Commentary
Mariah Foley 

High school students from all around the county are continuously enrolling in the Running Start program.  Parents and professors applaud these students for being  “ahead of the game” and “on top of things”.

But these teenagers all have a big secret.  They are running start students because they don’t want to be in high school anymore.

They are tired of all the unnecessary rules and self-centered, naïve, bullying, immature teenagers around them.  They want to try to be independent and have less people telling them what to do.

High school students tend to leave because they want to get away from the imprisoning rules and immature cliques they are held captive by.  Inevitably, bringing these kids into colleges allows those misbehaviors to become the standard for college student behavior.

Don’t get me wrong, running start is a great program, but high school students are not integrating properly to the college society.  These kids are expected to exhibit adult behavior, but so many skip classes, don’t meet deadlines, and don’t participate in class discussions.

Instead of becoming more mature and respectful, they are negatively influencing the students around them. In general, high school students are troubled with raging hormones and lack of standard social graces.

Normal college students don’t suspect these high school kids to become an issue, but instead of experiencing the college environment, as they want to, they are changing it drastically.

As a campus becomes overrun with high school students, professors get fed up with the disrespect, and then rules that didn’t used to be needed are created, transforming the carefree academically-based learning center into exactly what these students once looked forward to escaping from.

There are many high-school students that fit in perfectly with the college surroundings, but the childish teenagers who aren’t adult enough to recognize they are not the center of the world should not be allowed to participate in the college society.

They started with the Puyallup campus, and now they are on to Ft. Steilacoom. Teens are beginning to migrate to adult situations before they are ready, and it is making school more stressful for the people around them.