PRESERVING COLLEGE TOWN FLAVOR: Handbills don't do anyone harm

Chapel Hill Herald
Saturday June 22, 2002
EDITORIAL
Page 4

"I heartily accept the motto, 'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically."

So wrote Henry David Thoreau in his essay "Civil Disobedience," a manifesto exemplified by Chapel Hill music store owner Erik Ose.

Ose's act of defiance of a town ordinance, tacking up a handbill on a utility pole on Franklin Street, cost him a $115 fine, but it bought him a hearing:

The Chapel Hill Town Council is scheduled to revisit its prohibition of fliers on utility poles Monday.

In April, Ose posted a flier in front of his business, Lost City Music & Video on West Rosemary Street, advertising a "banquet for global peace and justice."

Perhaps because of Ose's willingness to bear the brunt of fiat upon his pocketbook rather than carp from the sidelines, Councilman Bill Strom put Ose's request to repeal the relevant section of the Town Code on the meeting agenda.

"I thought [Ose] made a good point," Strom said. "There are some unspoken things that make for community character."

Exactly.

Also, the good council members should consider how their longstanding neglect of enforcing the ordinance only underscores how superfluous it is to that character.

Much of what passes for community-building these days seems aimed at recovering what communities have in their folly done their best to obliterate, in this case, the sans souci charm of a college village.

One needs only visit The Streets at Southpoint mall in Durham to see how its designers have tried to reclaim the town's formerly similar ambience - with its faux streetscapes - that the last generation of city planners discarded.

To which the Chapel Hill Town Council can take the reasonable step of preserving the authentic item.

Handbills are simple and practical communication that harm no one and help cement the social contract.

To paraphrase a neo-Waldenite, Joni Mitchell, Chapel Hill should recognize what it's got before it's gone.