Be Grateful Utah County

By Brielle Barnes

Turning on the news and listening is one easy way to get depressed. There are so many problems throughout all the world, from school shootings to political crises that it’s hard to see the good that is actually happening, or more importantly the good of what’s around Utah.

Millie Mecham went to high school in Las Vegas, Nevada and was shocked when she went to a Timpanogos High School football game. She said “ I turned to my friend and asked her where the metal detectors were to get in and she looked at me like I was crazy.” For Millie the potential for high school violence was always present. There are metal detectors at every door and to be able to go to a different schools game students had to have your parent sign a waiver. Danger was always near.

Here in Utah county, Mountain View had a stabbing two years ago. To many it is still incomprehensible that something like that happened in Orem, Utah, whereas to Jacob Granados, who grew up in Southern California, stabbings and school violence happened on a regular basis. He says “gangs were a really big problem at my school… If you looked at my school it actually looks like a prison, surrounded by gates with police on the lookout.”

At Orem High students have open campus and here fights are a rare sight to see. Lizzy Oliveros, from San Antonio, Texas said “I feel that if I grew up in Utah I would have felt safer then I did in my actual school, Utah is just a safe environment to me.” Utah county compared to basically anywhere is a safe haven. But it’s not only the schools even though being in high school it feels like there is nothing else outside of it.

This past month there have been horrible forest fires. People of Utah county have volunteered to help so much that the firefighters are having to turn the hopeful help away. In the article ‘an overabundance of donation’ from the Daily Herald said “Saturday morning, incident manager Marty Adell informed the community that firefighters working on the fire had sufficient supplies, and donations should be directed toward evacuees. Monday morning, the Nebo School District and the Red Cross also let local residents know that the evacuees were well taken care of with donations.” so many people have volunteered even after these statement were sent out, they had reassure everyone that if there was help needed that an email would be sent out.

Even though the world around may seem to be in constant turmoil, there is always Utah county, where even though we still have things like drugs, fights, and contention it will ( hopefully) never be as extreme as the rest of the planet.

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Brielle Barnes

Brielle Barnes is a student at Orem high school. This is her junior year and she is so excited to be able to write to the world. Some of her hobbies are reading, writing, sports,and playing in the outdoors. She loves to try no thing and be apart of adventures. Her dream job is to some day be a journalist and write about the world while traveling it, so please give her some luck and read her articles.