[naviga:h3]Cheer [/naviga:h3]

After fits and a few false starts, the VA Butler Healthcare construction is progressing smoothly. The final steel structural beam was installed Wednesday during a topping-off ceremony at the Center Township site attended by VA administrators, construction workers, veterans, community leaders and spectators.

The ceremony marks the completion of the structure’s skeleton. Builders consider it a rite of their trade, tracing it to an ancient Scandanavian tradition.

Cambridge Healthcare Solutions holds the $163 million contract for the construction and 20-year lease to operate the 168,000-square-foot complex.

Officials say construction is running six months ahead of schedule. It is set to be done by summer of 2017.

There’s still a lot to be done. But the raising of the last steel beam is a significant milepost. Congratulations and cheers to the VA and its partners as the project progresses.

[naviga:h3]Jeer [/naviga:h3]

The sky is falling! The sky is ... what’s that? Oh. Never mind (sorry).

The alert spread like wildfire Monday at Indiana University that a Ku Klux Klan member was walking around the Bloomington campus. But it turned out to be a Henny Penny prophecy — a false report, spread by social media.

Responding to a student’s tweet, a dorm adviser quickly wrote an email to his students, warning them:

“There has been a person reported walking around campus in a KKK outfit holding a whip. Because the person is protected under first amendment rights, IUPD cannot remove this person from campus unless an act of violence is committed. Please PLEASE PLEASE be careful out there tonight, always be with someone and if you have no dire reason to be out of the building, I would recommend staying indoors if you’re alone.”

The “klansman” turned out to be a priest wearing the white vestments of his Dominican order. The “whip” was his robe’s corded belt. He was on campus to celebrate Mass with students.

It’s mildly disturbing that a campus community can’t tell the difference between a priest’s vestments and Klan robes.

Far more disturbing is what might have happened to an innocent priest if a few emboldened students had reacted to the false report by taking the law into their own hands.

[naviga:h3]Cheer [/naviga:h3]

Maybe it’s about safer cars, or safer highways, or safer drivers. Actually, it’s a testament to all three.

There were 1,200 traffic fatalities last year in Pennsylvania, the second-lowest since record-keeping began in 1928 and five more than the record low just a year earlier in 2014.

PennDOT Secretary Leslie S. Richards credits safer highway design for part of the improvement along with efforts promoting education, enforcement and outreach “to influence driver behavior and drive down crash and fatality numbers.”

PennDOT data from police reports shows significant decreases in fatal crashes involving drivers older than 65 — down from 300 in 2014 to 279; aggressive drivers — decreasing from 134 in 2014 to 119 in 2015; and crashes at intersections — down from 271 in 2014 to 251 in 2014.

Fatalities increased in some types of crashes, including those involving single-vehicle run-off-the-road crashes and hit-fixed-object crashes.

There were 580 fatalities in crashes involving single vehicles that ran off the road, up from 534 in 2014. Also, deaths in crashes where drivers hit fixed objects, such as trees, increased to 459 from 425 in 2014.

Still, 1,200 deaths is 1,200 too many. But the trend is in the right direction.

— TAH