Each year, the Roslyn High School seniors, like their Jericho counterparts, create a well-organized, secret scavenger hunt called Midnight Madness. There is a list created by a group of seniors detailing what needs to be found. There are four to five students in a car, each carload contributing $50 toward the grand prize, which this year was $1,700. It's a race. The race drivers are brand new 17 and 18-year-old drivers. Their gasoline is their parent's unspoken permission and/or ignorance.

Roslyn is a community where high standards are about the bottom line of grade point averages and SAT scores. Cheating is ordinary. Recently an incident occurred where some parents felt their non-cheaters should be applauded. Too bad we don't give a grade for character. Where is the rubric for that?

This Midnight Madness is not light-hearted fun but truly madness. A police officer who pulled over a car full of kids stated, "Many of the behaviors specified by the list are criminal behaviors." Freshmen girls are allowing themselves to be exploited and manipulated. Photographs are taken of naked girls. Inexperienced teenage drivers, possibly further impaired by alcohol and marijuana, are racing toward their goal. Overloaded cars without enough seatbelts; how are you going to feel if your kid is the one who ends up dead because he/she didn't have a seatbelt? How is your kid going to feel if he/she is the one who survives? How about your daughter's photo being shared? Do we continue to turn a blind eye on a tradition that is becoming increasingly corrupt and dangerous? There is a downward spiral of degrading behavior and drinking that permeates the evening. It would be nice to think that the winning participants are donating their money to a women's shelter or a sexual abuse organization.

We are not part of our children's peer group. We are here to provide guidance, structure and sometimes to say no. Does a tradition have to exist when decency is undermined? We have an internal party line, an e-mail list, where each parent is notified about upcoming plans for the senior party. Some parents may know a piece of the Midnight Puzzle as some of our kids do share. By networking this information, we would have made an informed parenting decision. We must start communicating with each other and taking risks together to protect our children from themselves. It's time we take responsibility and become a solution-based community teaching our children right from wrong. How far does this situation have to go before we as parents set limits and standards that we live by and expect our children to live by? Can't we learn from the tragedy at Mepham?

A Concerned Parent