I am a student at Flat Rock Middle School. Due to your recent reports on the possible outcome of the discussions on regulating and confining our schools and students' rights, I feel it is necessary for someone to speak up before the final decision is made.

I understand what the Fayette County School Board is trying to accomplish by these discussions taking place, but they are overlooking or ignoring very obvious points while they do so.

You can't stop a kid who is bent on bringing a gun to school and killing people. There is not a way. There is no perfect solution. No quick fix. But with these laws that they are discussing, they are looking for a quick-fix. The average student isn't going to bring a gun to school. Period.

There are more average students in a school than there are the extremists. Extremists are the few students who are willing and capable of bringing a loaded gun to school and killing people. The extremists are the minority. So far in the history of our country, there have been only a small handful of these people who actually acted. Because of those people, the average student is the one who will be confined unreasonably because of over-cautioning against these few type of people.

Now let me tell you this: If you pass these laws, it will be a useless gesture to what you are trying to accomplish. When such tragedies as Littleton happen, worried, hectic, frantic people in the middle of their search for the answer “Why?” turn to the Fayette County School Board and demand a solution to protect their innocent children.

The school board, with a blank expression on their faces, has no answer. So they simply fumble around 'til they find a half-thought-out solution to present to those worried, frantic people. The solution they present is not the answer. The worried, frantic people who haven't a solution in their minds are presented that solution. Suddenly, those people believe this is it! This is the answer! They only think this because they have no other answer to dwell upon.

Yet it is not the answer. Confining our student body to yet a stricter dress code, or maybe even uniforms, is not going to do the trick. In most cases of school shootings, the shooter(s) walks straight in, gun in hand, and kills, to put it simply.

It would not have made one difference if the kid was wearing skintight clothes even, they would've walked right in and killed. If there were guards they would've killed the guards and then killed the students. If there were metal detectors they would've walked through them, then killed.

Clothes won't stop a determined kid. Neither will making students go without the services of a bookbag, which makes absolutely no sense at all. As I mentioned before, in most school shootings, the people walked in with their weapons. That cannot stop an armed kid apt to kill. Nothing can. That is why these laws that are proposed are useless.

But if you pass these laws, an average student's rights are being taken from him. To go as far as not letting an average person not to be able to wear what clothes they want to wear, or having to carry several heavy books around with them, is just plain wrong. We all suffer because of somebody else's crime, and that is an injustice.

There is no quick-fix solution to the problem before us, and I believe I speak for the average student when I say these laws are not the answer.

Ben Hurst
bhurst@mindspring.com

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