Our View: Consequences should cover a wide spectrum so that high
school students learn what’s at stake: It’s a matter of life and
death and choices
Let’s reconstruct this incident.
Jay Raven, a Gilroy High School student and varsity football player, skipped school on Monday. He made a brief appearance on campus at lunch, just long enough to borrow the car of his friend Josh Sterling. Raven, with three teammates, drove off campus, past the smiling pictured face of Erin Kinkel, who was killed in 2004 when she rode unsecured in a vehicle.
Later, speeding north on Santa Teresa Boulevard, Raven swerved into the southbound lane, smashed through the guardrail and rolled the car, ending up in the ditch below. Two of his passengers were ejected. All three were injured. Thankfully, we do not have to post any more pictures next to Erin’s.
The tragedy would have marred the entire year for Gilroy High students and many in our community.
We hope that the parents of all five teens, once they recover from the mingled shock and relief, manage to inflict severe enough consequences that their sons are forevermore convinced that they must not skip school, lend their cars to friends with poor judgment or drive recklessly … and that they must always wear seat belts.
The insurance companies, no doubt, will do everything in their power to make these truisms plain to all the parents.
We hope that the law will impose appropriate penalties for speeding and driving without seatbelts. We do not want the lives of these kids to be wrecked, but we all know kids who have totaled car after car. We want these kids to learn their lesson from this accident, so they will not be involved in a fatality next month or next year.
Then there is the issue of truancy. GUSD has a problem with truancy, particularly at the high school level. Principal James Maxwell says that the punishment for truancy is work detail, i.e. picking up garbage. That is a good start.
But high school athletes are admired by their peers. Particularly football players. Particularly varsity football players. They are admired, and they are emulated.
If we really want to drive home the point that truancy is not tolerated, they will be picking up trash for a long time. If we actually want them to understand that reckless driving is neither macho nor cool, we will take away their parking places and make them walk to school. And if we truly want to emphasize that student-athletes are expected to set a good example, we will suspend those we can for an appropriate time period from sports.
