Apparently, there are still some hard feelings regarding this week’s school elections, judging by two letters I received. One was from a woman who claimed that on Election Day (I am withholding the name of the school district): “. . . one of the candidates for School Board was out there at a polling location, pumping hands, asking for support and thanking people for their votes as they left. I hear that the candidate’s campaign material was even on display at the PTA’s Children’s Voting program. Was it illegal? Inappropriate? Unethical? Do the opposing candidates wonder if they should have been out there, too? Did it actually affect the vote? I don’t have the answers to these questions. But I would certainly appreciate it if the current School Board would see to it that rules are laid out and enforced in the future. . .”

One would hope that the writer reported such behavior to the appropriate people to prevent any possible wrongdoing in the future. But her implication that an unnamed candidate stepped out of bounds is inappropriate for the Opinion Page – by not naming the candidate in question, she unfairly casts suspicion on all the candidates in that race. And had she named the candidate, we would not be able to use the letter because it would just be hearsay. (I did end up sending it to our News department, but, again, unless the writer made a formal complaint to a governing body, there really isn’t anything we can do to corroborate her charges.)

As for the second letter, I don’t have to withhold the name of the district becuase the writer did not provide one. Nor did he give us his address, hometown or phone number (he did sign a name to it, though). Here, verbatim, is what he had to say: “To all those (including myself) who showed no reaction to a woman shouting heil hitler and givinge a salute to a jewish guy after she voted. We should be ashamed of ourselves. With Memorial Day approaching I wonder what my granddad would say to all us gutless folks.” Well, OK, if such an incident did take place as the writer described, then it’s a shame that no one called out the woman for her actions. But what is the purpose of sending us this accusatory letter without even naming the district in question? We’re certainly not going to publish it; nor does it have any news value without us knowing where this took place. (And even if we did know, again, unless some kind of formal complaint was filed, it’s just hearsay.) If this writer wants to assuage his guilt over being “gutless,” maybe he can join or start a group to address the tensions that apparently exist among this district’s various members – this letter serves no purpose at all.