OUR VIEW: Election time

School Board member Dayton Owens got what he wanted.
He told the Bristol Herald Courier he wouldn’t challenge the decision made by a committee formed of seven parents, three students, an English department head from another school, the teacher using the book and a minister. The group, charged with making a recommendation on whether Lee Smith’s “Fair and Tender Ladies” should be allowed to remain a part of the curriculum at Abingdon High School, said that it should indeed. Some members said that even if the content were objectionable, the slope of censorship is even more so. Hurray for them. The committee of parents, teachers, students and a minister, as well as the school system as a whole, deserves heaps of praise for making the right decision for the right reasons. When Owens challenged the book earlier this year, citing sexual content he thought inappropriate for teenaged readers, it made for an easy target. We in the press obliged as oft as possible. It would have been easy for the committee to become reactionary and dismiss the matter out of hand. Because it didn’t do that, choosing instead to give the novel, told in a series of letters, and Owens’ challenge due consideration.
Unfortunately we can’t shake this nagging feeling that Owens wasn’t telling a tall tale when he said, “I wasn’t asking for censorship.”
So if he didn’t want to silence Smith, what did he want?
Re-elected.
And he got it. On Nov. 6, Owens, the incumbent, topped opponent Michael Hayter by 125 votes. Hayter carried Meadowview. Owens grabbed Glade Spring. It wasn’t exactly what you would call a runaway victory. But then a victory is a victory.
It could have been the blessing of incumbency, the fact that it’s hard to topple an already elected official, that secured another term on the School Board. Or maybe it was the leg work. Owens knocked on doors then knocked on more doors. He campaigned a campaign meant to win, even soliciting votes at houses with Hayter signs out front. But then, maybe, just maybe, those 125 votes were cast by parents, grandparents and others worried what their kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews are learning in public schools these days.
Owens surely knew that Smith’s novel would never be removed from the school’s shelves. He had to have figured, especially in light of the county’s history, that anything that smacks of censorship would be smacked down immediately. He also knows how to win elections, as made evident by the past two he has competed in. He had to have figured that while making a ruckus just before voting time would cost him some votes it would motivate the voters who put him office last time.
If he figured that, he figured right. And it he got what he wanted.