Commentary: Listen to the music

By Beth Belcher
Herbert Hoover High School

Towards the end of last school year, the Kanawha County Board of Education came out with a policy that school bus radios were no longer allowed to be on while students are present.

This was due to in part to an incident in Chicago where a bus was hit by a train because the bus driver could not hear the train over the radio. However, the county’s transportation supervisor also cited complaints from parents about sexually-suggestive lyrics in some of the music being broadcast.

Because of this policy, the board came out with another rule stating that students could listen to their own music devices like mp3 players, iPods and CD players while on the bus. This was contradictory to a past rule that banned students from bringing such devices because the board didn’t want to be liable for the loss of such high-dollar items.

When the board enacted these rules, it did not give taxpayers, who pay for the buses, information on them or a chance to vote on the matter. But more importantly, students, who are most affected by the rules, did not get a vote or a voice in the matter.

When the radio ban began, it affected students in several ways. It took away the ability for some to sleep on the bus, made it next to impossible for others to talk in private, angered still others who aren’t morning people and took away one of the means students use to stay informed.

Some students cannot stand to hear others talking while they are trying to sleep. With the radio, they could fall asleep peacefully to it and catch up on sleep on the way to school.

Other students used the radio as a means of covering up particularly sensitive conversations. With the radio on, they could speak quietly to each other about private matters with less fear of being overheard.

Then, there are people like me, who are not morning people until around 8 or 9 a.m. I used the radio as a buffer, so I would not have to talk to others or hear them talking. This helped me better prepare for the day and put me in a better mood because I didn’t have to interact with people so early in the morning.

Also, every morning the radio station that we listened to on my bus would have the world, national, state and local news at 7 a.m. sharp. This kept several of us up-to-date on current events.

I was not the only bus-riding student upset by the ban. Several other Herbert Hoover students gave their thoughts on the matter.

“I hate it!” sophomore Allison Lilly said simply.

“I think it is stupid,” said sophomore Sierra Lilly. “What are [the bus drivers] supposed to do when the weather gets bad and they need to hear the radio?”

Sophomore Amber Bowen disagrees with the rule about personal devices, especially if the ban was intended to prevent students from hearing certain types of music. “Now people will just bring their own music,” she pointed out.

Bethany Washburn, a sophomore, said, “I think it takes away a privilege we should have.”

It’s very upsetting that we, as students, did not get a vote or voice in this matter. Such actions seem awfully close to “taxation without representation” to me.