Survey Results

Erica Smith and Lia Toback

As students at Brewster High School with the typical "senior views" on Brewster, we can't wait to move away from Brewster and really start our lives. The question is, why can't our lives start here? Why do we have to go elsewhere? Is Brewster really as terrible as we make it seem? Through our Brewster surveys, that was one thing that we wanted to stress, that Brewster is not a bad place to be.

Our survey included 17 teachers and 35 students in the Brewster High School. All being from different backgrounds, we were expecting to receive different responses to certain questions, but many took the survey quite seriously and they, too, was that Brewster is not so bad after all.

The Brewster area, itself, is an ideal place to live. Its strategic location, with the trains, highways, and busses all around, and its close proximity to major cities helps to keep Brewster on its toes. Yet, as Brewster takes its steps into the future, it still has the country, "homey" feel to it. Participation by the public in community events has helped the town to grow into more of a family. People seem secure in Brewster, and most declare they feel safe.

The purpose of this survey, we felt, was to remind people that Brewster does have an importance, and to hopefully bring some of that positive up to the surface. It was also our hope that those people in Brewster who are not completely satisfied with where they live, learn that they are the ones who have to make the changes happen. They are the ones who need to come up with propositions on how to go about cleaning up the village. By simply avoiding the village, as some chose to do, they are not going to help our town improve, but will aide in its coming apart. Both the teachers and the students just proved to us that they have ideas for making Brewster a better place, now they need to continue, follow through and make sure that what they want to see happen is done.

As teenagers, we should be proud of where we are from, and what we have done to make it a better place. The four years of our high school career should not be spent waiting for college, simply because it means a chance to get out of Brewster. We should be enjoying our time here. Most students on their surveys said that if they did not travel to other towns in the free time they usually just stayed home and did nothing. What are the benefits of going to Carmel or to Mahopac or to Danbury all the time? Yes, friends may be there, but do they ever come here to visit? Why? Because there is nothing to do in Brewster. Right. Wrong. In my opinion, the downtown area would be happy to accept a few new hangouts for teens, we just have to ask for them. Of course we can not put a mall next to the train station, but smaller shops such as the Boone Dog, seem to work well in this setting. Perhaps then others, geared towards different cliques would be successful.

The fact of the matter is that Brewster is not going to get any better if we all just sit here and talk about how bad it is and how we can't wait to get out of here. We have to do something. Look at the activities you enjoyed as a child here, don't you wish that could all happen again? Even if downtown Brewster does not revitalize itself overnight, we have to keep in mind that if we weren't in Brewster, there is a chance that we could be somewhere worse. The teachers have shown us that there are good things about Brewster that may not interest the high school population, but they do make Brewster a good place to live.

Survey Results: