(Editor’s note: This is the final group of letters sent in by Escalon High School students as part of a class project. Several letters, chosen at random, were featured each week in February.)
Don’t Start That Car
Dear Editor,
Is that car really worth getting in while intoxicated? Drinking and driving is a huge problem for everyone. One wrong move and it could all be over. It is illegal to drive while intoxicated. Everyone that has their license should know that because it says you can’t have 0.08 percent or more in your system to drive. While driving intoxicated you are putting a lot of lives in danger, even your own.
All of that can involve teenagers and adults. It can turn out worse for teenagers because they are less careless for their actions. Nowadays everyone has a phone so you can just use Uber or even call another family member to come pick you up. Researchers say that every day 32 people die because of drunk driving which is one person every 45 minutes. So if we do something to stop drunk driving like raise the alcohol prices I think the world would be a safer place.
Sincerely,
Luke Maxwell
No Timeline For Harassment
Dear Editor,
It is well known that to file a report of sexual harassment, the victim has up to 180 days to file the complaint. Fortunately, in the state of California the victim has up to 300 days to report the incident. In many cases victims face numerous circumstances that prevents them from filing the report right away. Furthermore, these cases are often ignored because there is not enough evidence to prove whether it happened or not. This is a problem that has surely affected many victims. Having to carry the feeling that justice won’t be made often affects their everyday lives.
This is a national issue that should not be ignored even if those 180 or 300 days have passed. It does not erase the fact that the incident happened. I think victims should not have a time limit as to when they can file their complaint. Just like the incident does not have an expiration date in their head, neither should their time to file the complaint. To further fix this problem, law enforcement should take the time to deeply investigate the complaint and not just brush it off as something that does not have enough evidence to be proven. Just because a person wasn’t raped does not mean it couldn’t have happened.
Paloma Lara
Who To Blame
Dear Editor,
Why is there a major drought in California? Many people wonder why California seems to be in droughts year in and year out. Well, I’ll tell you why, it starts with our politics. The politicians in the State of California are run by environmental policy. The water treatment plants are outdated, and ineffective, which has created a raw sewage influx in our rivers and deltas.
This has forced the environmentalists to flush a fraction of the 50 percent of our state’s water that goes to the ocean. That of the 50 percent remaining is being dumped for two reasons. First, much of California’s water flows above San Francisco in rivers such as Eel River, which is a problem since most of the water consumption in California comes from the south. Diverting massive rivers to feed into California’s major southern cities is both impractical and illegal to do. Which leads to the water being unused and flowed out to the ocean. The second reason is the rivers that we do divert (Sacramento, San Joaquin) we want to reach the ocean. Otherwise we would see some ecological problems with the salt water when at high tide as it would get as far in as Stockton. This would lead to entire ecosystems between Stockton and Vallejo to be wiped out. You would think they would use the water as an energy source, but water isn’t considered a renewable resource as solar and wind is.
Another major contributor towards the drought is our population. Very few large-scale water projects have been built since 1979, despite the population doubling since that year. Due to the limited capacity of river channels and dam spillways, reservoirs cannot be quickly drained before major storms. This limits how much of a reservoir’s capacity can be used for long-term storage. If 50 percent goes to the ocean, where does the remaining 50 percent go? Roughly 15 percent of the water is used in agriculture, and the remaining 35 percent is used environmentally or in urban areas. People in California need to stay woke and not believe in what they are told causes the droughts. Don’t blame the farmers, don’t blame climate change, blame the people that run this state.
Sincerely,
Nico Franzia
