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An Oklahoma teenager died earlier this month after being beaten up during a fight with some older girls in a school bathroom. The school failed to call an ambulance or police despite the fact the 16-year-old had been struck in the head, leaving them with bruises and scratches on their head and face, and had lost consciousness. Their parents took them to the hospital, where the teen was checked over and sent home. But the next morning, this child — who should have had dozens of life’s most precious milestones ahead — collapsed at home, then died shortly after. One Oklahoma state ...

W.Va. Senate right to advance campus food insecurity bill

House of Delegates must follow suit “My first year in college, I lost 20 pounds,” said Sen. Mike Azinger as he voted against a “hunger-free” campus bill. “I didn’t eat. I didn’t have food all the time. I went to Bible college. … You go to college, sometimes you don’t have food, sometimes you get hungry. That’s life. It builds character.” How sad for Mr. Azinger that he suffered the pangs of hunger so severely in his college years that instead of gaining the “freshman 15,” he lost 20 pounds. How much sadder that he lost his empathy, too. Most people, after ...

Politicians’ unkept promises

The news can leave you depressed and politics can send your blood pressure through the roof — which is why most people tune out both. (If you’re reading this, you’re probably an exception.) We can rarely avoid the endless campaign ads on TV and radio, so every election season, we get inundated with politics whether we like it or not. But for the rest of the year, many of us ignore what goes on in the statehouse or Congress or just about any elected office. It’s how many of us protect our peace. However, ignoring what’s going on in politics and what politicians are doing ...

How legislators can protect children

One of the good bills moving through the West Virginia Legislature is SB 474, to create a “critical incident review team” to examine when a child known to Child Protective Services or in Department of Human Services’ custody dies or nearly dies. This bill was likely inspired by the Sissonville incident last year, in which police found two teenagers locked inside a sweltering shed that “had no running water, no bathroom, no food other than a loaf of bread and one sleeping bag rolled up on the concrete floor,” according to MetroNews. A third, younger child was found locked ...

The Good, the Bad and the Stupid 6

Good: HB 4223 — “that the Division of Corrections provide each probationer with physical copies of their birth certificate and Social Security Administration card upon release from a facility.” Both of these documents are essential to securing financial accounts, housing and employment. Multiple studies have shown that when former inmates have access to housing and work, they are less like to reoffend. This is a small step that can have a larger impact on reducing recidivism. Bad: SB 593 — “prohibiting ranked choice voting in any election held in West Virginia.” (For ...

There is a vocal group of extreme anti-abortion West Virginians, but despite their outsized presence in the Capitol’s halls, they are a statistical minority. Several polls show West Virginians support at least some access to abortion: A 2019 poll showed two-thirds of respondents believed full access to reproductive health care was important (even 49% of Republicans agreed), and a 2022 poll showed slightly over two-thirds of respondents strongly believed that there should at least be exceptions for rape and incest, and a slight majority said it wasn’t the place of the government to ...