You know what makes me really upset? People being mad at me for reasons that are not legit. Sadly, that is what happens a lot around Vergennes, specifically while riding electric scooters.

Most of my friends and I have electric scooters. During the summer, when we ride the most, people yell at us the most.

“Ride on the sidewalk, the roads aren’t for scooters!”

“Ride on the road, I am walking my dog here!”

We can’t do anything right without getting yelled at!

The reason that this topic is important to me is because I don’t want to feel like everybody in our tiny city hates me and my friends for simply riding our scooters. We will always ride our scooters and meet up at the courts, go to each other’s houses, go to the store, and we don’t want to feel guilty for riding on the wrong paved area. Riding little scooters around town shouldn’t get you threatened to have the cops called on you.

For the people that will and have already yelled at us, someday we could be neighbors, someday we will be peers, and do you want to be remembered as the person that yelled at us for having fun as a kid? Or would you like to be remembered as the old lady who kindly reminded us to be safe on the road and helped us understand your reason so we could respect that?

Per Title 23, Section 1141a in the Vermont state law, electric scooters are pretty much on the same laws as bicycles. So, the next time we get threatened for riding on the road, just remember that we are meant to be on the road, and not the sidewalk.

Look, I understand, it might be annoying having to avoid scooters and having to worry when the kids are on the road riding. Sometimes we might be a bit careless while riding, but we are following the rules and just trying to have fun.

Hendrik van Voorst
VUMS Student

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Students at Vergennes Union Middle School finished a civics unit by writing open letters. The driving question was: What makes democracy work? To create this final project, teachers and students used the New York Times open letter contest framework. Students could choose any topic they felt passionate about. The letters are being published in several different venues: in our school newsletter, on Front Porch Forum, in The Addison Independent, and on school bulletin boards. Two students submitted their letters to the NYT contest! Our students did a wonderful job writing these letters, and we hope you enjoy reading the ones that appear here. We expect these students will continue to use their voices to highlight issues they care about!

Libby Payeur and Nan Guilmette
VUMS Humanities Teachers