Editor, The News:
Re: Westview secondary is not a bad school (Letters, Jan. 25).
Mariah Grasby, I do not think you “understand” to any measure how I may be feeling, and I do not think you know the ins-and-outs of Westview secondary better than I do, considering I was a student there for most of my high school education and you attended Garibaldi secondary.
You tell me I cannot take one, or a few, instances of ecstasy use and call it a problem. Ms. Grasby, I don’t need to have an example of ecstasy use to call it a problem. If you had read the article to which I made my comment, you would have seen that because of this drug, there have been suspensions, deaths, and evidence of sexual exploitation in Maple Ridge. Do you not consider this a problem?
I am confused as to why you say that lost, misguided teenagers “[are] not a problem of Maple Ridge,” but common issues. Are you saying that because it is common we should avoid addressing it when it occurs?
I grew up in Maple Ridge, and currently, the state of our youth is extremely lost and misguided. I will acknowledge that this is common, but I won’t ignore that it is extremely common in this specific city. I will reiterate that I believe Westview is a bad school. This is my own opinion and I am free to make it.
The majority of the faculty at Westview, when I attended, was kind and helpful. Several of the teachers worked very hard to reinstate a sense of importance in a lot of the teenagers that attended. However, it was not always successful. The reason I believe it is not a good school is because there are hundreds of kids who attend Westview who do not care about school, and prefer drinking and doings drugs to furthering their education. Would I want my kids to be surrounded by people like that? No.
I do not know why so many of the students are like this at Westview. Perhaps it is a vicious circle. I know that when I attended Westview, the negative influences of people like that changed me for the worse. It wasn’t until I transferred that I started to get my life back on track.
I’m glad that you had such a nice experience attending Garibaldi and that even though there were issues, positivity prevailed. I am especially glad that it does not have a drug problem. Westview does.
I truly hope that you never come to a situation like Shannon Raymond’s family did because I don’t believe you can fully handle the reality of this city, its public schools, and this stupid drug. I had to learn at age 15.
Marianna Nagy
Maple Ridge