Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2002 | 9:03 a.m.
Editor's note: More than 1,000 students from 30 Clark County high schools participated in the 47th annual Sun Youth Forum Nov. 26 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The students were divided into groups to discuss various topics. A spokesperson was chosen from each discussion group to write a column about the students' findings. James Jobin of Silverado High School writes about his group's discussion of school issues. THIS YEAR's Sun Youth Forum was a real eye-opener and a truly enlightening experience, to say the least. I found myself in the middle of a constantly heated debate, whose twists and turns forced my group to ascend to a new level in our thinking.
My peers and I were given the topic of "School Days" and asked to discuss various school-related issues, and what a discussion it was! We first began with the issue of drug testing for our teachers and staff.
Immediately, most took to the argument that the teachers are responsible for the safety of large amounts of students, and so due to this responsibility, testing was a necessity for the welfare of the students. Furthermore, teachers should be role models in the classroom, and we need sober role models in today's decaying school districts.
Atop this, it was felt by the majority of our room that teachers' employers had a right to administer testing at any time, just as in any other job. Still there were those who felt it an invasion of privacy and even unconstitutional. Besides, what if the teacher was on cough medicine or prescribed drugs that caused a red flag in the tests? Should they lose their jobs due to an unsophisticated test?
Through our discussion, my room and I discovered for ourselves the true role that teachers play in our daily lives and how serious their jobs really are.
The next issue amassed the inner feelings of everybody, setting the mood for the rest of our debates. It was the ever-controversial issue of teaching abstinence and birth control in schools.
Those who said schools should do this felt that it has always been the duty and foundation of a school to provide information, and why should such an important piece of knowledge be excluded? However, the other half of my room argued that it was the place of the parent to instill the morals that accompany abstinence and birth control, and not the place of the school to interject.
On the other hand, there are those parents who do not take this responsibility, so should the school act on their behalf? Even when the debate turned to educating students of the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases and the harms of teen pregnancy, many still defended that the "sex" discussion should take place in the home.
Now with everybody's mind set on destroy, we moved to what would become the main topic for hours: racism. Does racism or prejudice affect students? An answer overwhelmingly boomed forth with an almost laughable unity, "Of course it does!"
From there on practically everybody in the room had their two cents to add to the swear jar, sharing stories, spreading hearsay and expressing their deep concerns about prejudice even existing at all. With almost no arguments, but feeling generally closer, we agreed to it that so long as there is culture in this world, there will always be fear of it, and so prejudice will not die in our lifetimes.
To move away from the ugly issue of hate, we addressed the topic of students having a dress code, inclusive of hair color and body markings. Many argued that self-expression should not be condemned, while others felt that school was an institution built for learning, and not solely meant for expression.
Though many of us didn't want to admit it, we came to the general conclusion that dress codes are needed to make some sort of standard, and the fact that they include hair color, hair length or tattoos may not be so bad after all.
While on the subject of rules in school, someone introduced the topic of the "zero tolerance policy" now in effect. This didn't entice as much discussion as did racism, but this too was a sensitive subject.
Schools need safety and often some strict rules to guide the stubborn, but at the same time some innocents are caught in the nets of the policy and suffer the same fate as the guilty. Again it became story time in our discussion group as many had something to share concerning the policy. And though most were against it for the fact that innocents suffer needlessly, again near the end of the discussion, we found it to be a necessary evil to preserve safety.
Though we discussed many issues under the topic of "School Days," the aforementioned are those that lasted the longest and had the most concentrated thought within them. To sum up my opinion of this year's Sun Youth Forum, it was a success!
My room and I enjoyed a rigorous series of debates that opened up entire worlds of thought to us, and I would like to thank my peers in the group for their company and commentary at the forum.
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