CHATSWORTH : Student Wins Award for Anti-Crime Essay

If you want to know how to make schools safer for kids, just ask Tram Nguyen, a seventh-grader at Mulholland Middle School in Van Nuys.

She won first place in a contest for the best essay on how to stop violence in Los Angeles schools.

“I think schools should be a safe place,” Tram said. “I watch the news a lot on TV about other schools, how kids get shot, and I think, ‘This could happen at my school.’ ”

The “Raise Your Voices Against Violence” contest, open to sixth- through 12th-graders attending West Valley public schools, drew 300 entries, said Gloria Pollack, education coordinator for Cablevision Industries in Chatsworth, which helped organize the contest.

“Tram had very mature thinking for a seventh-grader,” Pollack said. “A lot of students just wrote what violence is; we wanted them to tell us what they would do about it.”

Tram, of Encino, wrote in her essay that schools should create more after-school activities for children, to keep them out of trouble. “These kinds of activities keep them from getting high on drugs,” she said, “and enable them to show everyone how good they are.”

Students responsible for graffiti, she said, should be forced to remove it--on their own time. “If they do graffiti,” she wrote, “they should pay the price for the other kids who suffer looking at the dirty and disgusting bathrooms and walls.”

She also would establish self-defense classes for children so they can learn to protect themselves, she said. “I think that school is a place to get an education, not to get hurt or killed.”

Runners-up were Erin Smith, an eighth-grader at Sutter Middle School; Natalie Perillo, an eighth-grader at Holmes Middle School; Joseph Tsiang, an 11th-grader at Cleveland High School, and Stephanie Greenberg, a 10th-grader at El Camino Real High School.

Pollack said each will receive a $100 U.S. savings bond.

Tram will receive a $250 savings bond and a one-year free subscription to the cable company’s basic service, plus The Movie Channel and The Disney Channel, Pollack said. All five, she said, have been invited to the cable company’s production studio, where they will be videotaped reading their winning entries.

“I feel good, because maybe my essay can help people with school,” Tram said. “And maybe it can lead to a future for every kid not to use drugs and join gangs. It would really make them think about it.”