LETTER: Don't over-do the punishment

Please tell me why Flathead High School has taken the rights of passage away from so many children. Did we not go through the last 12 years with these kids, only to throw their lives away over some garbage? Do they not understand what’s happening here?

You take away their right to graduate, they retaliate — oops, now you’ve got people going too far who will be in jail or prison when you tried for 12 years to teach these kids right from wrong.

See, when you made life so tough and both parents had to go to work even to survive, you took the teacher out of the house, and now we send them to school to learn right from wrong. Yet when they do something funny, not to hurt people but be funny, and a couple of them got out of hand, they all have to pay with their futures.

I wonder how many of you all did a crazy funny senior prank, yet in today’s market you get the maximum penalty for throwing garbage in a school, whereas if you rape or kill a child you might very little time. Why? Because the school system has to be tough like the law. But your laws don’t work either. There are many cases where the guilty go free. Go figure.

If I dirtied the school as a funny joke, and a couple of kids did bad, I would not hesitate to turn them in. Yet I understand there was money involved — what if those who didn’t break the stuff and only put trash out had community service picking up trash, instead of losing the right of passage?

We don’t need harder punishment for stupid crimes; we need understanding and love.

—Robert Welch, Kalispell