Broad complaints about young people misdirected

“Can you put this picture in your paper?” a letter writer asked on a sticky note.

There actually were two photos on a page to which the sticky note was attached: one showing Occupy Wall Street protesters and bearing the caption “Twenty-Year-Olds in 2011 Wanting Everything” and the other showing soldiers and bearing the caption “Twenty-year-olds in 1944 Giving Everything.” Here's one link that shows the two photos.

I take issue in my Sunday, Feb. 5, Gazette column (pay site) with the broad message about young adults, knowing that the real target is the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Three of every 10 soldiers who lost their lives in the Iraq war were 22 and younger and four of every five were 30 or younger. One in four of those dying in the war in Afghanistan were 22 and younger, while three of four were 30 or younger.

On the peace front, the note crossed my desk after a weekend during which a college student hit my wife and me up for a donation to the 2012 University of Iowa Dance Marathon. My wife and I have donated to this in the past to support him and other students who have raised more than $10 million for pediatric cancer care since 1994.

The Dance Marathon is one of the many service-oriented projects that young people take on in a country that saw the number of young adults doing volunteer work increase from 7.8 million in 2007 to 8.2 million in 2009, the most recent data available from the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Yes, young people exist who want things handed to them. We all have encountered them, sometimes with older folks of the same ilk. And, yes, people gave great sacrifices in days fading too quickly to get us to this point in our country's history. But the  broad-stroke notion that young people aren't willing to give of themselves doesn't hold water.

To answer the original question: We cannot print the pictures because they are protected by copyright.