Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Forum for the future

Friday, Nov. 29, 2002 | 8:55 a.m.

LET'S TALK turkey.

I've always wanted to write that, and in the middle of this Thanksgiving weekend it seems an appropriate use of the phrase because there is something I want to discuss that is important to our community. It is called the Las Vegas Sun Youth Forum. Its importance is embodied in the name.

Last Tuesday close to 1,000 of Clark County's best, brightest and most ambitious high school students gathered together at the Las Vegas Convention Center to participate in the 46th Sun Youth Forum. Started in 1956 by my father, Hank Greenspun, and the first director of the Youth Forum, Ruthe Deskin, this annual gathering of the cream of Clark County's future has won national acclaim and local support for almost half a century. The reason is simple. It works.

Almost 50 years ago, Las Vegas was a city in its infancy. The rules were being made up as we went along, mostly because many of the people calling the shots came from places where rules, if they had them, didn't matter and norms were not normal. The result was young people were seen and still not heard, even though they should have had as much to say about their budding future in this brand-new city as anyone. After all, they would be the first inheritors of the Las Vegas experiment.

My father, probably frustrated at the backward thinking of the city elders and exasperated at their head-in-the-sand attitudes about practically everything, believed that high school seniors --- many of whose predecessors went off to World War II and the Korean War just a few years earlier -- should have a say in what matters most to them.

That's when he decided to start the Las Vegas Sun Youth Forum. Its sole purpose was to bring together young people in an environment that allowed them to speak and required their parents to listen. From that first forum in 1956, when some 96 students from the area's handful of high schools came together, the results have spoken for themselves. Whether it was the mayor, the sheriff or even the governor, youthful voices were heard and, most importantly, taken seriously.

Much has happened since that time. My father is no longer here. Ruthe has retired, sort of -- you can still read her common sense column every week in the Sun -- and those early Youth Forum participants have all grown up, had careers and children -- many of whom also participated in Youth Forums -- and return each year as adult moderators. It is a continuum that ensures the next generation an opportunity to be able to learn and grow from a similar experience.

Of course, it no longer is a few dozen young people in a room. Today, with the full partnership of the Clark County School District and, especially, Sandy Ginger, high schools fight for the chance to send increasing numbers of students to Forum day. High school advisers claim the Youth Forum is a highlight of the year both for their students and for them because it gives them a chance to do that for which they work -- guide the ambitious and the qualified toward better futures.

Today the students fill the meeting rooms at the Convention Center to discuss what is on their minds. To be sure, there are some young people who are still a bit shy about expressing themselves. There are some who, when they do say something, travel far beyond what one would call mainstream thought. And there are some students who possess such confidence in themselves and their opinions that they come to the Forum initially unable to hear the ideas and opinions of others.

When they are done, though, the shy ones are speaking out. Those on the fringes have moderated. And those who couldn't hear others have learned to listen. While what they have to say is clearly important, it is often more rewarding to watch them grow in just those few short hours.

I have been interviewing high school students who want to go to Georgetown University for over 25 years. I remarked a couple of weeks ago that this year's hopefuls are so bright, so accomplished and so mature compared to years past that I wondered if it was an aberration. I learned this week that it is not. Students across the board are bettered prepared, more thoughtful in their words, more considerate in their actions and more interested in what is going on in the world around them.

Do we have a few more cynics than last year? Yes. But that is no different from society at large. But what we also seem to have are more people willing to step up, take charge and try to find better ways to accomplish that which we adults have so far been unable to get done. I found my students to be very much aware of events surrounding their lives and more than willing to seek compromise-based solutions. That puts them way ahead of their parents.

The good news for everyone in our community and the politicians around the state is that in the next few weeks what we learned last Tuesday will be available to all. Each group elected one of their peers to summarize their findings. The students will share those views in one of three ways. They will appear on UNLV-TV, write columns for the student magazine, CLASS, and share this space during the holiday season.

The students have spoken and now it is our time to hear what they have to say. It will make better adults of each of us.