A piece in the Barre Montpelier Times Argus was a breath of fresh air. Even if only an oped, it is still nice to see the pro-youth point of view being published. Let’s have a look at this, shall we?

The rights of young people have been in the news lately. In Montpelier, student posters decrying public indifference to Darfur were censored by school administrators. In Barre, young people have been warned they can be arrested – solely because of their age – if they venture out at night.

Right off the bat, we see two vomit-inducing strikes at innocent young people. For one, students are not allowed to publicly renounce genocide in school? That’s what this is. It’s not like the school admins saw it that way. They figured the students were riled up about something or other and wanted to silence them to keep from being annoyed. That’s one possibility. After all, students are the inferiors of the situation. They don’t matter, right?

And let’s not forget good old Barre. A curfew? Why, because a few residents were offended and scared at the idea of those “horrible” young people being outside at night doing horrible things? Oh, right, they made up some junk about it being in place to prevent crime. After all, everyone knows teens out at night can only be out to destroy property or rape someone. Or is it to protect teens from being mugged or raped? These people need to make up their minds. In any case, we have yet another town enacting a curfew, the feel-good band-aid to cover up a municipality’s real problems and blame a scapegoat. That’ll get your votes!

To think these things are happening in perhaps the most freedom loving state of the union is even more disturbing!
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