A letter in The Crimson White on Monday as well as the reactions on the news recently forced me to address the Jena Six issue. The following is a comment I added to The Crimson White's web site. The original letter is here.

Ms. Deller,

I encourage you to follow your own advice and do some research on the subject (Jena Six).

The Crimson White is a college newspaper. The goal of a college newspaper is to provide news of local interest to the readership of the newspaper. If you notice about 80-85% of the paper is LOCAL news. And I don't mean local to Tuscaloosa, but local to the University. Typically, the font page stories are those that are of a major concern to students. While I think all the hubbub over a bar staying open one hour later one day of the week is a bit much considering it doesn't affect me, it is of concern to enough of the student body to be a front page story. Were the Crimson White a city paper, I have no doubt that there would be coverage. However, until recently, I doubt that the Jena Six incident was more than a small story buried somewhere in The Tuscaloosa News. I don't read that paper, so I could be wrong.

What I fail to see is why you insinuate that the teens being held in jail are innocent. They committed a crime. When a group of people consciously decide to attack a person and initiate that action, the crime is committed. Regardless of the race or ethnicity of the victim or the offenders, it is still a crime to beat someone up.

I think most people will agree that the nooses should not have been hung at the tree. But the people that did that were punished based on the offense. Hanging nooses is not a crime. The school reacted based on the offense. It was the group of teens who attacked another student that broke the law and must now face the consequences. Whether or not it was attempted murder can and will be debated in court, but at the very least, the teens are guilty of assault and conspiracy to harm another person.

While the whole incident is racially motivated, the punishment is based on the offense, not the race of the accused. The teens were not "fighting back against the systems of oppression and injustice" as you so eloquently stated in your letter Monday. There was no injustice in the punishment for people hanging nooses in a tree. While the act was offensive, it was not illegal. However, vigilante justice as a result of the offensive act is a crime and should be punished based on the severity of the crime.