Letters for Friday, December 17, 2021

County of Kaua‘i deserves better

I am disturbed about the possibility that Shaylene Iseri may again be elected and reinstalled into the position of Prosecutor for the County of Kaua‘i. Based upon my own personal and professional experiences with Ms. Iseri, I strongly believe she is not competent to perform the important responsibilities of prosecuting attorney and that she will not represent the best interests of the community if she is again elected to that position.

Clearly, I am biased in this matter. I represented the former Mayor of Kaua‘i County when Ms. Iseri unsuccessfully and vindictively tried to prosecute him for alleged misuse of a credit card by filing a defective grand jury indictment that had an insufficient number of votes to indict (as seen in “Judge dismisses charges against Rapozo” from The Garden Island on Nov. 28, 2012).

I successfully opposed Ms. Iseri in a particularly outrageous Family Court proceeding in which she was a party to the literal kidnapping of an eleven-year-old girl. This matter led to civil litigation currently pending in the United States District Court in Honolulu where I have sued Ms. Iseri and others, and she is somewhat ineptly attempting to represent herself. After Ms. Iseri failed to file a timely answer to the complaint and was defaulted, the presiding judge was sympathetic to her excuses and allowed her to file a belated response, but her subsequence performance — on her own behalf — raises doubts about her professional competence.

In my view, the County of Kaua‘i deserves a far better prosecutor than Shaylene Iseri.

Eric Seitz, Honolulu

Life as a student during the pandemic

As anything dealing with the pandemic goes, education has changed hugely. As a junior at Waimea High School, I’ve seen firsthand how the pandemic affected education from when the pandemic started until now. I cannot speak for anyone else but myself, but this pandemic presented many obstacles for my education.

Every assignment and class I had from Quarter 4 of School Year 2019-2020 to the end of Quarter 2 of SY 2020-2021 was purely online.

While the convenience of taking classes at home may be appealing to some (including myself), I also found it hard to create a work environment in a place where I would take a step back after doing my schoolwork.

My grades slipped a bit, but I salvaged what I could to get them back up. As I started to get back on campus in Quarter 3, my grades recovered, but my motivation got left behind. As school got back into full swing in SY 2021-2022, I found it a bit hard to find the motivation to keep up with my work.

The face of the world has changed because of the pandemic. My life as a student has changed since the pandemic. Who knows where we would be if the pandemic didn’t happen?

Matthew Gabriel, Waimea

Strict isolation, education is the answer to COVID

Reading the daily COVID cases raises some questions. Why, daily, are such a high percentage of new cases,”community-acquired infections as close contacts of previously announced cases”?

When someone gets a positive diagnosis, what instructions are they given? Quarantine? Isolation? Are they instructed on how not to spread the virus?

The initial infected person should be made aware of how their contacts can spread the virus. The spiraling of the chain of contacts should be addressed. We could reduce the daily number of new cases by at least 50% with stricter isolation and better educational practices.

Jack Mitchell, Princeville