Opinions vary on Mayor Daniels
Watching the city council meeting, senior Amanda Riddle joins other protestors. Many attendees brought signs.
Sonalee Joshi, Public Relations
February 6, 2012
Filed under Feature, Top Stories
It has been four months since Janice Daniels took office as Troy City mayor, and she has already taken the city and nation by storm. Wild rumors have flown about her recent actions,
including a potential recall, and students and teachers of Troy High want answers.
On December 2, 2011, Mayor Daniels made national headlines for a comment she made on her personal Facebook page regarding the legalization of homosexual marriage in the state of New York.
“I think I am going to throw away my I Love New York carrying bag now that queers can get married there” said Daniels in her Facebook post.
She later apologized for her remarks in a public statement, but some students are not convinced of her sincerity.
“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but she should remember that she is representing people of different opinions,” said Tessa Lanzen, senior.
Others however, believe the matter was blown far out of proportion.
“The mayor should have watched what she said, but I don’t think she deserves such a high level of criticism for her remarks,” said Wayne Shu, junior.
Other than this scandal, however, most students admitted to knowing little or nothing about her politics, and they feel the voters were not adequately informed on her politics while voting either.
Junior Kira Burnett believes that voters should have done more research on the candidates before voting for Mayor Daniels.
“I would like to see her step down, I do not feel like her apology [was] sincere” said Burnett.
According to Dave Aldinger, AP Economics teacher and Troy resident, local officials have very little effect on certain issues and mainly act as figureheads for the community.
“The mayor is actually pretty powerless; she is just one of seven votes on the city council and runs the meetings,” said Aldinger. “So, I don’t like it when local politics becomes about non-local issues such as abortion, gay rights, etc.I didn’t vote for her, but I definitely think many people voted based on non-local issues; her opinion on national issues does not really matter.”
Recently, rumors have been flying about the burgeoning conflict between Mayor Daniels and THS senior, Skye Curtis. After first hearing about the Mayor’s homophobic comment, Curtis was contacted by senior, Zach Kilgore. As co-founder of the Gay Straight Alliance, Curtis along with her co-founder, junior Sabrina Lee, staged a protest outside of city hall.
Since then conflict has sparked.
“We just wanted to get a few people into action, then we made a Facebook event and we had almost 500 people contact Zach and I saying how they supported our cause and wanted to help. We had a turn out of about 100 people at the rally and the city council meeting went till almost 2 A.M. because people were pouring their hearts out and trying to convince the mayor that [homosexuals] were people too,” said Curtis.
Following a dispute between Curtis and the mayor, Curtis is legally bound from commenting on allegations of a legal suit.
Daniels continued to draw attention to the matter when she made another comment to Curtis that was later publicized in newspapers such as the Detroit News.
“I will bring in psychiatrists, who will tell you that the homosexual lifestyle is dangerous” said Daniels in an article by the Detroit News.
Students are just hoping now that the matter will blow over and Troy politics will turn back to economic issues.
“The mayor should have let the [incident] pass, she took it too far” said junior, Peter Hao.
The mayor could not be reached for comment.
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