Students consider drugs in Saratoga inappropriate

In December 2009, two masked men broke into the Wardell Road home of 96-year-old Charlie Maridon. In an assault on him and his daughter, Maridon was killed.

Just over two weeks ago, on Oct. 5, disgruntled employee Shareef Allman killed three and wounded seven of coworkers at a Lehigh Cement Company plant, situated on Stevens Creek Boulevard a mere five miles away from Saratoga High.

Although neither of these incidents directly threatened the school or its students, some have begun to wonder if Saratoga is really as safe as it seems. Such violence occurring in the area suggests that the image of a safe and sheltered Saratoga may be illusory.

“There’s a misconception in our school that since we live in a rather affluent area, we are a lot safer,” junior Venkat Munukutla said. “But we’re not that far away from places where things happen.”

Senior Samantha Hoffman agrees. “It doesn’t matter if it’s just ‘Saratoga.’ There’s going to be crime everywhere, so personally I wouldn’t feel safe walking around most parts of Saratoga at night,” Hoffman said.

Hoffman admitted that the cement plant shooting burst the “Saratoga bubble” in her mind.
“Having such a dramatic shooting occur so close to home really showed me that Saratoga is a lot closer to danger than we think,” Hoffman said. “Cupertino is just as safe as Saratoga, so couldn’t something just as bad happen here?”

Besides these high-profile incidents happening in and near Saratoga, reports of nighttime drug use at Wildwood Park and Congress Springs Park also taint the city’s reputation for safety.

Some students have shied away from visiting those places at night. Junior Neil Prasad believes “people should not choose public areas for their illegal activities like drugs if they don’t want to get caught or put others in danger.”

However, many students consider Saratoga a safe city with minimal criminal activity and subscribe to the common perception that drugs do not constitute a major concern for the community.

“I haven’t really heard of any problems from other students or my parents, because my parents are in the mindset that drugs and crime don’t exist in this neighborhood,” sophomore Priyanka Krishnamurthi said.

One reason for contradicting viewpoints on the amount of criminal activity in the city could be the lack of police reports and media coverage, which alert citizens of crimes in cities such as Los Gatos.

“In the paper, I always see Los Gatos students arrested for substance abuse,” sophomore Geoffrey Reyes said. “But since Saratoga doesn’t have its own police force like Los Gatos does, things are harder to control.”

Nevertheless, Reyes is not surprised when friends tell him about alleged drug use in various public locations in Saratoga. Like many of his classmates, he thinks he can guess who the drug users are. Although he has never seen anyone smoking illegal substances, “there are students who [he] could see doing that,” he said.

Reyes believes that increased police presence, or even a volunteer police force, could partially resolve the problem.

Krishnamurthi, on the other hand, emphasizes education. Perhaps informing more students about the effects of drug usage would prove conducive to solving the issue.

“In health class, besides just teaching about drugs, the school needs to teach kids about prevention more,” Krishnamurthi said.

World geography teacher Rick Ellis agrees that education is important. “In health classes, the freshmen are talking about drug use and alcohol use a lot, so rather than just enforcing rules, there’s some good education going on trying to inform kids of the dangers.”

However, Ellis believes that the school cannot be totally responsible for preventing illegal activity across the city.

“I think the city and the school would be naïve to think it doesn’t exist, and it should be something that is constantly on their radar to deal with,” Ellis said. “Unfortunately, it takes a village to raise a child, so it’s not only what we’re doing at school, but what’s going on at home [and] what’s going on in the community.”

According to Prasad, another possible solution to reducing the amount of illegal activity in the city is to implement more lighting in the city. At night, Saratoga is essentially pitch-black, so drug usage easily goes unseen in places like parks.

Senior Jonathan Koo believes that utilizing more lights would “force druggies and other juveniles to find more private locations to do their activities.”