Solutions are possible if residents disciplined

If 25,000 students each spend $40 a day on rent and utilities, on food, fashion, gas and entertainment, that’s a million dollars a day pouring into Fayetteville from across this state and other states. How can we afford not to re-open college for the fall? Our fair city is equipped with expensive accommodations for that student body, and much of those are financed with bond issues and mortgages that won’t stop costing us. We are committed to a university economy.

Meanwhile, the spring and summer shutdown has already turned thriving businesses into hollow shells of empty buildings.

And worse, this has become a political issue in which the constituent bases take opposing sides. The Tender-Hearted Left urges us to close our economy and take every precaution with face-masks and distancing. The Tough-Minded Right urges us to press on with our business routines and dispense with those pesky precautions. Is there any solution?

Of course, there is! Either political extreme is half-correct and half-wrong. If dogs could talk, the Doberman Pinschers are probably smart enough to sort it out for us. Return the students to our university classrooms, and exercise every other precaution against the covid-19 risks.

Are we, as Americans, so lacking in discipline and unity that we cannot perform this simple response? Are we so fearful of tyranny that our City Council’s masking rule should stir rebellion? The Founding Fathers recognized that the local government was best able to discern the problem and develop the solution. If civic mandates have any right to exist at all, it should be at the local level, where we can most easily confront our “oppressors” and expect to be heard. There should be enough unity in our fair city of Fayetteville to realize the value of the university and to accept the discipline of face-masking to make those millions of daily dollars available to us. Golly, do it for the money!

Like everyone else, we Fayette-villagers have many issues with which to contend. I personally won’t miss the Biker Blues this fall, but I understand it offers tremendous value to many businesses. I don’t like crowded streets full of student drivers, but our tax-funded streets are smooth and in good repair. Some of the lifestyles that we host in Fayetteville are not my favorite, but as a smart-thinking university town, we must accept a leadership role by advancing tolerance and acceptance in a shrinking world. This stuff happens for good reasons.

What is the conclusion of all this? Simple. I’ll say what our president cannot properly say aloud: “If we drop this ball, China wins.” So, in Fayetteville we need to open the university to classrooms and let the admin people sort it out. Then, “We the People,” ladies and gentlemen, need to “man up, mask up, task up and team up.”

We can whip this assault on our city and our nation. Because this is America and we are Americans.

WILLIAM L. HARRIS Fayetteville