Back off, IHSA! Let unions, districts decide on playing sports during teacher strikes Say it with me: ‘Cult 45’
If Illinois High School Association officials are lucky, state Appellate Court judges will toss their case out of court Tuesday and put off for another day a decision about what should happen with high school sports when teachers go on strike.
Any other result will pose huge problems for them.
The story so far: When the Chicago Teachers Union began its 15-day strike Oct. 17, numerous sporting events were canceled. IHSA rules don’t allow athletes to compete during walkouts because coaches are often union members.
Many student-athletes facing disqualification from postseason tournament action came forward to plead their cases in the court of public opinion, mostly unsuccessfully. But cross-country runners in city public high schools went before actual judges to plead that IHSA rules were arbitrary and unfair.
After one setback, they got a favorable ruling Nov. 1, the eve of state sectional meet. Cook County Associate Judge Neil Cohen granted a temporary restraining order allowing the runners to compete on the grounds that the statewide policy is “ambiguous and vague and not good enough to not have these children run their race.”
Twenty CPS runners went on to qualify for the state meet. But rather than move on or accept defeat, the IHSA, in a misguided effort to assert its authority, went to the Illinois Appellate Court seeking to lift the temporary restraining order and keep the CPS runners out of the state meet, held Saturday in Peoria.
It was good for the runners when the three-justice appellate panel announced Thursday that it would not rule on the matter until Tuesday, three days after the state meet.
It was also good for IHSA officials. A ruling in their favor would have put them back on the front pages as the rigid ogres who were willing to punish innocent student-athletes because of an already settled dispute between the school district and the teachers union. And a ruling against them stood to set a precedent that would undermine the agency’s authority to govern high school sports in other ways.
Tuesday, Kevin Sterling, the attorney for the runners, will send a letter to the Appellate Court saying that because the state meet is over, the issue is now moot — legalese for no longer relevant — and the judges should not rule. He told me Friday he will ask lawyers for the IHSA to co-sign that letter with him and hope the judges agree to just let the matter drop, but a spokesman for the IHSA said the agency has not yet decided what to do.
If the case goes to a ruling, IHSA officials will again be in a can’t-win situation. A ruling in their favor will require them to strip from Chicago runners any honors won at the state meet, which will be ugly. A ruling against them will be an awkward precedent going forward.
The agency has announced its intention to take a close look at this entire issue when its 11-member board of directors meets in Bloomington on Dec. 16.
And I have a suggestion. A cursory look at news stories from around the country shows that, in some states, sports governing bodies leave it up to a joint decision of the union and the school district whether and how to allow interscholastic contests to proceed during strikes.
This puts the burden of asking the kids to sacrifice where it belongs — not on a team of faceless bureaucrats reading from their one-size-fits-all rules, but on the leading district and union negotiators in the communities. Mayor Lori Lightfoot and/or CTU President Jesse Sharkey should have been directly accountable to not only the runners but also to the volleyball, tennis and soccer players and other athletes sidelined by the strike.
The current IHSA rules insulate the disputing parties from responsibility and community wrath. Which may be the point, now that I think of it.
Congratulations to President Trump and the FOP!
Thursday, just 10 days after President Donald Trump ripped into Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson during a speech at McCormick Place, saying that Johnson puts the interests of “criminals and illegal aliens before the citizens of Chicago,” and just 15 days after the local Fraternal Order of Police union announced a vote of no confidence in Johnson’s leadership, Johnson announced his resignation.
He spun it as basically a decision to spend more time with his family. He said that his departure had nothing to do with the criticism or with the Oct. 9 release of documents confirming he’d been among the top brass who took an early look at the damning dashcam video of Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke gunning down Laquan McDonald and agreed that the shooting was justified. Also, he said it was unrelated to the Oct. 17 incident in which police found him in the wee hours dozing at the wheel of his car.
But come on. This has all the hallmarks of a surrender and a retreat by both Johnson and Lightfoot, a pelt on the wall for the president and the cops’ union. Yeah, he had a bad month. He should have hung on awhile longer, if only to deny his foes the satisfaction of feeling that they beat him down and cast him out.
The expression “Cult 45” to describe slavishly uncritical supporters of President Trump is new to me, but I see it’s been rattling around on Twitter and in assorted published commentaries since shortly after the 2016 election.
The term is a play on Colt 45, the name of a popular malt liquor and style of handgun, and it alludes to the near religious devotion inspired by our 45th president.
But poll results released Tuesday suggest it’s time for “Cult 45” to go mainstream. A Monmouth University survey asked 401 respondents who approve of the president’s job performance, “Can you think of anything that Trump could do, or fail to do, in his term as president that would make you disapprove of the job he is doing?” Sixty-two percent answered no, nothing their dear leader could do or not do would shake their faith in him.
Forget “Trumpkins,” “Trumpsters,” “Trumpistas,” “Trumpniks” and other nicknames. From now on, please, it’s “Cult 45.”
Re: Tweets
TBS nighttime talk host Conan O’Brien is also a star on Twitter, where he churns out bonus jokes and has more than 28 million followers. His career has peaked now that Tribune readers have finally voted him winner of the coveted Tweet of the Week survey after more than 50 appearances in the finals since 2014. O’Brien’s breakthrough effort: “On his new album Kanye West says ‘Christ’ so often he sounds like my Dad trying to fix our toilet.”
The poll appears at chicago tribune.com/zorn, and you can get an early alert when it’s posted by signing up for the Change of Subject email newsletter at chicagotribune.com/newsletters.