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Forum addresses
ways to better serve youth needs
According to the more than 200 parents, students, school
staff and community members who gathered in the Yellow Springs High School
gym Monday night, the village still needs to focus on bridging the gap
between adults and youth. And youth also need to be given their independence
and learn responsibility in the face of tough topics such as pregnancy,
drugs and alcohol.
The community’s second youth forum in a month,
initiated by Yellow Springs High School and McKinney School Principal John
Gudgel, focused on proactive ways to work with the community’s youth
and only peripherally addressed the recent tragedy involving two former
high school students, Tim Lopez and Michael Rittenhouse. Last week Rittenhouse
was charged with the murder of Lopez, who had been missing two years.
Gudgel read a letter of appreciation to the community
from Rittenhouse’s family and then called for a moment of silence
for both of the boys and their families. But trying to keep the meeting
positive and productive, he opened the floor for a discussion about working
with youth in the community.
The large group discussion
Adults, who outnumbered youth, dominated the cordless
microphone being passed around as they talked about ways in which the different
generations of Yellow Springers can connect and understand each other. Many
people encouraged adults and parents to get more involved with young people
and exchange both skills and ideas through a mentoring or apprenticeship
program.
“One parent getting to know one kid, there’s
a magic in communication and getting to know one another,” parent
Patti Dallas said.
Several people encouraged parents to spend time
with their children, talk to them daily and ask them how their day went.
YSHS student Kecia Favors said that kids are comfortable
spending time with their parents but that it had to be something that kids
want to do. She also said that she sometimes feels uneasy being watched
by Yellow Springs police and being judged too strictly by the community.
Another student, Jamie Stallworth, said the police
didn’t bother him but that the News must provide more accurate reporting
about stories involving youth.
Parent Ali Thomas said that she felt the whole discussion
was judgmental and that if she were a young person she would be angry. Just
because youth aren’t expressing their anger directly doesn’t
mean they aren’t feeling it, she said.
Some discussed what they perceived as community
deficits, such as adults’ inability to listen to youth and allow them
to express the truth, as Spanish teacher Kathryn Burkland put it.
Participants addressed the subject of drugs and
alcohol not only as an issue for youth but also for adults who either use
substances and don’t talk about it with their children or have an
addiction and don’t address it.
Parent Abby Cobb urged parents to invite their children
to their parties and to talk about alcohol and marijuana with their children,
especially if adults are using it at home. Another person suggested that
adults needed to look in the mirror and be better role models for youth
in their interactions with each other.
“Is pot legal here? Because it kind of seems
like it might be,” said Chris Roberts, who co-owns Caboose Bike and
Skate.
Youth want to and do take risks every day in school
theater productions or on the soccer field, school board member Mary Campbell-Zopf
said. But if there are no positive risk-taking opportunities youth will
turn to negative risks, such as crime and getting pregnant. She suggested
mapping out the positive and negative opportunities for youth to build confidence,
to be independent and to have fun.
“It’s difficult, but I think we can be
a youth-centered community,” she said.
For years the community has batted around ideas
about creating a space in town where youth can hang out, 1992 YSHS graduate
Paloma Dallas said. Others said they were tired of all talk and no action,
but several youth and a few adults still supported the idea of creating
a space.
Louise Smith, director of the Antioch College theater
program, suggested creating an art, performance and poetry reading cafe
space run by youth, something like the C-shop on the Antioch campus.
YSHS senior Martin Borchers is using his senior
project to try to create a youth gathering space, and he led a small group
discussion following the meeting about ways to begin the process. Students
suggested the bowling alley on U.S. 68 or the vacant Center Stage.
Other adults cautioned that youth might not want
a dedicated space set up for them or might reject a space created by adults.
How would the space be cared for, some asked, and would those who really
need the support use it? More important than simply having a space for youth,
YSHS girls basketball coach Shirley Cummins said, was giving students room
to learn to be responsible and to organize themselves for the things they
want.
Some students still like the Corry Street municipal
parking lot, where they have gathered downtown for nearly a decade to hang
out, talk and be themselves. Some parents agreed it was a good place for
youth to be, out in the open but independent enough to feel welcoming.
Though community members have complained about vandalism
in the parking lot, students said blaming the group for the mischievous
actions of a very few was unfair. Roberts said the students who gather in
the parking lot in front of her business don’t cause trouble for her
and she doesn’t bother them either.
The discussion was accented by action-oriented suggestions
by several participants. Monica Hasek and Robert Hasek, who works at the
News, are opening a yoga studio on Dayton Street this spring and suggested
their teen yoga classes could help both girls and boys deal with stress
and anxiety. Parent Judith Hempfling said that involving students in the
school administrative process would give them a greater sense of responsibility
and empower them to take on leadership roles.
Many more people had things to add to the big group
discussion, but it ended after an hour and a half to leave time for smaller
group meetings.
Small group discussions
Several students and community members led smaller
groups in discussions on topics such as a police advisory group, led by
Yellow Springs Police Chief Carl Bush; youth listening groups, led by local
resident Don Wallis; Martin Borchers’s project to create a gathering
space for youth; and a high school parent-teacher organization led by Pam
Conine, the lead teacher at McKinney.
About 13 adults and 11 eighth-graders joined Borchers’s
group and offered many suggestions and a lot of enthusiasm. However, again,
in a task group focused on youth issues, the discussion was dominated by
a larger group of adults gathered around Borchers and a smaller, more peripheral
group of youth sitting off to one side.
Students Anna Forster and Rose Pelzl said that Center
Stage was a perfect place for a teen center because it was centralized and
near a source of snack foods. But students need to be given the freedom
to organize and run it, they said, meaning adults need to trust youth to
create the space and maintain it.
Student Emile Fleming said the project should include
as many student voices as possible to allow students of all ages and backgrounds
to feel comfortable using a common space.
Parent Gary Zaremsky suggested that students address
three things concurrently, including what the students wanted, how to get
it and how to keep it. Parents Lynn Wood and Eric Miller suggested that
project leaders should conduct a youth survey and perhaps require membership
standards so that entry of out-of-towners is controlled.
Borchers wanted to make clear that he did not begin
this project in order to alleviate youth problems or steer them away from
hanging out in the Corry Street parking lot. The new space would be just
one more option, an indoor one, where youth could go to listen to music
and hang out, he said.
“This is just another place where people can
go, it’s not the answer,” Borchers said.
—Lauren Heaton |
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