With the recent incidents and mishaps that have occurred at our school in the past weeks it feels like we are no longer safe in our own community. Many of us realized last week, when the officers had to use pepper spray (mace) to break up a fight, things have become more complicated. A question that comes to mind when anyone is involved with Bartlett, be it a parent, a student, or a school official, and sees what is going on is “are we safe enough to come to school without being affected by other people’s actions and the repercussions that follow?”

Josh Mee said “I would feel just as safe as I did before the incident, had there not been pepper spray involved. If people would have just minded their own business, and not been around the fight then they wouldn’t have gotten pepper spray in thier eyes.”

Amy Chapa said “I feel safe because of the cops, but it all depends on what is going on.”

Bonnie Burt said “I think that we are all as safe as we were before the pepper spray incident. People are making a big deal, and it is, but no one is really threatened, except for those who were involved with something that shouldn’t have happened anyways.”

Almost everyone else interviewed wanted to remain anonymous. Most people said that they didn’t feel safe because of the fight, and several others felt that they were safe until the pepper spray incident.

It took one event going wrong to make a large portion of the students feel unsafe. If everyone can just get past what happened, then we can all go back to the way things were. It was a big mishap that affected many students, but fortunately we have police officers in our school that to take action. What if they hadn’t been there? What if someone had really gotten hurt? The pepper spray was a small price to pay for an entire school’s safety.