RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA : Students Tackle Issues Via TV Link

If there were any doubts that guns and violence have become a grim reality in schools around the country, students from Orange County had them resolved firsthand this week as they took part in a transcontinental classroom forum through the use of modern technology.

Thursday, 20 teen-agers from Santa Ana and Rancho Santa Margarita stared at the video images of students in Texas and South Carolina and were temporarily speechless. That didn’t last long. In minutes, the students were engaged with their counterparts thousands of miles away in vigorous debate over guns on campus and youth violence.

“This is wonderful,” said Randy McCord, faculty adviser for eight students from Santa Margarita Catholic School. “For me as a teacher, it’s fun because this isn’t a learning theory, this is a learning experience for them.”

For almost two hours, the discussion on guns and violence on campus linked students from the Rancho Santa Margarita private school, Century High School in Santa Ana, and high schools in Houston and Greenville, S.C.

Sitting in a video conference room at the Fluor Daniel Corp. in Irvine, the students first had to adjust to the strangeness of video technology. The out-of-state schools were also sitting in local Fluor Daniel teleconference rooms in their hometowns.

The images were sent electronically through telephone lines, creating a momentary delay between sound and picture that had lips moving just after the words were spoken.

But it didn’t take long for all the students to get used to talking to a television screen and the debate on guns in schools was lively. The local group disagreed strongly with students from Southside High School in South Carolina over random locker searches and stressing security guards over gun education.

“The people who bring guns to school do it to show off their power,” said Century High freshman Floyd Watson. “They do it to intimidate other kids. We should bring in people who were paralyzed by gun violence to be a positive influence.”

Shaking her head, an unidentified female student from Southside High said security guards are also needed. “There’s more than one solution to this problem. We’re going to wake up one day and realize that there is no magic solution,” she said.

A female student at Dulles High in Houston said she just wants the violence at her school to stop. “I would give up my right for privacy to be safe,” she said. “I’m afraid of guns at our school and I don’t want to wind up in the cross-fire.”

Last year, Santa Margarita Catholic School hooked up with Southside High to discuss racial issues. “We both had these stereotypes of each other that weren’t true,” said Brian Flock, a Santa Margarita sophomore who moderated the teleconference. “They thought we were a bunch of surfer dudes who hung out by the beach.”

Quickly, the stereotypes were tossed aside. “We just started talking about how to deal with racism,” Flock said. “They’re closer to the problem than us, but it just seemed like we could also see the problems.”