Contact Sports

I voted with the minority to pass Mr. Stephen Harrington’s substitute motion to Article 58 at last night's Town Meeting, the final session of Town Meeting this year.

The intent of this Article was:

To see if the Town will vote to appropriate $25,000 to defray the expense of purchasing, leasing, or bonding of capital equipment to reduce the likelihood of traumatic brain injuries in students participating in athletics at the Arlington Public High School for helmets, pads and baseline testing software; or take any action related thereto.

We are learning a lot more about concussions these days, and have come to understand just how common, and serious, these injuries are.

Mr. Harrington has championed this issue, and succeeded in getting the School Department to allocate $22k for the purpose of replacing old (and ineffective) football helmets, over the course of 3 years. This Article would have seriously accelerated that program.

The official argument provided by the Finance Committee against passing this Article was that the School Department has heard the concern, and moved to address the issue.

I suspect that personal conflicts also played a role in this Article being defeated. Mr. Harrington has been an outspoken critic of the School Committee for some time (you can get a taste of his politics by visiting his blog at www.truepersons.com).

In this particular case he brought attention to a very important issue, and the Schools have seen the merits of his concerns, and responded. It is easy for me to suspect that rejecting Mr. Harrington’s request for additional funds was a way of not letting him have the last word on the subject. Some may suspect that Mr. Harrington’s submission of this Article was an attempt on his part to be sure he got the last word in. They may be right. I have had a chance to talk with him about this issue, and I'm convinced that he is very sincere in his intent to address it.

I don’t share Mr. Harrington’s views much of the time. For me though this Article was about reducing the number of concussions suffered by High School athletes. The Article would have accomplished this, equipping student athletes with better equipment now, rather than 3 years from now.

To me that Seemed like a good thing to do.

The substitute motion was defeated by a vote of 121 to 53, and we voted No Action on Article 58.