Question: At what age does age discrimination become age discrimination?
This is a question that has been plaguing shopping malls across the nation as they try to recapture control of their shopping areas from hoodlums who have turned malls into gang hangouts.
One such mall is the Lansing Mall.
In recent years gangs had a major presence there; shopping could get dangerous in and around the mall. Juvenile crime was hurting shoppers and retailers alike.
A few years ago the Lansing Mall underwent a major remodeling/face-lift and the management cracked down on troublemakers by bringing in security companies and law enforcement. The atmosphere has greatly improved, the mall looks great and shoppers (old and new) have come to the mall in greater numbers year after year.
One of the things that the mall did was institute a rule banning loitering on mall property by teens and children.
Lansing State Journal (LSJ) columnist John Schneider, who has exposed several major Lansing-area scandals this year (and is an excellent writer), wrote in his Thursday column that four girls (ages 11-15) were walking around the mall to spend several hundred dollars worth of gift cards that they had gotten for Christmas.
They were approached by a security guard and asked to leave the mall for doing "more loitering than buying."
Schneider wrote in today's column in the LSJ that dozens of e-mails and phone calls had come in from readers who were fired up about the incident. Some have come down hard on the mall policy as age discrimination; others came down hard on the girls' parents for dropping them off in the first place; yet others came to the mall's defense.
It's my turn.
The Lansing Mall management should be complimented for getting control of the dangerous climate that existed there previously. Getting the drugs and weapons out of there (along with their owners) has indeed made it safer for shoppers.
Errors were definitely made: the parents screwed up, the security guard didn't handle this right due to his not distinguishing between four girls who were slowly making their way around the mall and gang hoodlums who were in there looking for trouble, and the management of the Lansing Mall should have realized that not all teens are troublemakers. One solution doesn't fit every problem.
It's very unfortunate that this had to happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment