By Kyle Auger
Editor-in-Chief

According to a memorandum with the Westford Police Department, the police maintain the right to inform Westford Academy administration when a student is involved in “any incident or potential incident that would jeopardize the well-being of students, faculty, or individuals within the greater Westford community.”

Basically, if a police report is filed in any type of incident, having anything to do with the school or not, the student involved is at the mercy of the administration as well as the police, and seems like the school is over-using its power and reaching outside their jurisdiction.

The school is a place for learning, and nothing more; it is not a punitive force that should reach out into community members’ personal lives. If a student does something against school rules in school then the student deserves a punishment within the school’s means.

The issue can be cleared up more with an analogy.  If you swore to a teacher and were given a detention, do you believe that the police should punish you? It is simply an issue of departments doing the job which they are assigned to do; there is no need for a students to be punished twice for one offense.

I understand what the school’s goal is with this agreement, a unified school-police department front can be effective in bolstering student safety as well as creating a communicative relationship. It combines the three overlooking forces in an adolescent’s life; their school, their parents, and the local police.

My own mother actually had an interesting perspective on the issue. She believes that as a student, academics are your job and if you get in trouble with police as an adult in the ‘real world’, you get fired. Her argument is valid, and it’s probably an idea running through the minds of parents everywhere. However, that is why we are students, to learn. Learning from mistakes is the real job of a student.

With the current system of punishment, one mistake can ruin not just your personal life, but your academic one as well. It is true that if you break the law you need to be punished, but not  by two separate parties for one offense.