A Concurrent Affair

Sometimes it’s interesting to compare Wikipedia articles in different languages. I just read something about the last school shooting in Germany, the one in Winnenden in March 2009, and decided to search the web for it. The English Wikipedia article came up first, probably because I am located in the US.

I expected the German version to be longer, because obviously Germans should care more, right? To my surprise, the English version actually has more details. It lists the full names of the victims, for example!

This is emblematic for the US-American “public’s right to know” and the German “right to privacy”.

After the Ft. Hood shooting last week, for example, I overheard people saying “Nidal Malik Hasan… Hasan, well no surprise there.” The name was released, and because it was Muslim-sounding, the suspect was prejudged to be guilty. German media would not have released the name, or used first name and last initial only.

It would have been prudent to wait with the release until after being pronounced guilty at his trial (or death). In this particular case, it is highly unlikely that he will go free, but other cases may be less clear. Also, remember the flood of incorrect information that was released in the immediate aftermath of the Ft. Hood shooting: (1) The shooter was dead; (2) the female police officer was dead; (3) two or three other suspects were detained. With all of these mistakes being made, it is easy to imagine that someone may have been mistaken about the shooter’s identity, too, and thus subjected an innocent person completely unrelated to the incident to unwanted media attention.

Innocent until proven guilty is the fundamental tenet of the US justice system. Justice trumps the “people’s right to know”, and justice includes the right to privacy for suspects. And in the case of shooting victims’ identities, that “right to know” does not exist (@ I realize Wikipedia gathered these identities from other publicly available sources; I nonetheless wonder what purpose listing the victim’s names serves.@).

Twenty years ago, on 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall came down.

I remember the day, but the TV coverage doesn’t belong to my most intense childhood TV memories: It feels like this event is bracketed by stronger memories of the Challenger disaster and Chernobyl in 1986 and Desert Shield/Desert Storm in 1990/91.

The German radio station that I listen to, NDR2, is playing music that was popular during Die Wende (“the turning point”, as the end of East Germany and the beginning of a reunified Germany is often called in German), and people are calling in their memories of the day.

One story was particularly funny:

I woke up with daddy standing naked in my room, yelling ‘the wall is open, the wall is open!’ I didn’t know which wall. Was there a hole in our house?

Last Tuesday I went back to the DPS to renew my drivers license — temporary visitors now have to do that once a year. I took exactly the same documents with me that allowed me to get a drivers license last year (passport, visa, I-20 immigration form, I-94 immigration form, current drivers license, enrollment verification, tuition payment receipt), but this time I was denied.

Last year, the item that I absolutely needed to show was the tuition payment receipt–which I fortunately kept. This year, I made sure to carefully set the tuition payment receipt aside, only to find out that there’s nothing the DPS can do with it or with the regular enrollment verification that Rice issues via the National Student Clearinghouse, a third-party non-profit organization that handles enrollment and degree verification for 3,300 colleges in the US.

Contrary to Houston Metro, for example, where the National Student Clearinghouse verification is accepted, the DPS requires a special hand-signed enrollment verification on Rice letterhead, which I then had to get prepared. There are two problems with this: First, nowhere did it state that Rice’s regular enrollment verification was not acceptable, which means I had to wait longer and pay additional fees. Second, and more importantly, I almost would not have received the hand-signed enrollment verification in time.

Processing for the hand-signed document takes two to five business days at Rice. This Wednesday, my student visa will expire within six months, and when the expiration date is within six months, the DPS will not issue a drivers license or ID card at all! I assume when that happens, students are expected to finish their studies without being able to drive.

Fortunately, the Registrar’s Office at Rice was able to issue the hand-signed enrollment verification by closing time on Friday (they promised it would be done on Thursday, and I had to tell them on Friday that I am not leaving without it).

This morning I went back to the DPS and got my license renewed, but again, just like last year, I am shocked by how arbitrary the DPS handles these matters for legal non-residents, while I am sure that illegal immigrants are not affected by these procedures at all. This doesn’t make anyone safer, it is merely a hassle for foreigners who are here legally.