Recent incidents of car vandalization have been reported to administrators. The reported vandalism includes cars being keyed and tires being slashed. Junior Ethan Yaroch is one of the students who has experienced his car being vandalized while parking on the hill adjacent to the football field.

“The first time [the vandalism occurred], someone slashed all four of my tires and that was last Wednesday,” Yaroch said. “The second time, they slashed my tires, all four of them, and keyed [my car], and that was this Monday.”

Yaroch described his reaction in discovering his car had been vandalized.

“The first time, I was kind of shocked and upset,” Yaroch said. “The second time, I felt upset because they’re obviously targeting my car.”

Westside has recently supplied Yaroch with a parking pass, attempting to prevent further damage from occurring to his car. However, according to Yaroch, the pass was not issued soon enough.

“I did get a parking pass, but I got it the day that I parked my car up on the hill…the second time the vandalism happened…which was kind of too late,” Yaroch said. “But I’m going to park in the parking lot from now on where there are cameras.”

Yaroch said he would appreciate knowing who has been vandalizing his car, as well as the reasons provoking it.

“I would like to know who’s doing it and why,” Yaroch said. “If it’s something against me, I want to know why, but I don’t think that will happen.”

Principal Jay Opperman reflects on his opinions regarding vandalism.

“Any time property is destroyed, to me, it’s bold disrespect by not respecting other people’s property. It saddens me,” Opperman said. “I mean obviously we don’t know if it was a student or whoever the person/people are, it’s just disappointing that that would happen to another person.”

Opperman discusses that vandalism may occur under different circumstances, but regardless, administration would like to resolve the issue.

“We always want to be able to solve it for the victim, and one is just restitution for whatever property damage they’ve had,” Opperman said. “Sometimes there’s conflict in general in vandalism cases…sometimes it’s just random…we would also like to know if there has been a conflict to help resolve, just the conflict in general if that led up to that. But also, obviously, we want people to learn that that’s not an acceptable behavior, whether it’s at school or anywhere in our community.”

When vandalism occurs on school grounds, Opperman said that administration uses various resources to discourage vandalism from reoccurring.

“We have cameras both internally and externally in the building, but even with the camera system you can’t cover every nook and cranny,” Opperman said. “But when we have a report, we try to see if we can view it from our cameras. And when we’ve had incidences like this, or if we’ve heard of other things going on near or around campus, we do ask police if in the evening if they could give some extra patrol rounds.”