READERS REACT TO DRUG DEATH OF BRITTNEY CHAMBERS AND MEDIA COVERAGE OF IT

In response to the recent adverse media coverage regarding Monarch High
School I would just like to say thank you to the staff. My faith and trust
in them has not been tainted in the least.

My daughter is a junior at Monarch this year and I feel as a parent and
member of the Louisville community I should speak up on her behalf. We have
suffered an unspeakable tragedy with the loss of one of our children. Let us
not forget that, yes, this child may have made a bad choice, but it is my
hope that we as parents, friends, siblings and a community can learn from
this tragedy so that Brittany Chambers' life and death were not in vain.

We need to stand together in support of her family and say to the media and
world, "You obviously are not from around here, because you really don't
know us." Our kids are good and hardworking, which the media would have seen
if they had really spent time with them. Instead we got the trumped-up
stories of drug trafficking in the parking lot.

This is irresponsible journalism! Interestingly enough, our kids even
recognized this. Hmmm . . . how would this happen if they were in a
compromised state of mind?

Our school boasts the highest honor roll population in the district. Our
kids also have the highest attendance of any other high school. We are proud
of our students and of our school.

So I say thank you to all of the dedicated faculty and staff of Monarch High
who make school safe and enjoyable for our children. And thanks to the
Louisville police who patrol our school grounds daily. I appreciate all they
do to keep our kids safe.

Linda Gutgsell

Louisville

I appreciate the coverage the News is giving to the drug problem associated
with Brittney Chambers and her classmates. But one question keeps running
through my head: Why has it taken so long? Why did a beautiful young girl
have to die in order for not only parents but school officials to get
involved?

In 1995, my junior year in high school, I lost five friends in three weeks
to drunken driving accidents. There had been at least one death a year at my
school, mostly from drinking or drugs. When I read the comment from the
Monarch High School principal that he didn't believe there was a drug
problem in his school, my first reaction was "Yeah, right!" Every school has
a drug problem. There are drugs everywhere.

How many more beautiful young people are going to have to die before this
country wakes up and starts to combat this problem effectively?

I was fortunate enough not to get involved in drugs when I was a teen-ager,
but many of my friends did, and it took all my strength to stand by them and
help them through it. That same strength needs to be applied by parents,
teachers, principals, police officers and whoever else has the opportunity.
These kids don't think that they can die, and even now they are thinking,
"She just got a bad dose; it won't happen to me." But it will happen, again
and again, until everyone realizes that drugs are everywhere and they won't
go away if we ignore the problem.

Naomi Osburn

Thornton

As a sophomore at Monarch High School, I found the recent column by Mike
Littwin, "At Monarch, they say, it's easy to get hooked up," really
offensive.

Where did Littwin get his information? He completely misinterpreted events.
Before now, we never had a drug team or dogs search our school. Not everyone
at Monarch does drugs or even knows how to get hooked up. I have never done
drugs, and neither has any of my friends.

Our school is not the new symbol of "teen-age drug use," as Littwin
describes it. It is a very normal school with normal kids. why is Monarch
being targeted?

Our school is trying to cope with what happened to Brittney Chambers, and
the others who were involved. The media are only making the situation harder
to cope with.

Elizabeth Kupfner

Louisville

While the Boulder District school board was off on a retreat to discuss such
issues as the district's image problem due to lack of communication, a child
lay unconscious in Boulder Community Hospital from a drug purchased at
Monarch High School. As a parent of a Monarch High student, I am shocked at
the total lack of communication from the school and the district
administration to me, as a parent, explaining exactly how the recent drug
purchases by students are being addressed by the administration in light of
its zero-tolerance policy. Monarch High School, after all, is supposed to be
a "drug free zone."

If the board is concerned about an image problem, it might consider, at a
minimum, requesting the superintendent and Monarch principal to communicate
with parents about the most tragic issue facing the district: drugs
purchased by students that resulted in death.

Fran Ryan Raudenbush

Lafayette

We are upset with the News' coverage of the Brittney Chambers untimely death
from taking the drug Ecstasy.

What is back-page news doing on page 1? There are lots of deaths from drug
use all the time and they don't get this kind of coverage. Why don't we hear
about those? When cops find people dead in crack houses from overdosing,
does it make front-page news?

Nobody forced illegal drugs down Brittney Chambers' throat. She knowingly
took them! We are upset at both the glamorization of the Ecstasy drug and
the spin on the story that portrayed Miss Chambers as a victim of other
people's wrongdoing.

These substances are banned for a reason. Brittney Chambers was old enough
to know better.

Arbon and Dianna Reimer

Golden