Author: opinionstogo

Florida A&M, the country’s largest historically black university, has been around for more than a century. For most of that time, it was a legitimate victim of legal segregation. It was a product of rules that were different — and discriminatory. It soldiered on with its charge to provide an opportunity for more blacks to have access to higher education.

However, the time has long since passed that FAMU should be playing by different rules. Any more than it should be playing the race card of past injustices and preying on white institutional guilt.

For too long — notably under the 16-year tenure of former president Frederick Humphries — it has gotten by with phantom oversight of accounting and bookkeeping practices. It has skated on accountability. Education leaders — often cowed by Humphries –routinely excused FAMU its shortcomings: allowing for lower admissions requirements and permitting a long-simmering financial mess.

Lawmakers are now demanding answers and solutions — and rules compliance. “We were not held, in my opinion, to the same kind of rigorous standards as the other (state) universities,” FAMU trustees chairman James Corbin told the Associated Press.

The condescending attitude that less should be expected of FAMU is finally being seen for what it is: a more insidious form of racism. After 117 years, a new era at FAMU now beckons.

For many of us, the post-Christmas period is one of inevitable anti-climax. There had been the gathering, the tree-trimming and the gift-giving. Then the re-united disperse. The tree is unceremoniously un-trimmed. Toys soon lose their novelty.

But what’s it like for Santa? The mother of all melancholia? A welcome respite from the seasonal exertion?

A bit of both, as it turns out.

“When it’s over, I’m a little sad, and I’m a little glad too,” acknowledges 74-year-old Bob Kyle, arguably Tampa’s most pre-eminent Santa. “The children are always special, and it’s fun to see the teenagers get in the spirit too,” says Kyle. “It’s really an invigorating month, and it’s my way of giving back. But, yes, a bit tiring by Christmas.”

The Town N’ Country resident, who is also one of the area’s leading arborists, has been playing Santa for the last 20 years. From Tampa’s Festival of Trees and the Santa Fest Parade in downtown to Sweetwater Park, Clay Elementary and Girl Scout Troop 1498. And a bunch of schools, churches, senior-care facilities and neighborhood stops in between. He has been known to change into costume on the job — hustle to an event — and then resume landscaping or tree-trouble shooting.

He has long-time, “elf” assistants and an elaborately decorated float. Moreover, Kyle is a Claus lookalike. A dead-ringer for the Kris Kringle character in “Miracle on 34th Street,” which happens to be his favorite Christmas movie.

For “Kris Kyle Kringle,” it’s all about the “magic.” Santa is as real as you wish to believe,” he tells all those who need telling. “When you believe, he lives in your heart forever.”

Kyle began doing Santa, he recalls in a, yes, jolly laugh, when his beard turned white. He trims it drastically each January. For the rest of the year, he foregoes any more such trimmings — or haircuts.

And the verisimilitude is always worth it, says Kyle. Santa does have his skeptics.

Kyle remembers an especially persistent little boy at Tampa’s Festival of Trees about five years ago. Flat-out, the kid said he didn’t believe in Santa. Kyle replied: “That’s ok; Santa believes in you. And someday you’ll do the magic yourself.”

The tough little tyke wasn’t buying it. He reiterated that Santa “wasn’t real.”

Kyle then played his tonsorial trump card.

“If you really think that, then pull on Santa’s beard.”

He did. And not all that gingerly.

“That was it; I had him,” says Kyle. “He came up behind me later on and whispered, ‘You’re cool.'”

Over the years, Kyle has observed predictable patterns. For one thing, kids are still kids.

“You see true feelings,” says Kyle. “And it’s not just that Santa brings gifts. You can see the look of absolute joy. There’s nothing like the joy a child can experience. That’s very moving.”

And however joyous, some children will always test you, explains Kyle, and many tend to reflect the economic times. A bit more buoyant when times are good. More likely to ask for, say, G.I. Joe than a Playstation, when times are tougher. No one, interestingly enough, has asked for cowboy stuff in more than a decade.

But kids don’t just get a hug and candy and Santa’s ear.

Sometimes it’s up to Santa to moderate their wish lists and manage their expectations.”Occasionally they ask for guns,” he says. “And I steer them to something else. Or they want an electric guitar, and I play up a wooden one. I can also get preachy, I guess. I tell them about bike helmets and where not to ride their scooters.”

He’s also been known to politely lecture on the merits of pet responsibility.

Santa will also try to personalize requests as best he can. He will mention that Barbies, for example, come in safari outfits, and evening gowns and bathing suits. And there are all kinds of trucks.

Sometimes he prods the overly shy with special, memory-jogging “brainfood” that looks not unlike ordinary candy canes.

“On your toes”

While Santa slips in his share of counseling, he also has learned a thing or two after 20 years of on-the-job Clausing. “You gotta constantly be on your toes,” he says. “And you just can’t blame everything on the elves.”

One child, for example, was incredulous about his wristwatch. His — by now — stock answer: “Rudolph gets mad if I’m late.”

And speaking of, so where exactly were Rudolph and the rest of the reindeer? Why weren’t they there?

“I tell them that the reindeer are magic, and they are parked on a cloud,” says Kyle. And for the more precocious: “The FAA says the reindeer and sleigh have to stay parked.”

Kyle also has learned to temper his preference for coffee while in character.

A certain little girl prompted the change. After motioning to Santa to lean down for some serious whispering, she confided: “You forgot to brush your teeth.”

He now munches candy canes when he gets the coffee urge.

But sometimes the wide-eyed and innocent request that which is way beyond Santa’s purview — or mythical powers.

“Sometimes I get some real tear-jerkers,” says Kyle. “They want Santa to help their mom and dad get back together. Or to make their grandmother well.

“I tell them that Santa doesn’t work that kind of magic. That’s God’s kind of magic.

“They seem to understand,” notes Kyle. “And I think they feel better for telling me and knowing they’re doing everything they can.”

Other than that, just another seasonal day at the office for Santa. Lots of listening, counseling and credibility proving.

And magic. And joy. And hope.

Now more than ever.

As the race to succeed Sen. Bob Graham coalesces in the new year, look for Betty Castor to pick up the fund-raising pace and solidify her position as the early Democratic front-runner. Also look for her main Democratic primary competition, Miami Dade-County Mayor Alex Penelas and Pembroke Pines Congressman Peter Deutsch, to up the ante on the in-fighting — especially Deutsch.

Most political observers expect the name of Sami Al-Arian, currently jailed on charges of aiding and abetting Palestinian terrorists, to surface as a campaign issue. They’re probably right. Especially in South Florida, where the Jewish voting base is concentrated. But it’s wrong.

Let’s go back to when Castor, the former state education commissioner, came to USF as president in 1994. She was praised for her political skills and Tallahassee contacts — as well as criticized for educational credentials that were conspicuously minus a doctorate. She would soon win over the critics with her staunch support for all things academic. Including freedom.

She inherited Al-Arian, an increasingly controversial but quite competent — in fact, award-winning — computer science professor. She also inherited Al-Arian’s think tank, WISE — or the World and Islam Studies Enterprise — and a university culture enamored of such an ostensibly prestigious, internationally-connected organization.

Although a comparatively young and relatively undistinguished university, USF apparently had itself a coup with WISE. If nothing else, it meant that USF was a geo-political, higher-ed “player.” That can be heady, important stuff in academic circles — helping to advance understanding and “dialogue” between the West and Middle East.

The following year, former WISE director Ramadan Abdullah Shallah surfaced in Damascus as the leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the infamous, prototypical terrorist organization. Prior to that, a PBS documentary had fingered Al-Arian as part of a PIJ cell and published reports in the Tampa Tribune linked WISE and Al-Arian’s Islamic Committee for Palestine charity to the PIJ.

By now — late 1995 — the feds were on the case with search warrant affidavits. By the middle of the following year, USF had placed Al-Arian on paid leave. In 1998, absent any law enforcement action, he was allowed back on campus. The following year — 1999 — Castor left USF.

Two years later the world changed — as well as the USF campus. After the Sept. 11 attacks, there followed the ill-advised, uproarious Al-Arian appearance on “The O’Reilly Factor,” an agonizing dilemma for new president Judy Genshaft, and a lot of revisionist thinking on terrorists, their sources of support and the obvious Islamic nexus.

It’s so much Monday morning quarterbacking to second-guess what Betty Castor could have done — better and sooner — regarding Al-Arian. She was expected, according to some, to have summarily booted Al-Arian even as the feds were dragging their heels.

What matters is the context.

There’s not a lot of precedent — nor on-campus, popular sentiment — for sacking a tenured professor who hasn’t been charged, much less convicted, of anything. Guilt by association and outrageous rhetoric is normally not a credible enough rationale.

The pre-Sept.11 era, while hardly an age of naivete, is not to be confused with the Homeland Security crucible — and expedience — we’re experiencing today. The Al-Arian of the Castor years was not the mega-count-indictment version of 2003. The one who was finally fired in early 2003 by President Genshaft.

When terrorism is targeted as an issue in this senatorial campaign, the focus should be on Iraqi reconstruction, foreign and domestic intelligence, immigration, the Patriot Act, Islamic money trails and policies of pre-emption and unilateralism. The role of the United Nations and America’s relationship with the rest of the world, including putative allies, despotic sheikdoms and Israel, are much more relevant than Al-Arian’s treatment during Castor’s watch.