Youth / OPINION : ‘It Will Make Me Feel Safer’

I’ve seen a lot of people carrying weapons. It makes me feel unsafe. So I wouldn’t oppose metal detectors. I go to school to learn, not to see other people fight.

When it comes to concentration or affecting the way I learn, I don’t think metal detectors will make any change. It will make me feel safer, that maybe not so many things are going to happen. But violence is everywhere and I do feel scared.

I don’t think of it as the place I’m in, but rather of how the people are acting. It’s society. So if they have metal detectors, they should have them in all the schools. Not only in South-Central or just in a school that maybe appears to be unsafe.

My school has changed a little. I think I felt a little more safe in the 10th grade when I first went to Jefferson. There weren’t that many gang members and at the end of the year, they were all gone. Now I see the 9th graders, at so young an age, they’re starting to get into gangs. There are so many of them.

If they have metal detectors, neither the gang member nor the student that is afraid that something might happen would have anything to hurt the other. There would be maybe a fistfight or something like that, but I don’t think it would be as terrible as if something happened with a weapon.

Times staffer Kevin Baxter conducted these interviews.