New Songs in a Rush of Young Voices

My source material is missing. It’s still somewhere in San Luis Obispo, I fear, buried inside a dumpster at the Cal Poly campus, if not already at the local dump.

I should have been more careful. I’d collected these rough nuggets of teen-age prose for a purpose, but at some point in the frenzy of our little graduation celebration, of packing up and checking out of Santa Lucia Hall, I’d set them on a table and, a few hours and a couple of hundred miles later, realized I’d left them behind. I hope that Shay, Diane, Ryan and Kelly--especially Kelly--accept my heartfelt apologies.

They were four of the 25 high school students who gathered for two weeks of journalism training under the auspices of the California Scholastic Press Assn. (CSPA)--the same mom-and-pop workshop I attended at age 16. The mom and pop passed away long ago, but much of the faculty, all volunteers, is intact. This was my eighth summer back teaching--and the first I entered feeling certain moral qualms.

It’s not that I’ve come to equate newspapering with pimping, drug dealing, lawyering or other occupations widely held in disrepute. What I wondered is this: Is it morally defensible to encourage teen-agers to pursue a career in a shrinking field?

*

So it was in this downbeat spirit that I drove to San Luis Obispo for six days of mind molding. What had once been a sojourn suddenly seemed more like a schlep .

It didn’t help that they seemed so bright, so eager, as eager as I was 22 summers before. And they were such a nice bunch of kids that it became my mantra--”such a nice bunch of kids.” No, it didn’t seem fair to lead them down this path.

But old habits die hard, and so do some sentimental beliefs.

So I got out my video of “The Thin Blue Line,” Errol Morris’ 1988 documentary about a Dallas murder case. This film proved so persuasive that it led to the exoneration of a hitchhiker wrongly convicted of murdering a police officer and sentenced to life in a Texas prison. I show it to give 16-year-olds some idea of how an investigative reporter might pursue a story--and as a dramatic example of how, once in a while, good journalism is capable of righting wrongs.

Another class concerned column writing. I chose a few of mine I thought might appeal to high schoolers. One was about how everybody ignores the 55-m.p.h. speed limit. Another concerned this spring’s drive-by slaying at the Fallbrook Mall. (One of my students, it turned out, was a friend of a friend of the 16-year-old victim, Ramtin Shaolian.)

The assignment was to write a column based solely on their memory, reasoning and creativity. There was no time for research. They could write about anything--but I wanted them to keep in mind that they’d be writing, at least theoretically, for thousands of readers. (I didn’t want anything too personal.)

There were some funny pieces, but I found myself drawn to stories written by Shay, Diane, Ryan and Kelly. All shared the theme of loss. I wish I could quote them for you, but I’m left to rely on memory, just as the students had to rely on theirs.

Shay wrote a story about a childhood friend who came from an unloving, abusive home and sought shelter with Shay’s family, but had moved away. Diane wrote about a friend who drifted into a haze of alcohol and drugs. Ryan wrote of a friend, a child prodigy and fellow guitarist. The boy had once inspired Ryan by telling him how, with his glasses, he resembled Eric Clapton. A few months ago, Ryan’s friend was killed in an auto accident.

Kelly’s story was tougher. She had written a single page. She remembered Kevin’s eyes, his smile, especially his laugh. Her brother, just a year her junior, was 13 years old when he was shot to death in a firearms accident at a friend’s house. Two years had passed since then.

I had told my charges that a good column may impart a message, a moral. Kelly alluded to gun control, but only briefly. What matters most, Kelly wrote, was remembering Kevin.

With a red pen I marked up her column and then paused. We were supposed to grade the assignments from zero to 100. But how, I wondered, could this story be reduced to a numerical value?

And how, I ask myself now, could I have left these papers behind?

*

I gave Kelly a score of 90 and wished she had written a little bit more. She was one of the quiet students. At the workshop picnic, I made a point of speaking with her, to tell her that I might want to quote her story. And I encouraged her to write about Kevin for her high school paper, if she felt so inclined. Kelly said that, yes, she planned to do that, someday.

So what’s the moral of this story? Truth is, I’m really not sure, but before I left San Luis Obispo, I found myself encouraging other students to keep plugging away. It just seems that we’ll never run out of stories that need telling, so there will always be a need for people to tell them.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311. Please include a phone number. Address TimesLink or Prodigy e-mail to YQTU59A ( via the Internet: YQTU59A@prodigy.com).