The Complications of Colocation: What the Federal Communication’s Rule Making May Mean for Your Community

Abstract

You did it. You successfully worked with a wireless service provider to find the ideal spot for its new wireless tower. The tower is positioned perfectly—in the heart of downtown, yet safe, hidden, completely undisruptive. The provider is happy. The community is content. It’s a win‐win. Fast forward a month. The provider is back with a new idea: To support the latest technology and to enhance its revenues, it will add not one, but four 20‐foot extensions for new antennas. The extensions would make the otherwise hidden facility visible. They would reach across and over the sidewalk and street, presenting safety risks. And the provider would also add four new equipment cabinets and an equipment shelter. Your answer is easy: Absolutely not. We can find a better solution. But this time the provider is not asking, it’s demanding. It says that because it is not proposing an initial facility but a colocation, you must approve its requests. Whether the provider is correct may turn on how the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) resolves a pending rule making. This article describes the proceeding, key issues it raises, and what the proceeding may mean to you and your community. As a planner, you can influence the proceeding by meeting with the FCC to discuss the proposed rules and by responding to industry claims that local requirements are delaying deployment.     

Should the Law Convict Those Who Act from Conviction? Reflections on a Demands-of-Conscience Criminal Defense

How should the judge or jury in a just criminal court treat a civil disobedient, someone who performs a conscientiously motivated communicative breach of the criminal law? Kimberley Brownlee contends that all else equal a court of law should neither convict nor punish such offenders. Though I agree with this conclusion, I contend that Brownlee mischaracterizes the nature of the criminal defense to which civil disobedients are entitled. Whereas Brownlee maintains that such actors ought to be excused for their criminal breach, I argue that they ought to enjoy a justification defense. Acts of civil disobedience are not (morally) wrongful violations of the law for which an actor ought not to be blamed; rather, they are violations of the law that are not (morally) wrong in virtue of their illegality. It is the absence of wrongdoing, and not merely the absence of fault, that renders the conviction and punishment of those who perform acts of civil disobedience inappropriate.     

Intimate Partner Violence Control Scale: Development and Initial Testing

Although control has long been considered central to understanding intimate partner violence (IPV), there continues to be a notable lack of validated scales measuring control (e.g., Strauchler et al. Journal of Family Violence, 19(6), 339–354, 2004). The purpose of this study was to develop and empirically validate a brief assessment tool, the Intimate Partner Violence Control Scale (IPVCS), designed to measure control in the context of IPV. Data from a sample of male undergraduate and graduate students (n = 436) were used to examine the scale’s properties. After reviewing theoretical conceptualizations and measurement issues of control, psychometric properties of the IPVCS and results of exploratory hypotheses tests are presented. The availability of a brief and reliable measure of control offers a tool for professionals in the judicial system, for IPV victims’ advocates, and for human services workers in practice settings to adequately assess for control and fills a gap in this area of research and practice.