Students discuss violence in D.C.

Benjamin Grove

Thursday, Oct. 21, 1999 | 11:43 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- As politicians clamored for media attention at their youth violence conference held here Tuesday and Wednesday, about 350 teens from around the nation took an honest look at how they might fix the problems plaguing their schools and neighborhoods.

"The adults tend to address the issue from a different point of view -- guns, metal detectors," Green Valley High School junior Christine Papio said. "We tried to look at what really causes youth violence. What if we tried to really understand each other?"

Papio joined two other Clark County students -- Will Hooks, a junior at the Community College High School in Henderson, and Jeanine Tegano, a senior at Las Vegas Academy -- at the "Voices Against Violence" conference that featured a keynote address from President Clinton. The event, timed to coincide with the six-month anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting April 20 in Colorado, was sponsored by 130 Democratic House members, including Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.

"We wanted to receive input from the students who are on the front lines," Berkley said.

The students spent part of the two days swapping ideas and stories. Some told emotional personal tales of experience with gunfire.

"For some of these students this is their life," Tegano said. "I'm fortunate. I don't have friends who have been shot."

The three Clark County students said they had no experience with youth violence. But they said violence can strike at any time at any school, as it did Oct. 11 at Clark High School, when two students were injured in a shooting on campus.

"Everybody's awareness about violence was really heightened by that," Hooks said. "It was shocking, but in a positive way. It really got people thinking."

The three students said that teens everywhere are still reeling from the shooting at Columbine that claimed 15 lives and served as a prominent talking point during the conference.

"It's one of the reasons that we had this conference in the first place," Papio said.

The three students pledged to organize a similar conference in Clark County soon with Berkley's help, even if it is only to maintain a general awareness among students that violence can be stopped.

"We may not be in Congress, but the fact is that kids have the power and the know-how and the passion to change it," Tegano said.