Students Respond to Columns

Dear Editor,

We are presenting a re- sponse to Dan Groom's col- umns in The Times regarding why some Dayton High School students choose other activities other than playing sports. The students in our AP Civics class take excep- tion to some of what was said in the columns and would like the opportunity to pres- ent other possibilities. The students in the class got together and wrote a letter in response to Groom's columns. We are not al- lowed to include the students' names with the letter since most of the students are under the age of 18. We are very proud of our students for voicing their objections in a proactive way. Our hope is that your readers will appreciate the students' frustrations and their efforts to deal with them in a positive and appropriate manner. We thought it was important that their response be passed on to The Times as it was presented to us:

Although we would love to write to Dan Groom directly, he has fortuitously moved on to another position that we hope he is much better suited for. Therefore, we are left with little recourse but to voice our opinions to you.

Although we appreciate Dan Groom's concern for smaller turnout for male athletics in Dayton High School, we would like to take this opportu- nity to provide a better insight into this particular situation. As students in this school, we have a better perspective.

As of January 30, 2013, Dayton High School had a total of 161 students in grades 9-12 and on the same date Waitsburg/Prescott/Ju- bilee had 224 combined students in those same grades. Not only does this give them a larger population of students, but a larger population al- lows for larger anonymi- ty regarding the problems to which Mr. Groom addressed. To be very honest we have students who smoke marijuana; what school doesn't? We wish that wasn't the case, however, it happens here, every other school in the area, and schools across the nation.

The number for becoming 1A in Washing- ton State is 207 students. WPJ has 224 students, yet they are still a 2B con- sortium, while Dayton is a 2B school with 161 students. We are aware that WIAA establishes classifications on a given date early in the year. However, WPJ currently has 63 more potential athletes for each sport. With 63 more students, obviously it is easier to fill a sport's roster and allows the remainder of the students to make their own decisions without impacting their teams. Dayton High School has more sports/extracur- ricular activities, so our kids are highly engaged in diverse activities such as: Youth and Govern- ment, Future Business Leaders of America, FFA, Knowledge Bowl, National Honor Society, SHEO, local theater productions, and robotics club.

Mr. Groom spent much of his writing re- counting his glory days at Dayton. While we are all proud of our athletic history, those were the years that we were grow- ing in numbers and were on our way to becoming a 1A school (Dayton High School was 1A from 1996-2003).

Mr. Groom quoted two male athletes as his source of information. We feel that that was a poor decision for an experienced journalist to interview two stu- dents and have those two opinions represent the student body as a whole.

In our AP CWP class, eight out of nine students turn out for high school sports. The outlier is employed after school and participates in the local theater productions who would otherwise participate in sports. All nine of us manage to be actively involved in school, sports (as multisport athletes) and jobs without the assistance of marijuana.

We resent the broad characterization by Mr. Groom based on the opinions of two "ath- letes." We are hardwork- ing students striving toward better futures that do not need to be tarnished by an unprofessional article. We look forward to less biased articles in the future.

Go Dayton Bulldogs!

Senior AP CWP

Dayton High School

Mary Pryor, Teacher

Andy Maheras, Principal

Dayton High School