Columnists

This is the time of the year when most of us are looking forward to spending time with family and friends, putting on our holiday cheer and generally letting the past year wind down.I am looking forward to all of the above too but this year seems to be including un-holiday-like conflicting sentiments and torn emotions. The season is delivering the satisfaction that one of our community’s most unfair episodes seems to be coming to a close, yet also with the concern that all of this might be giving our community a black eye.I am referring to the recent attempt to recall MHUSD Board President Bob Benevento which has deservedly fizzled while emotions in the community are reaching the boiling point towards another trustee—David Gerard, whose district emails are now in the public realm for all to see.The trustee’s public emails recently released by the district offices in response to a Public Records Act request by the Morgan Hill Times have opened a Pandora’s box for Trustee Gerard in particular but seems to implicate trustees Borgioli and Badillo in recent goings on too. Do we have a trinity here?From alleged harassment that ultimately led to trustee Porter-Jensen’s retirement to the recall effort against Benevento, there seems to be a thread that connects Gerard and the other two trustees. This leads a small group of the like-minded to do things that remind me of one of those movies where someone is unjustly accused of something heinous until a hero steps up and metes out justice with the support of the local townsfolk.Most of those movies come to a fitting end, which includes all of the bad guys getting theirs while the wrongly accused is exonerated and life can finally move on.So far the ending of our story is shaping up nicely with the exoneration of one of the good guys and the realization that the “large numbers of disgruntled parents” supporting the unjust recall is actually a small number of very vocal parents.Just how completely involved were the trinity in the alleged harassment of Trustee Porter-Jensen? I hope we can get a clearer understanding of this soon so we can gain some certainty that we will no longer have silly behavior on the board again.I see the local media and even a columnist out of San Jose and the Metro as being the heros here. They shined a light on a dark place where the unsavory behavior took place. Now we can make up our own minds about how we feel toward these events.During all of this, the fact that the school district is in a much better place than it was just five years ago has been missed. Let’s pay some attention to how well things are going for our students. Some insist on comparing our schools to others and can dig up statistics that say we are not at the top. How about we take a look at how much we have improved and start looking forward to the day when we will be at the top? We are headed that way.So this holiday I’ll be spending time with family and friends, being cheerful, and putting this whole school board mess in the rear view mirror.John McKay is a Morgan Hill resident, city planning commissioner and co-founder of the Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance.

THERE is more to a natural landscape than meets the eye. We stand in awed reverence beneath Yosemite Falls or on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Who wouldn't? The grandeur is overwhelming. But what about those ho-hum areas that we pass without notice? Are those places empty wasteland, or do they hold some importance beyond our ken?

Lianne Marie Dobbs as Emma and Timothy Gulan as Mr. Knightley return in this radiant much demanded production of Jane Austen’s charming “Emma”. It was so highly lauded in TheatreWorks 2007 production season that it has returned in all of Robert Kelly’s directional glory as good as new if not better.

I think I’m on a roll here. I have been addressing what I have recently seen in the community that seems hostile and deserves more delving into; social media has been playing a big role in all of this. I think we need a better understanding of how to use the wide open frontier of the digital world—how to access and assess the sentiments of communities whether it be on the local or national level.During the last year or so I have seen so much more mention of social media in the public discussion of our community. There are forums and Facebook pages and all kinds of places to go get information, find kindred spirits, and express yourself.Along these lines, a speaker at this year’s State of the Valley Address spoke about how we are not using social media to its fullest potential. The means is out there to create an environment where an open and flowing dialogue can take place with relevant information and sentiment being shared in an almost instantaneous manner.Unfortunately, I feel that almost every time I see a meaningful dialogue beginning to happen in social media there is someone with a strong emotional bias that wants to monopolize the conversation.On so many occasions I have seen someone who feels negatively about an issue dominate a conversation, often ignoring facts. In one example earlier this year, 24 out of approximately 50 posts on a subject regarding the downtown were by the same two people.I think we need to figure out how to truly understand what we are seeing in social media for it to become reliably relevant in any decision making process.We need to be cognizant of the effect of something called “negativity bias” which makes it much easier to mobilize someone angry about an issue than it is to get someone content or supportive of an idea to do something about it. This is the strength of many in the community who disagree with what the City Council, School Board, or even a local Homeowners Association might be doing that involves change or a perceived limitation of rights. They have the power to mobilize many based upon one of our strongest emotions—anger.We should be aware that the apparent majority showing up in social media can be the result of well orchestrated planning and the use of electronic messaging. On one issue, I heard both sides complain about this.We should realize that most of the 40,000 plus residents of our community don’t get involved because things are just fine with them. It’s hard to mobilize a group of people who are happy with the way things are.The potential to marginalize what we can glean from social media is tempting, but instead let’s develop a better understanding of how to use it and truly interpret what we are seeing. There is so much good feedback out there that we should be using it, we just need to understand what it really means.And maybe if we all act civil we won’t need to do so much interpretation.John McKay is a Morgan Hill resident, city planning commissioner and co-founder of the Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance.

“A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” won four Tony’s in the 2014 Broadway season.  The book and lyrics are by Robert L. Freedman and music and lyrics are by Steven Lutvak.