That’s the length of a lunch period at Oak Park and River Forest High School. At issue, again, is whether students above the rank of freshmen have a right to leave campus during their lunch break.
The immediate answer is that they have no such right. Currently they have the privilege of an open campus. But if students have their antennae up, they ought to realize that forces are aligning to remove that privilege and to close the campus from first bell to last.
A subset of students is acting like dopes and smoking tobacco and marijuana in the streets and alleys surrounding school over lunch. Drug transactions are taking place, leading recently to students rightly being arrested. Then there’s alcohol, littering, and a general level of obnoxiousness that parents of teens are familiar with but which neighbors in a residential area increasingly resent.
So according to a letter sent in the last month by Principal Nathaniel Rouse, a combination of “parents, community members, neighbors and police — rightly again — have helped us focus on inappropriate off-campus student behaviors.” He seems to be getting ready to pull the trigger. Rouse said he is actively speaking to student leaders about closing the campus. In fact, recently the Student Council hung a banner warning students to straighten up.
Here’s our view: Closing the OPRF campus should not be seen as punitive action taken by one person, albeit the principal, in response to bad behavior by a small group of students. Instead it should be presented to students — inevitably howling students — as a broad community response to concern for their well being.
We’ve spent nine months now talking about our community-wide substance-abuse problem among teens. This problem is real. Allowing a situation where any notable-sized group of students is enabled to leave campus midday to smoke pot or drink alcohol should be reversed.
The school’s administration, school board, Citizens Council and other parent groups, local police, township Interventionists, drug counselors, Faculty Senate, alumni, neighborhood newspaper, ought all to be aligned in making this call.
We love and value our teens. The community’s job is to hold them close and protect them. This would be one step in that effort.