Students Lead WNET Teen Conference
By Marie Holmes

An African-American student and his friends were harassing an Asian-American student in the cafeteria, making fun of the student’s limited English proficiency. One African-American student called the Asian-American student by a nasty racial epithet, the Asian-American student responded in kind, and physical violence ensued. The school newspaper responded to the incident with a series of articles in which students celebrated their unique cultural heritages. The articles were accompanied by a collage, which, after the paper had gone to print, was found to contain the same kinds of hateful phrases that sparked the first conflict.

You are a student. You are a teacher. You are the principal. What do you do?

“I don’t know! I’m tired,” superintendent-of-the-day Terrie Williams cried out in exasperation.

Ms. Williams was one of eight students and professional adults on the Ethics Forum Panel, moderated by Professor Charles Ogletree of Harvard Law, who debated hypothetical situations that touched upon very real issues. The panel discussion was one of several opportunities that high-school students had to discuss issues of diversity and bias at Thirteen/WNET’s Teen Leadership Day.

“I feel that we need to break down stereotypes that many of us have about each other,” said Joliz Cedeno, a senior at Beacon HS. “We need to relate to each other and respect each other for who we are.”

The students did not hesitate to confront complex and controversial topics, from affirmative action to the use of Osama Bin Laden’s image.

“We raise these issues so you can talk about them,” Professor Ogletree told the audience, “ but you go back to school on Monday – one day is not enough.”

“Part of the goal is to get them really jazzed up so that they go back to the schools and really infect the student body,” explained Macenje “Che Che” Mazoka, Director of Youth Outreach at Channel 13.

With the help of mini-grants from Channel 13, some schools have gone on to hold similar conferences within their own districts. Lynne Feldman, a teacher at Northern Highlands regional HS in NJ, attended last year’s conference with a group of students who decided to apply for one of the mini-grants to sponsor a peer-mentoring program for 8th grade students coming into their high-school. But then the world changed.

“We found out that we had won the mini-grant on September 11th,” says Feldman.

The brother of one of her students, Johanna, was one of the heroes of Flight 193. Johanna and the other students started thinking that they wanted to use the grant money to do something more along the lines of “character education,” and after the President created the Freedom Corps, the students decided to create their own Teen Freedom Corps. Their chapter will be dedicated to Johanna’s brother.#

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