CAMPUS CORRESPONDENCE : Everyone Should Get This Message Loud and Clear: ‘Leave Chelsea Alone’
I feel badly for Chelsea Clinton because she is the same age as I, which is 13, and she is living in the White House, where she can’t be alone at any time. A lot of things in my life bother me, but if I were put in Chelsea’s place, I would ask to be sent away. Because the one thing I resent drastically is to have people with me at all times--when I say “people” I mean people like Secret Service men, not people like my friends.
She probably can’t even go to buy a soda by herself. And when she does find herself a boyfriend, what is she going to do? Bring her Secret Service guard on dates? The tragic thing is she will be living in the White House for all her teen-age years--if President Bill Clinton gets reelected, that means eight years for her. It wouldn’t matter if Chelsea were 9, 10 or some young age, but she is not. She will be in the White House until she is 17, or even 21. It really isn’t fair.
A normal day for me would probably be very different from one spent by Chelsea Clinton--or anyone who had a guard with them 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Let’s take Friday, for example. The normal school day is from 8:00 a.m. to 2:20 p.m. This is probably the same with Chelsea. When it comes to Friday night, I would maybe hang out at a mall--such as Century City, the Third Street Promenade or the Beverly Center. There, my friends and I meet people or go see a movie if we are in the mood. Friday night might consist of having a friend over or hanging out at someone’s house with a bunch of friends. Hey, who knows? Sometimes teen-agers go to the clubs.
How could you do anything like that when you’re the President’s daughter? You can’t. A normal night out would be staying in your room reading a book. Fun!! That’s no way for a teen-ager to live these days. What do you get out of doing that? Sure, you learn something more--but you learn at school five days a week, plus homework. If I had a Secret Service guard, I couldn’t have any friends, because the friends I’d make would never want to be around me and my “guard.”
Life now is so different from life in the Gilded Age, when people probably did stay home and read on the weekends. You need adventure now when you’re young. New experiences! I mean, come on, the same boring schedule every day!
I feel so, so, so bad for Chelsea. She has no privacy. I’ve seen T-shirts saying, “Leave Chelsea Alone.” I know that message is in a different context, but “Leave Chelsea Alone” should be in the context of her Secret Service guards! Who knows if they are with her all the time, but if they are, they’re probably annoying the living daylights out of her. I’d be pretty annoyed if I had government personnel around all the time.
To tell you the truth, at my house we do have a guard for security reasons. Even though he only works at night--and he certainly doesn’t work for me but for my parents--sometimes when I invite people over, the guard tells them to leave, because he doesn’t have permission to let them in. That makes me mad, because then my friends are so scared of the guards that no one likes to come over. Their first question is: “Is the guard there?” Now I know this doesn’t say much, but it really does. And it is probably 10 times worse for Chelsea.