Superintendent’s Chat

Richard McClements, Shonto Preparatory School

I heard recently on the radio that five police officers in Austin, Texas, were suspended for a few days for neglect of duty. What did they do to merit their punishment?

These five police officers were assigned the job of guarding the perimeter of a nuclear power plant. Instead of doing that, it was discovered that they were irresponsibly spending their days fishing. They spent no time protecting the lives of the innocent people surrounding that city. What if the terrorists had stuck knowing that “Austin’s finest” were just pulling in the trout? People who rip the system, and they are everywhere, gall me. I think that the city officials let them off far too lightly. In my opinion, they deserved to have been permanently removed from the police force, fined for the time they spent playing, or spent some time in prison working off their debts.

When adults drive down the road, there are certain expectations of the motorists on both sides. The rules of the road, if followed, make it safer for all of us. There are those, however, who put all of us at risk because they will pass on a blind hill, around a corner, or because they have consumed excessive alcohol. Any trip between Shonto and Flagstaff is like running a gauntlet. I shake my head in wonder at the stupid things some drivers will do. 50,000 Americans die every year from car accidents. Many hundreds of thousands are seriously injured.

On every main highway, there are signs that read, “No Littering.” Yet how often have you been behind a car when suddenly McDonald’s bags and coffee cups come flying out of the window? It saddens me to see that the roads to our campus and down through the canyon are filled with empty beer cans and cardboard containers that someone left for others to pick up. The culprits do not think of preserving the beauty of this Reservation. They are only thinking of how they can make extra room in their cars or not get caught with the evidence. We have the same problem on a smaller scale here on campus. Every day, we spend a lot of money cleaning up the unnecessary messes and the littering that our students have made.

People need to be accountable for their actions and their decisions. Life would be better for all of us if we followed that simple rule.