Woodland Hills : Campus Rally Strives to Promote Peace

Many of the students milling around the quad Monday at El Camino Real High School seemed oblivious to sophomore Jennifer Haft, who stood at the podium praising slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

They hung in their usual cliques, eating sack lunches, gossiping, laughing, paying scant attention to the noontime rally to promote world peace organized weeks ago by student groups. However, Jennifer continued undaunted, her amplified voice echoing off the quad walls.

Afterward, Jennifer said that students’ apparent lack of interest is evidence “that they are not aware of what’s going on in the world.” The student said she had been shocked by Rabin’s death and wanted to do something to honor “the greatest man that ever lived.”

Jim Centorino, a science teacher at the Woodland Hills school who helped organize the rally, said it was designed to give students hope.

“It’s something positive in a world that seems to be all negative,” he said. It was inspired, he said, by a friend, British naturalist Jane Goodall, who organized various peace events around the world over the weekend.

“We want to help the students so they won’t feel overwhelmed,” Centorino said. “There are some positive things that we can do and this is one of them.”

One student who stayed away from the rally said she was skeptical that world peace will ever come.

“I see no point,” said sophomore Tierra Norman. “What can a school do? It would take God” to bring world peace.

Senior Meghan Lambert, one of the rally organizers, had another theory about the low turnout. “Some of the students think that anything that has anything to do with the school is stupid.”