For five hours this past Sunday, a man named Edmond Aviv sat outside holding a sign which read, “I am a bully. I pick on children that are disabled, and I am intolerant of those that are different from myself. My actions do not reflect an appreciation for the diverse South Euclid community that I live in.”

The action — along with serving 15 days in jail with seven months of probation, attending anger management classes, writing a letter of apology, going to counseling and completing 100 hours of community service — was ordered by a judge in response to Aviv’s actions toward his neighbors for the past 15 years.

Some of his actions included hooking up kerosene to a fan and blowing the smell onto his neighbor’s property, calling his neighbor an ethnic slur while she was holding her adopted black children, spitting on his neighbor several times, regularly throwing dog feces on his neighbor’s car windshield and smearing feces on the wheelchair ramp that was used by her paralyzed son.

After carrying out part of his punishment, Aviv asserted the sentence “isn’t fair at all” because the judge was subjecting him to public humiliation, which “destroyed” him. While Aviv was holding the sign, onlookers honked at him, yelled at him and even stopped to take pictures of the embarrassing situation. The case also gained national media attention.

Aviv’s complaints about the unfairness of his punishment are bogus. The only thing that the judge did when she handed down that sentence was give him a taste of his own medicine. He subjected his neighbors and their disabled children to years of torment and humiliation; they were bullied for no reason. Expecting him to withstand only five hours of the same feelings is actually a bit lenient. Aviv fails to realize that his punishment could have been much harsher if it included more jail time instead of the sign punishment. He should be grateful for the judge’s decision to give him just 15 days.

Not only is this punishment fair, but it also seems to be effective. The punishment obviously had an effect on Aviv if he claims it destroyed his life. Hopefully, the next time Aviv wants to harass his neighbors, he’ll remember how this punishment made him feel and he will refrain from doing anything that will put him back in that position.

In a similar situation, a 12-year-old boy named Jose Gonzalez was caught stealing and was forced to hold a sign as punishment. While evaluating the effectiveness of the penalty, a psychologist named James Huysman said having Jose take responsibility for his actions was a positive, but that he was likely too young to gain any “insight” from the punishment. However, in the 62-year-old Aviv’s case, the perpetrator is old enough to gain insight from the experience, and hopefully he will avoid harassing others in the future.

Furthermore, Aviv’s punishment is a good example to the children and teenagers who passed by him when he was holding the sign. He was setting a perfect example of the negative consequences that will come when one commits a crime, or even simply a wrongdoing. No one would enjoy being in his position, and hopefully they will avoid actions that could land them there.

Though public humiliation may seem like an outdated form of punishment, it certainly has its benefits. In Aviv’s case, it may have been lenient, but it did teach him a lesson. The only reason his life was “destroyed” was because he can no longer go on harassing his neighbors without fear of retribution.

Katy Vines is a Weinberg freshman. She can be reached at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].