Letters to the Editor

If you take students on an overnight trip, the assumption should be that some of them will try to sneak into another room. Supervision should be in place that rests on that assumption. You place adult chaperones in the hallways in shifts. There should not be any time when a student room is out of the sight of an adult. Students should go nowhere without an adult. That means that no student or group of students should be out of the sight of a supervising adult at any time. Had there been proper adult supervision on the island of Aruba a year ago, a tragedy could have been stopped.

Now, how do you punish such heinous acts done when the adults aren't doing their job? You tell them to get back in their rooms. You don't even have to be nice about it. Then you go jump the case of the adult who should have been watching in the first place. This kind of behavior has been going on since cave parents were trying to keep their kids in the right cave. Get a clue, Dr. Charlesetta Deason.

What you don't do is set up a guillotine in the cafeteria. Do you remove students from the National Junior Honor Society? No. Do you ban them from attending the prom? No. Do you destroy the reason the juniors came to your school in the first place? No. What can you be thinking? What universe do you inhabit? Can you make a distinction between students having sex in a third-floor bathroom and students who sneak into another room on a school trip? And, before you say it, I know they could have been having sexual intercourse in another room. That's the point. With a little supervision, that would not happen.

Schools have become appalling places in many parts of the world. We now send kids through the court system for being irresponsible. There are places where kids are treated like garbage. And the parents take it. What do we expect kids to be in the teenage years? What happened to detention or a couple of Saturdays at school? Instead, we have a principal giving kids years of punishment for being kids. Can it get more absurd? Obviously the answer is yes, if parents let it happen. If you apply enough political pressure, this will stop. Remember that the people who employ your principal are elected. Organize. How can you parents allow this to happen? They are your children.

John McGeough
JM Learning Solutions
Humble

That's Vintage

Capitalist prigs: Greetings! I am writing to both thank Travis m$%#@$%g Ritter for his gracious preview of our rained-out Westheimer Block Party ["Go West," Night & Day, by Travis Ritter, April 27] and to notify your fine publication of an error in his copy. You see, we are not a "leftist rag." We are ardent capitalists who would sell our mothers up the river for six bux and some chili cheese fries at Lucky Burger. As a matter of fact, I have two dirty hippies tied up in my basement that I regularly torture and force to sew "vintage shirts" that I sell to "vintage shops" at very capitalist non-vintage prices. Lastly, the Westheimer Block Party has been reset for Saturday, May 27. We hope to see Travis there.

Omar Afra
Managing editor, Free Press Houston