Editor,
I am a little confused about “Open Letter to Injured Skateboarder” in the July 27 edition from “Anonymous” as I thought there was a policy in place requiring: “The letter writer’s signature, (an email address will suffice) printed name, street address and phone number must be included – published letters will only use the writer’s name and city.”
By granting anonymity you open the gates to anyone being able to say anything about an individual, situation, or group with whom they take issue.
Just because someone says something happened doesn’t make it so… just because the child is being called out for being a fault for allegedly running a stop sign doesn’t mean that happened… how do we know the driver of the car wasn’t speeding or texting or simply not paying attention… by protecting this person’s identity, you automatically make them, the driver, the victim when perhaps they were every bit as responsible for the situation.
Letters taking aim at a certain segment of our community, in this case skateboarders and their parents, “I can’t fathom how any parent would go through what I went through and argue for their kids’ rights to skateboard fast down our hills” do not deserve the safety net of a protected identity.
If what happened occurred as Anonymous claims, there is no need for them to hide and certainly no need for the local paper to allow such.
Kristin Fast, Laguna Beach
