VENTURA : What’s With Helmet Law? Students Ask

State Sen. Jack O’Connell wanted to talk about presidential politics Friday, but the antsy sixth-graders at Anacapa Middle School had a more pressing issue to pursue: What’s up with the helmet law?

The questions came as O’Connell visited two Ventura schools, urging high school students to participate in the democratic process and explaining the need for the law requiring helmets for young bicycle riders.

O’Connell (D-Carpinteria) stopped first at Ventura High School, where the students were gathered in an auditorium to nominate two candidates for a school election.

Their nominating convention is an “innovative, creative lesson in democracy,” said O’Connell, a former teacher.

Instead of representing states, as do the delegations to the national conventions of the two major parties, the Ventura High students represented different decades in the 20th Century. Some wore gaudy fashions from the 1960s, for example, while other sported derbies, spats and other garb from the 1920s.

“Your participation in a democratic form of government, from registering to vote to getting out to vote, is so important to our way of life,” O’Connell told the students in a short keynote address.

“You need to be involved, you need to be educated . . . so you will be a well-informed voter and citizen,” he said.

Jeff Mattesich, 17, the student president, said he was impressed by O’Connell’s appearance. And he said the senator gave an important message to students.

“We have about 1,700 students in this school, and last year we got about 600 people to vote” in student elections, Jeff said. “It’s really a wake-up call for students to get out and vote.”

Later in the day, O’Connell visited 35 sixth-graders in a class taught by Karen Biedebach at Anacapa Middle School. O’Connell talked about his job in the state capital and answered a student’s question about whether Gov. Pete Wilson would run for President in 1996.

O’Connell said the governor might turn up as a vice presidential candidate, Biedebach reported. But the issue most students were interested in was a law that requires youngsters to wear helmets while riding bicycles, she said.

“He told them it was necessary for safety reasons,” Biedebach said.

O’Connell had one other message for students:

“He told them to work hard and pay attention to their teacher, which I appreciated a lot,” she said.