Every year the freshmen class is generally disliked. But this year, we are disliked even more.

As you all may know, the freshmen have quite a bad reputation this year. From burning books to terrorizing Main Street, we’ve given ourselves, and the school a bad name. But it’s not the whole freshmen class acting out. However, people are putting this stigma on us so it makes everyone look bad.
When I was in high school, my class was always considered the babies. Many of us had helicopter parents who did much of the work for us so we never really learned right from wrong. I excluded myself from those negative connotations because I feel my parents gave me the tools to succeed and to always do the right thing.

When I came to Castleton, I thought that I left behind the childish actions of my classmates and their parents. Little did I know it wasn’t just Proctor High School’s senior class of 2014 who had this problem; it was the entire 1995-1996 generation. What I would like to know is what happened in those couple of years, if anything, to make us act the way we do?

Of course I know that it’s not the entire generation. 18 and 19-year-olds are starting college, coming from all over the country and making these bad choices. It could be just the fact that we are away from home for the first time and partying is on our mind and we want to rebel. But it feels much bigger than that.
 One could argue that it is the choices we’ve made in the past define us. Or maybe it’s the way we were brought up. Maybe it’s the fact that we were the first generation who didn’t really know what it was like to live without things like Internet, cell phones, or constantly depending on someone else.

Things have always just been easy for us, which makes us think that we can’t get into trouble for doing wrong and illegal things. We’ve never had to do things on our own, so why start now?

In my classes I’ve even noticed there are very few freshmen that actually know how be independent. Others want help, extensions, allowance and to generally be lazy.

They are the ones burning books, and showing up to parties in packs of 20 because they never learned how to go anywhere alone. They are the ones terrorizing and vandalizing streets. Those are the people to blame, not the entire freshmen class.

Personally, I am tired of this bad reputation. Hopefully everyone realizes that it is not all of us, it’s just a small percentage.
-Carly Trombley