Sun looking for past participants in Youth Forum

sheila@lasvegassun.com

Friday, Oct. 29, 2004 | 7:21 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

October 30 - 31, 2004

The Las Vegas Sun Youth Forum, which has given generations of Southern Nevada teenagers the opportunity to share their views on a range of local, national and world topics, will celebrate its 50th anniversary in November, 2005.

For the golden anniversary, the Sun wants to make contact with the hundreds of former local students who over the last six decades have written Sun columns or, in more recent years, have written columns for the CLASS! student newspaper or appeared on a televised discussion panel.

The annual event draws more than 1,000 students from Southern Nevada high schools who are chosen, because of their academic excellence, to participate in discussion groups. Each discussion group selects a representative who either writes a column or appears on local TV.

Started in 1956 by late Sun Publisher Hank Greenspun, the forum has produced opinions on topics ranging from the significance of popular music on society to whether teens should marry to segregation in schools to the war of a particular era. The project has been honored and copied nationwide.

"We are on an archeological dig into the opinions of young people," said Brian Cram, director of the Greenspun Family Foundation and a former longtime superintendent of Clark County Schools who has been associated with the Sun Youth Forum for more than 35 years.

"Hank Greenspun believed that the right of free speech was guaranteed to everyone and that the young should not be excluded. And Hank also stuck up for the little guy. So we want to hear from all of our past column writers or TV panelists -- both those who achieved fame and the little guys whom Hank championed."

Stories about past Sun Youth Forum columnists or TV panelists and their opinions -- both then and now -- will be compiled into a brochure and a Sun newspaper supplement commemorating the Sun Youth Forum's milestone anniversary, Cram said.

If you are a former Sun Youth Forum columnist or TV panelist, a relative, a school alumni association official or anyone else who has knowledge of the whereabouts of the former students who represented the best and brightest young minds in Southern Nevada, please contact the Las Vegas Sun at (702) 259-4150 or send emails to sheila@lasvegassun.com.