Thumbs up, thumbs down: Who deserves praise and criticism this week
The Oaks restaurant in Ogden Canyon is seen on Friday, June 12, 2020. The restaurant reopened on Wednesday under new ownership.
U.S. Air Force Capt. Emily Thompson, a pilot with Hill Air Force Base's 421st Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, dons flight equipment in the Aircrew Flight Equipment shop at Al Dhafra Air Base, United Arab Emirates, on June 5, 2020. Thompson is the first female to fly an F-35A Lightning II into combat.
THUMBS UP: Thumbs up to the Multicultural COVID-19 Task Force for Ogden. The group formed recently in response to the higher concentration of COVID-19 cases in Ogden’s Latino community. Latinos make up just 10.9% of the residents in Weber and Morgan counties, but they account for 42.9% of the total COVID-19 cases. The group aims to investigate ways to address that imbalance and raise awareness among Latinos of the disease, to counter its outsized impact.
THUMBS UP: For fans of The Oaks, the iconic Ogden Canyon restaurant, there was some good news this past week. The eatery, which closed in January 2019 after more than 100 years of operation, was recently reopened by new owners Chris and Christina Bowler. The new menu, designed by head chef Jake Danielson, is being called a “new take on the same idea.” For those who crave burgers, fries and ice cream in a picturesque setting by the Ogden River, the return of The Oaks is welcome news indeed.
THUMBS UP: Hoping to continue the important work of libraries in communities, this past week the Weber County Commission approved the creation of a capital projects fund for the Weber County Library System. The idea is to create a pool of funds for various larger capital projects in the future. There’s also talk of eventually using the new fund to generate the money to build a new library in what Commissioner Scott Jenkins called “the last part of the county that doesn’t have one” — northwestern Weber County, possibly Plain City or Farr West. In this digital age, libraries have repeatedly demonstrated their usefulness, and this decisions seems like a forward-thinking one.
THUMBS DOWN: If his intention is to do what’s best for the school and the community, Scott Senjo doesn’t seem to be going about it the right way. The Weber State University professor of criminal justice resigned back on June 3 after coming under fire for a series of threatening posts on Twitter about the recent protests on race and policing. Initially, Senjo seemed resigned to his fate, telling the Standard-Examiner in an email: “Those are my tweets but I don’t stand by them and will have to suffer the consequences of my recklessness.” He also emailed his department head and dean, saying, “I studied the situation and the public fury is too great. I have to resign immediately. There’s no other option.” But apparently, there was another option. According to university policy, a tenured faculty member has five business days to rescind a resignation, and Senjo took advantage of that policy. So, apparently, Senjo does stand by his reckless tweets.
THUMBS UP: Thumbs up to U.S. Air Force Capt. Emily Thompson, a fighter pilot from Hill Air Force Base who recently became the first woman in Air Force history to take the F-35A Lightning II fighter jet into combat. What’s more, on the day of her first combat sortie, Thompson had an all-woman maintenance crew launch her historic flight. We agree with Airman 1st Class Ashlin Randolph, a weapons load crew member from Hill who was on that four-person team, when she called the moment “very empowering.”
THUMBS DOWN: More bad economic news for Layton. In a letter obtained by the Standard-Examiner, Bed Bath & Beyond will lay off about 285 employees at its Layton call center by the middle of August. That bad news comes on the heels of the announcement by J.C. Penney that its Layton Hills Mall store — and another at the Cache Valley Mall in Logan — would be among 154 stores slated to be shuttered nationwide as part of a companywide downsizing.