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Readers Respond

Following safety rules might have saved students from shooting | READER COMMENTARY

For The Baltimore Sun
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Linda, West Baltimore shooting victim Deanta Dorsey's aunt, who declined to share her last name, hugs family members during a press conference after the 16-year-old Edmondson-Westside High School student was fatally shot on Wednesday, Jan. 4 as he and other students were gathered during lunchtime in the shopping center across the street from the school. (Kim Hairston/Baltimore Sun).

Linda, West Baltimore shooting victim Deanta Dorsey's aunt, who declined to share her last name, hugs family members during a press conference after the 16-year-old Edmondson-Westside High School student was fatally shot on Wednesday, Jan. 4 as he and other students were gathered during lunchtime in the shopping center across the street from the school. (Kim Hairston/Baltimore Sun). (Kim Hairston)

The report on the tragic shooting near Edmondson-Westside High School gives one comment from teens: “Students are inevitably going to cut class, but the students in the parking lot today were on their lunch break ordering food,” the Baltimore Student Union, a grassroots advocacy group composed of students from multiple city public schools posted on Twitter (”Family of slain teen calls for justice, prayers after shooting at Baltimore’s Edmondson Village Shopping Center,” Jan. 5).

But, according to school officials quoted in the same article, the campus is closed, and students are not supposed to leave for meals so the students were breaking a rule that exists in large part for their safety. Sorry, Baltimore Student Union, but this is not “scolding students for a pattern of behavior that is applicable to a small minority,” this is pointing out that five of those in the small minority got shot because they were in a place they were not supposed to be at that hour, lacking the comparative protection of the crowds of other students present before or after school, who would be potential witnesses to identify shooters.

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Now, there is one family suffering unimaginable pain and four others suffering trauma and what may be catastrophically expensive treatment. When you live in a place that is far more dangerous than it ought to be, yes, you have reason to expect the adults in charge to do something to improve that situation, but when you willfully flout the rules they have made to try to limit your risk, you bear some responsibility for what happens. If you don’t want to grieve your family, or handicap your family, you accept restraints even though they chafe. This is part of growing up.

These days, sadly, it may be a minimum necessary condition of living long enough to grow up. Please, young people, think! Nobody wants to bury more of you.

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— Katharine W. Rylaarsdam, Baltimore

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