Student’s Death and Open-Campus Policy

* It was with great sadness but not surprise that I read in the March 26 Times of the unnecessary death of a Woodbridge High School sophomore in a lunchtime auto accident.

When my oldest son began attending a public high school in Orange County, I was appalled to learn that his school was an open campus. This meant there was no monitoring who could come onto the campus, be they students from other schools, gang members, potential rapists or whatever.

The security issues were obvious to me. The combination of short lunch breaks, inexperienced drivers and the distance to the nearest fast-food location seemed a potentially lethal combination.

For four years I tried to persuade administrators to close the campus. I was given such answers as: The district would have to decide to close all the high schools in the district. My response? “Good!” Or: It would be hard to take away off-campus lunch privileges because the students wouldn’t like that. My response? “So what!”

What a classic case of the inmates running the asylum! In all my discussions with administrators, no one was ever able to give me a good reason why the open campus policy was ever initiated.

In the end, the campus was still open the day my son graduated. Our younger son attended a closed-campus private high school, and while the open campus issue was not the overriding issue, it did play into our decision to leave the public schools.

My heartfelt sympathy goes out first to the family of Kristin Godfrey, whose loss I cannot even begin to imagine; but also to theyoung driver of the car, whose life will be forever altered.

It is my hope that the school districts will resolve to make Kristin the last student to die or be injured in a lunchtime accident. The greatest honor they could do to her memory is to close all of our high school campuses.

JUDY JOYER

Coto de Caza

* It is true that it was a very tragic accident; I do believe that it is no one’s fault. This was an accident caused by the slippery roads.

Some people might say that school campuses should be closed at lunch. To take away the privilege of letting students out to lunch would be wrong.

Most students who are allowed off campus for lunch are very responsible. During this year this has been the only accident of this type. Students should not be punished.

Since this was an accident there is nothing anyone could have done. I think the only good thing to do is to give students more behind-the-wheel training to let them experience what driving is really like.

Possibly the only thing that the teenage driver [might] have done wrong in this case was to take other teenagers with him, but like all teens he probably wanted to be cool and take his friends an a ride--a ride that turned out to be a horrible one.

JOSE HERRERA

Student, Mountain View

High School

Santa Ana

* The latest accident in Irvine involving the students at Woodbridge High School reminds me of the accident involving the students at Newport Harbor High School [in May 1997].

We can avoid these accidents if driver training involved practical experience in rear-wheel skids.

California does not have many rainy seasons, but when it does the number of accidents should show us that our children need to have every possible experience in recovering from a rear-wheel skid.

While the closing of this campus for lunch seems like a viable idea, this does not prevent our children from getting into a similar situation outside of school hours.

MICHAEL CALDWELL

Buena Park

* As a student at Woodbridge High School, I have noticed the grief over the death of Kristin Godfrey.

[In] The Times article about the accident, I was upset to see the focus of the article shift blatantly from Kristin’s death to the school district’s open-campus policy.

Shame on you for turning a girl’s death into a reason to take away students’ only break from school. It is unreasonable to keep Irvine campuses closed; they were not built to accommodate it.

Closing the campuses at lunch would require tall fences and security guards. Money isn’t as available as most people think.

So concentrate on the life of Kristin, a girl with many friends. Don’t turn her death into a cause for changing school policy. Let it be a time to remember her.

PATRICK STOCKSTILL

Irvine