I hate these posts, but I must say what is on my mind. School started last week, and it has changed. Eight foot black bars surround our campus. Video cameras monitor us. Extra staff watch us and listen to our conversations. There are now panic buttons in every class and new Red Alert procedures to learn. After school no one is to be anywhere other than the library (unless you're in a sport). Mind you, this is a Baptist private high school in an upper class neighbor hood, one with no history of trouble. It surprised me when I looked at these and didn't feel and anger, bitterness, or bewilderment. Rather, a sense of sadness that seemed to permeate my very being. I can only imagine what it must be like to be a new 7th grader entering a high school environment for the first time, only to be greeted by bars and cameras. When I first enrolled in that school, the "security" staff was minimal, there were no bars, fencing, or barbed wire. No cameras, no panic buttons. It was a happy atmosphere. Now school is seen as a place where death happens, like going to South Central or something. Poor little seventh graders. And I so wanted to raise kids in my future, but I now am thinking twice, because if all this came about in one year, how much more in the next 15? ::sigh:: You don't have to reply, I just had to get this off my chest.

By-"weeping for the future"-ron