Living with eyes open
Right now, there's a battle going on in the neighboring town of Marion — a battle that's just a short eight miles away.
It's the battle over random drug testing.
Next month, Marion-Florence school board members will give the final "yea" or "nay" to a process that would give random tests to all students participating in extra-curricular activities. And that's not just for athletes — it's for every event, whether you're on the debate team or the wrestling team.
With 80 percent of the school's students involved in extra-curriculars, that could be a lot of tests.
Whether it's a proactive measure to deter drug use or a violation of the students' civil rights is debatable. No doubt it will be debated endlessly.
But there's one thing this whole thing has shown: Even small towns aren't immune to "big-city" problems.
Sometimes we think that just because our population is smaller, the number of problems is fewer. And to a degree that's true — Hillsboro doesn't worry about, say, drive-by shootings like a Wichita or a Kansas City.
But just because the local police don't handle homicides on a regular basis doesn't mean our town is completely devoid of problems.
Because the bottom line is this: People are people everywhere.
A person who breaks the law in a big city is just as apt to get into trouble in rural Marion County.
People always say, "That would never happen here. Not in my backyard."
And parents say, "It's not in my child's school. Not my kid — he would never do that."
Of course, we hope that's true. That's what we all want.
But we can't close our eyes. If problems are there — be they with drugs, underage drinking, whatever — we've got to have the courage to see them. We can't hide under a rock and pretend they're not there.
Let's have the courage to see the difficult situations in our own backyards — and then have the courage to do something about them.
— JENNIFER WILSON
