Letter: Youths in Hastings need options

To the editor,

I see all of these posts about Hastings on Facebook, the news and the newspapers and, yes, I am deeply saddened by all of the young loss that we have been dealing with. But I feel many are lashing out for all the wrong reasons saying this was wrong and that is wrong and why did this person do this or publish this? What I feel we should be doing is coming together as a whole and trying to think of ways we can better our community. Growing up, my class didn’t have much of anything to do in this town, especially if we didn’t play sports. We kept ourselves entertained and not all were in good ways, but my point is shouldn’t we be blaming the community as a whole for letting this get too far out of control?

Maybe there are more problems than what this community is aware of? Why don’t we try and provide something in our town for the kids to do, like bowling, arcades, or something so that these kids (all ages) have a place to hang out with one another and be able to have fun and not sit around doing nothing, thinking of ways they can harm themselves or others, rather than having suicide and these deaths constantly talked about. How are they going to grieve if we have this stuff plastered all over Facebook, the news, and the paper and not do anything but complain about it? Any town you go to, you are going to have the drugs, the drinking and parties but when our town has more bars, liquor stores and gas stations than anything else, it’s kind of an eye opener to the future we are providing for our children.

How many kids want to go stroll in the park everyday? That sounds lame. People make their own choices, yes, and they should be held accountable for their own choices, but why can’t Hastings try and provide other choices for the residents of this town to make?

Randi Nyberg

Hastings

Tags: letters to the editor, opinion, hastings, minnesota, spiral, local