Friday, Dec. 27, 2019 | 2 a.m.
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Editor’s note:
For 63 years, the Sun Youth Forum has given Las Vegas teens an opportunity to discuss the important issues of their day with their peers from high schools across the valley.
But the event isn’t just for students — it also provides the community a glimpse of how the young people of Las Vegas feel about current events and what improvements they would like to see in their city, their state, their nation and their world.
This year’s version of the forum drew more than 1,000 students from 52 schools to the Las Vegas Convention Center, where they were divided into discussions in seven topic areas — Law and Crime, America, Around the World, School Days, Home in Nevada, Teen Topics and Potpourri. Afterward, a student representative was selected from each group to report to the community about their discussions through local media.
This week, the Sun is presenting a series about the forum based on interviews with student representatives from across the topic areas.
Here’s what we feel the community can learn from this group.
They could teach political leaders — and all of us — how to have a compassionate and constructive discussion on immigration.
In Amelia Norman’s Around the World room, immigration initially prompted the same sort of tribalism that so often characterizes the national discussion of the issue, from Congress all the way to family dinner tables.
“It was a very divisive,” said Norman, a Foothill senior. “There were certain people who believed immigration should be limited and was harmful.”
The dynamic changed when an immigrant student from Tijuana, Mexico, entered the discussion.
“She stood up in the middle of the room, which no one had done, and became teary-eyed, saying that people do deserve an opportunity and that she was very hurt that the room had been discussing the topic in such a cold, clinical manner,” Norman said. “She said there was more that went into it — these were people’s lives.”
The discussion from that point veered away from political arguments to the human level, focusing on the damages caused by family separations at the border and by a system that disadvantages immigrants trying to obtain visas or asylum while trying to escape violence in their home countries.
“A lot of times in politics, people become too focused on being right and proving other people wrong,” Norman said. “But (the immigrant student’s) statement, her personal feelings on the matter, brought everyone to the table to realize, ‘OK, regardless of our position on this, there is a flaw in the system that needs to be addressed.’
“So by the end of the conversation, the consensus was in favor of immigration reform — decreasing the court clog by increasing the number of judges and lawyers available to legal immigrants and asylum applicants, changes to the visa system to make it easier for immigrants to apply and get results, etc.”
They see a critical need for more mental health services in schools.
Several students said their schools needed on-site psychologists to provide them with confidential, professional services. Current counselors can’t provide that level of support, they said, which is alarming in a state where suicides among teens and children are rising — from 15 in 2017 to 27 in 2018, according to state officials.
“Two kids in my room talked about how they had suicidal thoughts and were told to go to their counselors,” said Tate Nowell, a senior at Bishop Gorman. “But the school had brought that to the attention of their parents, and their parents were part of the reason for their mental health issues. So bringing it up to their parents wasn’t beneficial to them.”
Nowell said the lack of school psychologists unfairly affects low-income students whose families may struggle to afford private services.
Students said the need is propelled by an array of issues affecting teens, including social media dynamics and cyberbullying.
“Social media only shows the happy parts of someone’s life and not the bad parts, which creates this false (perception) that life is always supposed to be happy and translates into, ‘Their life seems to be perfect, so why can’t mine be?’ ” Nowell said. “And it makes bullying easier. In school, we’re taught that if you see a bully, don’t be a bystander but be active instead — go say something and stick up for that person. But when it’s over the internet or social media, it’s hard for a bystander to stand up for somebody, especially because it’s not face to face.”
Spencer Dee, a senior a Spring Valley, said psychological services also would benefit students feeling intense pressure to perform — those taking advanced placement or International Baccalaureate classes, for instance, or those extensively involved in extracurricular activities such as performing arts or sports.
Spring Valley senior Andres Carrasco said short-term options were to place stress-relief dogs in schools, and to beef up the district’s staff of social workers and provide them with incentives to stay in the profession.
“They deal with people on a regular basis and understand the issues better than some counselors do,” Carrasco said.
They’re bursting with ideas about how to improve schools. Here are a few samples.
Give students a say in the evaluation of teachers. Dee said the Clark County School District gives students an annual survey to address issues about the school environment. Do they feel safe? Is the climate control system working? And so on. But he said students in his School Days group proposed adding teacher evaluations to the survey to help the district weed out underperforming faculty members. “What we see is that some students are more prepared than others after graduation,” he said. “But that should not be a matter of who has a better teacher or who lives in a better environment — everybody should be given the same opportunity.” But what protection would teachers have from being unfairly evaluated by students for simply holding them to high standards? Dee smiled. “It’s true, at one point we think teachers aren’t demanding enough, then maybe we think they’re too demanding. So that takes time and practice and fine-tuning that teacher survey form.”
In addressing police brutality, Nowell’s group proposed educating students on how to comport themselves if pulled over or arrested. Tips to drivers would include putting driver’s licenses and registration papers on the dash before an officer came to the window, then keeping their hands on the steering wheel. “We talked about not only teaching how to be respectful to the police, but what to expect on your end about the respect you deserve,” Nowell said.
