Letters To The Editor
By Jacob Brennan
Stratford High School
In recent news, Connecticut Post Mall is putting an age restriction at their mall again. The rule states that an adult must accompany anyone under the age of 18 (over 21). This whole rule was made because during the holiday season there tends to be fights that start and security needs help with dealing with this problem. The help that they decided to use is a rule change that affects a good portion of the mall’s population. This rule change will be in full effect this holiday season and a lot of people are not happy with this rule change.
The rule change is definitely something that should have a lot of controversy around it. I think that there were ways around stopping this problem rather than cutting out most of your market. I do agree with the Mall that there is a problem with the fighting juveniles. But the way that they are going about fixing this problem I don’t believe is the right way. I think that more security would prevent this a lot better and stopping all the people that wouldn’t get into fights is just unfair. There are too many people who want to go to the mall that just want to shop and not walk around but they are being affected by this rule change in a major way. Especially during the holiday season people need to go shopping for Christmas.
This policy affects me pretty well because if I want to go to the mall with my friends I need to bring an adult which everyone knows that’s just not as fun. I don’t go to the mall often but when I do I tend to not have someone over 21 with me. A lot of adults are happy with this rule change because they have been affected by the fights and it has changed their experience. I get why they are trying to do something about this problem because it is a very big problem and should have controversy. The mall needs to think this over again I believe because this is not the answer and it hasn’t been since 2018. But on the other hand they have kept doing the same thing since 2018 so maybe it is working and they do not care about the other consequences like businesses losing customers.
Most of the time kids under the age of 17 do not go to the mall to spend money they go to hang out so that could be a counterargument. However, I believe that the actual 17 year olds that want to spend money should not be punished like this.
I think there has to be an answer to get the people who are just there to start problems out and the people that actually want to spend money to stay in. The mall brings in too much traffic for them to be kicking people out, I feel like the mall needs to realize that they are losing a lot of their profits and need to make a change to get the people to spend money. But I guess stopping the fighting is more of a problem for them.
In conclusion I think that it is unfair that the shoppers who are under 18 are being kicked out for reasons that are not their fault. I get the mall has a problem with people fighting but kicking everyone out that is not of age is too harsh and they need to realize this.
