William Marvel: Cybercrats

I “attended” the Feb. 8 “hearing” that the Conway School Board pretended to hold on its proposal for yet another supplementary bond for the new Kennett High School. Pardon the generous use of quotation marks, but that electronic charade stank of such perfunctory artificiality that it invited ridicule. Any citizen who lacked computer access, or enough experience with Zoom to actively participate in a “meeting,” was effectively shut out from this absurd substitute for a public hearing.

Those who did manage to tune in might be forgiven for thinking they were regarded as something of an annoyance. The “hearing” was, after all, a dinner-hour intrusion at the beginning of a long regular board meeting. It was advertised as the board’s attempt to “receive public input” into the proposed bond, but this board didn’t seem much interested in what the public thought. An ulterior purpose of public hearings is to inform the public, but the information came in such a jumble that this hearing may have produced more confusion than clarity.