve to be proud of the substantial economic and cultural value they have created for all who live and visit here. Imagine the heights they can climb to — and the value and joy we can draw from them — if we design spaces that foster their continued success.
Protect yourself
All parents warn their kids against danger: Don’t run into the street; a car may hit you. Don’t hang out with riffraff; you could get yourself in trouble. Don’t get high or drunk; you may not be able to control what happens. Don’t meet strangers anywhere but a public place. Most crimes are ones of opportunity, so don’t give them the opportunity.
If I leave my house every day and don’t lock my doors, I should not be surprised when one day I come home to find it stripped of its contents. Sure, I’ll be a “victim” of theft, but the police will still ask me why I left the house unlocked.
What Wichita Police Chief Gordon Ramsay said is what my husband and I told our daughter when she went away to college in 1998. There were no smart phones then, so we didn’t have to worry about online dating apps. But she was still going to socialize and go on dates, and as a woman — yes, a woman — she was more vulnerable to being abused, raped or taken advantage of than her male counterparts.
Un-PC? You bet. And pretending that it isn’t would do her no favors. Of course I would not have blamed her if something awful had happened. But Chief Ramsay is right when he said most of these situations are preventable by using good judgment. That’s not “victim shaming.” It’s the truth.
Sure, awful things happen all the time to people who are doing the right thing and minding their own business, and we should support them 100% when they report a crime. But they are less likely to happen when we are careful about who we’re with, which applies to everyone, male and female. And there is nothing wrong with saying so.