The Public Safety Committee of the Selma City Council came up with some new rules for behavior at public buildings when they’re leased. The committee shouldn’t have had to waste 30 minutes performing this task.

People in Selma have enough sense to behave themselves when they are in public. Leasing those buildings is a privilege and each privilege carries with it a responsibility. Above all, people need to feel safe when they are gathered in a crowd.

It would stand to reason that someone would hire security to ensure that rapscallions didn’t get carried away by the moment and start problems. It would also stand to reason that someone would keep the lights on. If folks want to dance in the dark, they need to do that in a more appropriate place. A public building should be reserved for more refined gatherings.

Council member Bennie Ruth Crenshaw made an excellent point the other night during the city council meeting when she laid the problem of fights and inappropriate behavior flat on the backs of parents. Grownups should make their children behave. Children, whether they are 2 or 20, should know the rules of common decency.

The fact that good time had to be wasted on a list of common sense rules for consideration by the council at its next meeting just hammers home that we have become too informal. We are no longer a polite society.