Massena: Youth in a Small Town

By Breanna Foster
As many people such as myself know, living in a small town is usually boring and in order to find anything fun to do, you usually need to travel elsewhere. Traveling out of town is not an easy process, especially for kids who don’t even have their licenses yet, or whose parents work often and can’t drive them. That’s why I think that more youth recreational facilities should be brought to small towns, such as Massena. These facilities would make living in small towns more interesting and fun and, more importantly, would keep kids out of trouble.

One of the bigger problems in Massena, related to it’s being boring, is that kids are getting into trouble and doing bad things, such as drugs and drinking, at very young ages. On May 12, 2009, the Daily Courier Observer newspaper’s main headline was “MCS Ecstasy Use Jumps”. This headline should have alarmed any parents who have kids in the MCS school district. The article goes on to explain that “while other drug usage is down, the use of ecstasy among students at MCHS has gone up from 2.3% in 2005 to 18.3% in 2008.” In my opinion, ecstasy and other drug use wouldn’t be a factor if there were activities and recreational facilities where kids could hang out, supervised, and do fun, safe things. If kids were more interested in going places with their friends, they would stay away from drugs and stay away from places where drugs are in the environment.

I explored the drug-use issue in a recent interview with Lindsey Breitbeck, a relief aide at the Rose Hill Chemical Dependency Treatment Center in Massena, NY. I asked, “Do you think the lack of recreational facilities for the youth in our town increases the chance of drug use?” Ms. Breitbeck responded, “I believe that if there were more activities to occupy a teenager’s time, it would do a lot towards keeping them from becoming chemically dependent.” Ms. Breitbeck also stated that the most common ages of children admitted into Rose Hill were “15 to 17 years of age” and that “most kids become addicted to drugs because they begin to use recreationally with their friends, and later get hooked.” This statement shows that if kids had somewhere safe and drug-free to hang out, they wouldn’t begin to use drugs recreationally and will never develop drug addictions. The final question in my interview with Ms. Breitbeck was “How do you feel drug use in Massena is affecting the town itself?” Her response was “Massena is becoming a frequent ‘hot spot’ for not only drug USE, but drug trafficking as well. I feel that there is no need for all the drug use. Massena was once a safe place, and is now becoming harder and harder to live in.” This response is common among many of the community members of Massena. I have overheard and been directly told by quite a few adults and elderly people of Massena that they view the youth population in Massena as “hoodlums” and “scums”, and as kids who show no respect for anybody. If there were a place that could teach kids how to have safe fun and learn to be respectful at the same time, that would be of great benefit to our community.

School isn’t even a fun place for some students anymore, especially high schoolers. If you aren’t into sports like the majority of Massena High School students are, then you basically have nothing to do and find yourself searching for things to do once the school day is over with. Athletes at MCHS end their school days at 2:16, usually stay after with a teacher until 3:00, then have practice until around 5:00 and maybe even a game at 6:00. That fills up their entire day and they don’t have a chance to be bored. But this is negative for the kids who don’t have a talent for sports or just aren’t interested in them. This is another reason there should be some sort of recreational center created that is going to stay in Massena and not fail; then the non-athletic children in Massena won’t feel so left out.

It’s not like Massena has ALWAYS been boring, however. We used to have a roller-rink where, when my Mom and her friends were my age, they would roller-skate, listen to music, and just hang out with their friends. About a month ago, our only movie theater closed. It’s closing was a huge blow to the community – especially the younger community because that was one less place to go and hang out. However, a couple weeks ago, the theater reopened under new ownership but with the diminishing economy, who knows how long it will stay open.

Years ago, the St. Lawrence Centre Mall was thriving and popular. It used to be home to popular stores such as Gap, Spencer’s, and Ames. Now, there are very few popular stores left, or any stores for that matter. One entire end of the mall is empty stores, and while you walk through the other end of the mall, you will pass several more empty stores. As we all know, the economy has been going through some very rough financial times, and the St. Lawrence Centre Mall has been hit the hardest in our town.

Lack of recreation isn’t only affecting the youth groups of our community; it’s also affecting entire families. Some people prefer living in quiet, close-knit communities such as Massena, while other prefer living in cities where there are plenty of things to do. I recently interviewed John Tenbusch, who works with the Census Bureau in Canton, NY. He has a different point of view on the population of Massena. In the interview, I asked if he had seen any recent change in population. He stated that from 1990-2000, population in the North Country, mainly Massena, remained about the same, but Massena specifically, however, lost a few hundred people. I also asked him if he thought many business failures in Massena have affected population change. Mr. Tenbusch stated that the recent closing of GM is probably the only factor that would affect the population change in Massena, however he thinks that because many of the employees at the GM plant had lived here for such a long period of time and bought houses, that they wouldn’t be willing to move because it would be too much of a hassle and they raised their families here. The final question I asked Mr. Tenbusch was “Do you think the lack of youth recreation in Massena has/will affect population change?” In my opinion, I thought that it would affect the population change. Mr. Tenbusch said that in his opinion, we already have enough youth recreational facilities and it won’t affect population change. “The main thing affecting population change will be lack of jobs.” Tenbusch stated.

The problem of small towns being boring can easily be fixed – just create things to do! In Washington D.C. in July of this year, kids would meet at the Thompson Boat Center and would participate in sport activities. Some of these activities included soccer, baseball, lacrosse, and rowing. Most kids were under the age of 18 and each sport had a number of different evenly-split teams (Weintraub). If there was something like this during the summer in Massena, I’m sure this would be of great interest to all of the youth in the community. Massena is a town that is big on athletics, so an event like this would be a great idea because it would bring in a lot of participants.

In the article titled “The At-Risk Youth Recreation Project”, the authors discuss how creating a park area and recreation center can “be a primary community resource for alleviating societal problems associated with at-risk youth.” Park and Recreation Departments (PARDs) have been trying to find ways to lessen gang violence and how to deal with youth-related problems. They feel as though creating centers and parks for at-risk youth to go to would be beneficial to not only the youth, but society as well because communities will feel safer with less gang-violence and parents won’t have to worry about their children as much (Witt). Massena doesn’t have a problem with gang-violence, but as explained in the newspaper article about drug-use in the school districts, we obviously have a large population of at-risk youth who need drug-related help, and by creating a center where they can get counseled about their problems and have fun at the same time, we could eliminate the drug-use.

I don’t want the readers of my essay to think that the town doesn’t try to create anything fun at all for the youth of Massena, because that’s false. As shown in the newspaper article “Carnival Games Keep Kids Busy in Massena,” Massena has a summer recreation program whose director is Patrick Henrie. The summer recreation program would take kids to the movies (when the theater was open) and even went to the beach every day where kids could cool off in the water or play games led by the recreational leaders. This program not only provides ways for kids to have fun, but it also employs college students that come home for summer breaks and teaches them how to deal with all types of different youth. The only negative about this summer recreation program is that it’s only in the summer. There should be a recreational program all year round so that kids will be able to spend time with their friends and stay out of trouble doing it.

Just about a month ago, a youth center opened in the St Lawrence Centre Mall. The founders called it “The Union”. The Union is a great idea because there are so many kids that hang out at the mall on Friday nights, some who attend Rock n Skate at the Arena. Although the mall is a great place for the kids to hang out, a lot of them get into trouble because they aren’t supervised the entire time they’re there. When they are at Rock n Skate, they are supervised, but once they leave, they’re on their own. If kids attend The Union, they will be supervised. The Union will be open from 3-9 Thursday through Saturday, and only costs $15 a month or $150 annually. But The Union isn’t just a place for kids to hang out: they also have a variety of classes on Thursdays and Fridays such as stained glass art, guitar, makeup consulting, and much more which will keep kids interested and coming back each week.

As I have greatly stressed in the previous several paragraphs, something needs to be done in Massena that will make our town a safer and more fun place to live. Myself and many others love that it’s such a small, close-knit community and would love to continue our lives here. However, it’s very difficult to raise a family here and if the necessary steps were taken (as discussed throughout my essay), it would become much more easy and safe to live there. The safety and recreation should both be very important things to the people in charge of Massena, and I hope some of them read my essay and it opens their eyes to the realization of the effects of the lack of existence of youth recreation in our town, and something will be done about it once and for all.

Works Cited Not Available