Is it possible that Colton High School is prejudiced against skateboarders?

This year, there has been a new policy at Colton High School: to put all skateboards in the principal’s office or the security office for  “safekeeping.” Many would agree that this is unfair to skateboarders seeing as that there hasn’t been any similar enforcing rules regarding sport equipment such as helmets, balls, and duffle bags. This rule is supposedly set up for ALL equipment but only seems to be targeted toward skateboarders and their skateboards. Although the policy supposably applies throughout the district, CHS’s administration could just be biased.

Although students have been cooperative with this new-ish policy, some would say if there wasn’t any consequences, they wouldn’t even let administration glance at their property. Naturally, that is our response as humans, to not let people touch our property so is it really as big a deal as administration makes it? Yes, not following directions is defiance, but it wouldn’t be if the policy were dropped. Principal Joda Murphy believes the policy is working, saying, “I think students are happy with the policy because there have been complaints that students are losing things.” Ricardo Casillas, a CHS student, disagrees with this entirely, and says “The policy is a lie, they don’t care about safety or anything, they just want to take our skateboards away.”

“Bottom line, we want the students to be safe,” Murphy counters. But skateboards are the least of safety problems to take care of around here. Although nothing happened on the day of the “school shooting,” it seems student and staff safety didn’t matter then. Administration allowed students to come to school and if the school shooting event took place, it would have been bloody. Accusations of administration being prejudiced towards skateboarders have been thrown around but how did Murphy respond to them? She feels that the skateboarders are unfairly labeling administration because they, as adults in charge here, are “simply out for everyone’s safety.”

Stay tuned.