Youth Opinion : ‘Our Campus Has Been Really Divided on Proposition 187’

What are the hot issues on high-school campuses this year? JAMES BLAIR put that question to student newspaper editors.

CLAYTON BENNETT PAYNE

Senior, co-editor of the Mustang, San Dieguito High School, Encinitas

We have to be really careful now with some of our political cartoons because it seems everyone’s gotten really sensitive. Political correctness has gone beyond what I think decency is. The littlest thing will set someone off.

There was a cartoon drawn for a health story in the feature section talking about MSG and how it could be dangerous to your health and how lots of it can be used in Chinese food. There was a picture drawn for it of someone who was sick being dragged out of a Chinese restaurant. It was done in good humor and the artist had no idea that it could be taken wrong. The Asian community at our school got really offended and demanded an apology and threatened to fight to have us canceled. We are printing their letter in this issue.

CECILIA CASTANEDA

Senior, managing editor of the Lancer Scroll, Bell Gardens High School

The hottest issue before the elections was Proposition 187. We had a walkout. Since it is mostly a Latino school, most of the students saw that it would affect them, although most were ignorant of exactly what Proposition 187 was.

As the newspaper staff, we felt we should educate them. We dedicated a whole page just to students’ opinions, teachers’ opinions and two editorials--one pro and one con. We had a lot of facts and where students could get more information. A lot of students are undocumented and are concerned about their education and their future. Our next issue will have some follow-up information regarding what they can do.

JENNIFER Y. WHANG

Senior, editor-in-chief of the Smoke Signal, West High School, Torrance

In past years we’ve been able to leave campus for lunch. This year they took that away from us. The reason for this is there has been trouble from others, students not from our school. So now it’s a closed campus. Some people oppose it, say it’s crowded and we have to wait 30 minutes for lunch. But I think it’s actually good because we’re forced together and we have to make it work. We’ve been opening up intramural sports during lunch. We did a news story and one staffer did an opinion piece on the new policy.

SAMUEL ABORNE

Junior, business manager, The Shamrock, John F. Kennedy High School, La Palma

Our students are concerned about drugs. We ran a feature on pot and its use by, and affects on, students at Kennedy High School.

The administration found the article objectionable--the fact that we had pictures of marijuana plants, that we had student testimony on pot use at our high school, that we did demographics on who had tried it, why they tried it, when they tried it and how easy they thought it would be to obtain. The Shamrock conducted this survey in randomly selected classes.

The administration got scared at the survey results, which appeared to indicate high usage on campus. They don’t see why we covered it.

STEVEN WALSH

Senior, editor of Esperanza Aztlan, Esperanza High School, Anaheim

Overcrowding has got to be the main issue. We have major problems with class size, who’s going to be where, even problems seating people. At the Esperanza Aztlan we’ve tried to display the issue of overcrowding to the students. We’ve printed pictures and written articles about the numbers in each classroom and the difficulties the teachers have controlling that number of students.

GINA ALEXANDER

Senior, editor of La Serna Freelancer, La Serna High School, Whittier

Before the election the biggest issue was probably Proposition 187 because there’s a large immigrant community at my school, almost 15%. Now we are getting a lot of letters about the articles we had because everyone’s worried about it. A lot of people are still writing to ask questions and get their point across. Our campus has been really divided because there were a lot of Republicans who were totally for Pete Wilson and the proposition. Then there were all the people who might have to leave if it was passed. We had a whole section on it. Everyone was out to say how they felt about it. Everyone wanted to get their message across.