Maybe students should spend their money elsewhere

Art can break down barriers. It can open minds and connect communities. Art at its best reaches across borders.

Greenwood Village City Council, however, has taken the opposite position with its recent meddling in the work of the city’s Arts and Humanities Council. With the decision to restrict and ultimately cancel the annual Greenwood Village Arts Scholarship, the city leaders prefer to close doors, build walls, marginalize people, and restrict arts funding. In fact, if you follow the thinking of the City Council, you might suspect the Village is closed for business to outsiders.

The GV arts scholarship had been a wonderful message and symbol to the community and the town’s neighbors across Arapahoe County. For thirty-five years, previous leaders of Greenwood Village set an admirable example of support for the arts among young people. With its generous and impressive guideline that opened applications to any student in Arapahoe County, the Arts Council used its independently-raised funds to honor the best among all the students attending school in the area. Knowing no city is an island and that consumers cross borders all the time, the Arts Council simply focused on its mission –supporting the arts.

Apparently, city council members are pretty riled up about giving money to artists who don’t live in the city. I guess that could make sense because it’s not like the Village ever pays artists who don’t live here – like say the musicians who play the mobile summer concerts. I guess we’ve never seen non-resident artists and performers at the Mayor’s Lighting Ceremony or Greenwood Village Day. No, of course not. The Village can’t honor, support, and pay artists who don’t live in the Village. That’s the thinking of a City Council member who said “this is city money and we are elected to be stewards of city money.” However, that view is somewhat inaccurate and misleading because city tax dollars are not used to fund the scholarship.

The Arts Council is self-funded through fundraising, donations, and grants, a point made clear by member Sandy Carson who noted “I find this particularly appalling because all monies for scholarships are derived from our earnings. City taxes are not involved in the scholarships.”

Sadly, current council members are surprisingly aloof to the nature of the town they profess to lead. For example, one council member responded to an email about the arts scholarship by saying she had “volunteered to chair the application and award committee” limited specifically to a Greenwood Village resident. Had she listened to the discussions with Arts and Humanities, she would have known that last year only two of the twenty-seven applicants councils to specialize. were from Greenwood Village, and one of those applications was not even complete and did not qualify. The scholarship is a merit award, yet apparently some council members would simply award the scholarship to applicants based on their address. Clearly the council members have limited knowledge of the work the Arts Council does. In fact, that’s why the Village established separate boards and

Greenwood Village is a small community of just fourteen thousand people. Thus, in a graduating class of nine-hundred seniors at Cherry Creek, the number of Village residents could be quite small, with no guarantee any of those residents are outstanding artists of exceptional talent. However, a phenomenal artist may literally live across the street from the Village in Centennial or just down the road in Littleton. Council members want to award the “youth of Greenwood Village,” but the youth of the community are not just those living here. It’s those who spend their days – and their money – in the Village. And, to be clear, of the nearly seventy scholarships given over the years, only twenty-nine went to kids outside the Village anyway.

As a Village resident, I’d hate to suggest people not support local businesses, but money talks, as the saying goes. Because the Council has made it clear they don’t value non-residents as members of the community, perhaps students should think more carefully about where they spend their money and the implications of those funds. A Centennial or Aurora student attending school in the Village may spend thousands of dollars in the Village over the years. Until the Greenwood Village City Council reverses its unfortunate decision about the arts scholarship and heals its relationship with the Arts and Humanities Council, the young people of Arapahoe County might want to consider spending their money elsewhere.

Michael P. Mazenko is a writer, educator, & school administrator in Greenwood Village. He blogs at A Teacher’s View and can be found on Twitter @mmazenko. You can email him at mmazenko@ gmail.com thirty-five years, previous leaders of Greenwood Village set an admirable example of support for the arts among young people. With its generous and impressive guideline that opened applications to any student in Arapahoe County, the Arts Council used its independently-raised funds to honor the best among all the students attending school in the area.

From ROTC to tank warfare

Following two years of mandatory ROTC, a choice was offered to Junior level students to enroll in advanced military science for two- years that offered a Reserve Officer commission as a 2nd Lt. Following graduation, a tour of duty in the Army or Air Force. They didn’t offer naval programs. Classes were held daily in the military science building. The pay was $28 a month for the two years, with an eight-week army basic training boot camp following the junior year. After graduation, orders came for assignment to a military branch for further training. I selected a combat branch of the army at Ft. Knox, Kent. The draft was still in place, and students were dropping out of school for various reasons and were being drafted into the army. Storm clouds were gathering in Vietnam, but no military conflicts yet.

It wouldn’t be long before students fled to Canada to prevent being drafted into the Vietnam conflict.

As a farm kid who grew up around guns, hunting, and heavy farm equipment, joining the armed Calvary would be exciting. I signed up for the program, never dreaming that I would be a 2nd Lt. operating tank firing ranges at Ft. Knox three years later. We were ready for assignments after an intensive 12-week training class in AOB-3 with 29 other young officers. The West Point class was AOB2, where they were career officers. The rest of us were short-term reservists. Most of my classmates were from Southern states, military academies, and many LSU graduates. I learned that these southern gentlemen loved football, coffee and were military-minded, with backgrounds stretching back to the Civil War. I learned that southerners are feisty and very patriotic.

Here’s the bottom line of this “shaggy dog” column. I learned a great deal about tanks. I still have my M1/ A1 tank driver’s license. We learned all about these massive war machines that were so prevalent in World War II and Korea. Our training included driving tanks over obstacles, climbing walls and fording water hazards. Four crew members are in a tank: the loader, gunner, driver and commander. Everyone had a headset and was linked to a command network.

During training, we had to run a timed mile every day, make wind sprints until some puked, attend classes, and do tank exercises. We loaded and fired the tank 105 cannon with live ammunition. We dismantled and assembled the 30 -caliber machine gun and the 50 caliber machine gun mounted on the turret. If you watched the movie Fury, which depicted tank battles during World War II, you saw the dangers of tank warfare. The Germans had better Panzer tanks with more firepower. Now they have Leopard tanks that are being sent to Ukraine. The United States is going to send 30 Abrams tanks in a year. I read that Ukraine wants at least 300 of these armed vehicles from various sources. They want the tanks for a military offensive to reclaim lost territory to Russian forces.

I’m all for supporting the Ukraine forces. Still, I am very aware of some of the challenges in transporting, training and operating this many tanks on a remote battlefield in rural Ukraine. I know how long it took me, and some savvy students, to become rookie tank commanders. While we had the latest tank technology that included some pretty sophisticated rangefinders to zero in on targets, it takes immense training, skill and practice. Time is of the essence, with the Russians believed to be launching a spring offensive. These tanks will never arrive in time to repel or launch a major Russian offensive.

Inside the interior of a tank is a seat for the gunner, who receives an order from the commander up top to load a choice of shell. An “HE” round explodes above the ground to scatter shrapnel to kill advancing infantry, and another round, “ME,” has thousands of ball bearings in the shells to mow down approaching troops. Standard artillery shells blow up on impact. Many tanks in Vietnam were used as artillery. The recent Dessert Storm War was an absolute tank offensive that went very well. Tanks can only venture into jungles with infantry support. I’ve been to Vietnam and have seen the burnedout tanks in the jungles.

Lastly, watching newscasts from Ukraine, those forces have destroyed hundreds of Russian tanks with the deadly bazooka shells developed by Israel that can penetrate six-inch thick tank armor. The interior of the tank has all of the large shells stacked around the interior wall by the loader. These new tank killer weapons can be carried by infantry and are death sentences to tanks and crews. I’m hinting that tank warfare may be a thing of the past. Maybe many tanks are being given away because new warfare is rapidly moving to missiles and air defense systems.

Tanks are scary. You can feel the ground shaking when you hear them coming. They will scare the daylights out of raw Russian recruits. But overall, they will not win the war for Ukraine forces. Diplomacy must occur soon to prevent the Russians from just destroying Ukraine cities, one by one, with their missiles and bombs.

I was once the sole range officer for Ft. Knox, my squad, training company after company in tank gunnery. While my Army MOS was Platoon Reconnaissance Leader, being the lead tank ahead of an infantry column had a possible life span of about three minutes. I was fortunate to be assigned to USATC as a range officer supervising the three tank firing tables. I got really good at it. The army offered me a full-time regular army commission, but I declined. I was glad to return home, helping my dad feed cows and my eventual newspaper career.

I never met finer men and women than those I served with in the military. They are genuinely the honorable heroes of our nation.

Next: The evolution of the newspaper industry.

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Reverend Martin Niemoller

“In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists and didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up because wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me and by that time there was no one left to speak for me!”

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