By Haleigh Ehmsen-

Everything in Mount Vernon looked incredibly beautiful this morning. The snow resting on tree branches, the way houses looked with snow covering their roofs, and especially beautiful was the fact of the two hour delay announcement. Everything seemed perfect but this of course was just a façade created by the newly fallen snow.

As I approached The Gazette hanging sideways in the library, I turned my head a little to examine the cover and knew that this beautiful, uniformed blissful feeling was coming to an end. But that’s reality and while the driveways at the gas stations may have been blocked with snow this morning, there was no snow to cover up the fact that the gas prices are rising dramatically.

As someone who pays for her own gas, this affects me, and through discussion with my peers I have discovered that I am not the only one. Many students have to pay for their own gas and it’s not easy with the prices increasing.  As I opened the paper and turned to my favorite section, the opinion page, I read a guest column about the importance of a gas tax. James D. King wrote that those who drive on the roads should have to pay for them.  This seems agreeable but with gas prices already rising, why would the government want to raise the price even more? Sooner or later the reality will be that people won’t be able to afford to fill their cars up weekly and will have to limit their travel.

It is ridiculous to raise gas prices even more in a time where many people in the country are already struggling to fill their gas tanks. While this gas tax would provide for better roads, what are these new roads worth if no one can afford to drive on them? There is not enough snow that could make these new roads, which would actually prevent travel instead of promoting it, look beautiful to me.