Meeting Seeks to Focus Spotlight on Youth Issues

Teen-agers and youth experts gathered at UCLA this weekend in an attempt to catapult youths’ problems, including drug and alcohol use, teen pregnancy and unemployment, onto the agenda of the presidential candidates.

“None of these problems are really being discussed in the campaign. Candidates are focusing on media-driven issues,” said Stan Salett, chairman of the Youth Policy Institute, the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that organized the two-day forum.

Organizers said they hope that the discussions will be used to help develop party platforms on youth issues when the Democratic and Republican conventions are held this summer. The forum’s speakers included Reps. Mervyn M. Dymally (D-Compton) and Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove); state Superintendent of Instruction Bill Honig; media executives; students, and leaders of various youth agencies.

Lauri Hendler, a young actress and a forum panelist, urged young people to learn a lesson from the lobbying talents of senior citizens. “The Gray Panthers have gotten their issues out to the forefront,” she told the gathering of 50 people. “It’s time for the youth to do the same.”

But Kenneth C. Green, associate director of UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute, was skeptical that young people can command the same type of attention from politicians. Green and other UCLA professors have surveyed the changing attitudes of college freshmen for 20 years.

“Whatever college students are thinking, it doesn’t make much difference,” Green said. “You don’t vote and you don’t pay taxes. . . . Politicians don’t have to pay attention to them.”