By: Melissa Klemme

Vandalism is an action involving the destruction of personal property or public property. Vandalism is very popular in the world today, and it can be found everywhere. Vandalism varies from graffiti on buildings, to defacing public property and many other things. Sometimes people are vandalizing without even realizing what they are doing. For example: If you are sitting on a wooden bench in a park, and scratch at the paint with your fingernail to chip it off, you are actually committing an act of vandalism without knowing. Although there are times that it happens on accident, there are many times when it is definitely on purpose.The images shown above are of the Middleboro High School track. There are many types of vandalism displayed on the track. People, no one knows who exactly, went out there with spray paint with the intention to mistreat and destroy it. This track is open to the public, so everyone in town, including the students, are able to run on it whenever they please. With this vandalism on the track, it can give people a weird attitude towards the school. People may wonder how it got there or how it could be prevented, and many wonder what the vandalizers motive was.

After looking at all of the vandalism that is done around and inside the school, I decided to conduct a survey to fifty- five MHS students to understand how they feel about vandalism. The first question of the survey is “I have seen one or more types of vandalism in or around the school building this year.” The majority of the students that answered said yes.  The second question asked is, ¨I find vandalism to be offensive.” The majority of students answered that they kind of agree. The third question is, ¨People vandalize things because they think it is fun.¨ Almost all of the students agreed. The fourth question is, ¨I have committed an act of vandalism inside or outside of school before,¨ and the majority of students said no. But, with the next question asking if they knew anyone who has committed an act of vandalism, the majority answered yes. I found this interesting because it creates a wonder to whether or not they were lying. Normally, friends do things together, so answering that they know someone who has vandalized makes it seem like they might have vandalized something themselves. The majority of students also agreed that there are too many things in school that people are destroying, which I strongly agree with myself. The majority of students also answered ¨sort- of” to the question asking if they found vandalism to be funny. Many students agreed that the quality of something affects how people are to treat it, and many students agreed that having a better school would not make a difference in the amount of vandalism. The question that I found the most interesting was, ¨People that vandalize are bad people.¨ The answer options were agree, half agree, and disagree. The majority of students answered half agree, and only two out of fifty- five answered agree. I myself do not think people that vandalize are completely bad, so I do agree with the majority. Sometimes people vandalize on accident like I mentioned before, and sometimes people can be peer- pressured into doing it. But, they are still committing the act of vandalism. Therefore, it is a hard question to answer. Do you think people that vandalize are bad people?