Valerie Parnell, Seminole County Watch columnist

One of the greatest benefits of having an older brother who was mercilessly stuck in the 70s was being exposed without end to his collection of Harry Chapin music.

Having heard it night and day, almost ceaselessly, brought an intimate familiarity with the complete Harry Chapin catalog, including the most obscure of tunes.  One called "The Rock" would surely fall into that category. 

It is an odd tune about a young man who tries to alert his town of the danger from a giant rock that looms upon a mountain overlooking the town.  The young man studies the rock, monitors it, charts its location and almost-imperceptible movements, and realizes it is a threat to the town.  The rock is obviously slipping, says the young man, and we must do something or it will roll down and destroy our town.

The warnings are met with ridicule, but the young man stays true to his cause, until finally, one day, when the rock begins to slip while the young man is atop the mountain.  The young man wedges himself between the rock and the ground, securing it in place, sacrificing his life to save the town.

When the young man disappears, the townsfolk look up at the rock, still atop the mountain, and laugh at his memory, wondering whatever happened to that crazy young fool.

What was once an odd story set to music is now an important allegory about our environment, and whether we will heed the warnings of those who say we need to start acting now to preserve it.

Hearing "The Rock" used to bring to mind wonderment about Harry Chapin and how he came up with such a story. Hearing "The Rock" now makes me think of Susan Eberle.

Susan is a 57-year old semi-retired nurse whose name pops up in the news periodically, usually in response to some proposed development or related action in the area surrounding the University of Central Florida, where Seminole and Orange counties meet.

Susan is an "activist", the bane of developers, industry, conservatives, and those who think they are conservatives because they find them to be entertaining.

Susan, along with many of her colleagues in and out of the Sierra Club, thinks there is a danger to our quality of life and the balance of our ecosystem, as we continue to pave over every available parcel of land and build in places where nature obviously never intended we do so.

Susan does what many of us should but fail to do, for a number of reasons, be it time, interest, money or, to be honest, laziness and lack of proper motivation.

Susan studies issues, acquires reports, monitors the effects of our full-scale, gung-ho development and tells us how and why it threatens us.  She does all of this on her own, with no help from the vested interests, from which she receives only an incredible amount of opposition.

Her main tool in doing this, and which has allowed her to be quite successful, has been access to public information.  By making use of the "Government in the Sunshine" laws that are in place to safeguard the interests of the citizenry, she is able to access information that allows her to poke holes in the reassurances from developers that we can "trust" them.

Not that it is easy for her.  She has spent thousands of dollars of her own money, and countless hours of her own time.  Finding the pertinent information means wading through streams of impertinent information, until the hidden nugget is unearthed that exposes the truth that protects the public interest.

Fortunately, Susan has been successful at doing this.  As a result, sensitive parts of the environment have been protected, and attention has been paid to the ill-effects of what would be otherwise unchecked development.

Susan has been the young man in the song who wedged himself between the rock and the ground to save the town.  Just as in the song, she has saved our environment, or at least portions of it, largely unknownst to us, even though we have been the main benefactors of her having done so.

Unfortunately, Susan's success at doing this has made her an enemy to the ever-sprawling University of Central Florida.  The university has tired of Susan acting as the environment's representative and defender in their relentless assault upon it.  Now, in their own defense, university officials have come up with a solution.

Susan's efforts have been successful due to her access to public information.  Realizing this, UCF has enlisted two area legislators to sponsor legislation that will basically take away access to public information from Susan and the rest of us.

The main sponsors of the legislation are State Rep. Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, and State Sen. Lee Constantine, R-Altamonte Springs.  Cannon and UCF officials acknowledge that the proposed legislation was written mainly by the school, which then had it sponsored by the two legislators.

Although the school is the author of the legislation, Cannon says it is not unfairly tilted in the school's favor.  Oh, that's right, silly us.  We are supposed to trust them, just as we have trusted so many developers whose reassurances have proven totally false over the years.

The bill will basically streamline implementation of university growth, taking away the rights of affected citizens to monitor and gauge the effect of such growth on their community and lives.

In other words, UCF had a problem, to which they found an easy solution:  Susan Eberle was using the law as a way to keep her eye on them.  Their easy fix was to write a law, find a Republican House and Senate member willing to sponsor it, and have it introduced in the legislature.

It's funny how this works within our local and state government.  Parents in Seminole County cannot get their School Board, comprised entirely of Republican members, to abide by their own policies, and are instead told that the board technically complied with the law, which is all that matters.

Then we have a private citizen whose compliance with the law leads to a state university seeking to have the law changed.  Leading the effort to change the law are a pair of Republican legislators.

Without seeking to make this a partisan issue, it seems rather incongruous, and, if the word may be used, hypocritical.  Do we respect the law or not?  is it acceptable for a university to use its clout to change a law at the expense of individual citizens, while individual citizens obviously lack the clout to have the law changed to their advantage?

Finally, is that how laws are determined, based upon whose interests they are serving?  If so, then whose interests are being served by our elected representatives, such as Dean Cannon and Lee Constantine?

To further illustrate my hesitance to make this seem a partisan issue, I must say that although I have known of Susan Eberle for a long time, I do not know her personally.  For all I know, she can be a registered Republican and vote a straight party ticket. 

As with the parents and the School Board, I certainly hope such is not the case, because Susan Eberle has been a hero to me and many others as she has wedged her body between the rock and the ground to save our community one small piece at a time.

I would hate to think she has voted to put into office the very people who are now seeking to put her permanently aside, especially since it is so clearly obvious who they are.

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Listen to "The Rock" by Harry Chapin with Windows MediaPlayer