That Think You Do!

As leaders, they know you shouldn’t ask others to do something you wouldn’t do yourself. But in this case, they hope the electorate will make an exception.

In a twist in get-the-vote-out campaigns, a group of local high school students--almost all too young to vote--will lead hundreds of classmates across Orange County on Saturday to encourage apathy-prone elders to pull the lever in November.

Given that some county pollsters are predicting a low turnout akin to the 1988 Bush-Dukakis election, which drew only 60% of eligible county voters, the energetic youth are prepared to urge couch potatoes to rise up and cast their ballots.

“I will tell them I would feel like not voting too. I will tell them everyone feels that way,” says Charlene Sargeant, a Garden Grove High School student, a year away from being able to vote. “But if no one votes, then nothing changes.”

The Get Out the Vote Blowout is the first in a series of community service projects to be undertaken by a core group of 50 high school students, recent graduates of the Knowledge and Social Responsibility program. Co-sponsored by UC Irvine and the Orange County Chapter of the National Conference, the 10-day leadership training program stresses diversity, critical thinking, and resolving societal ills.

The students, selected from more than 100 applicants, represent some of the most accomplished high school teens in the county. The students, hailing from 26 different schools, include valedictorians, varsity letter athletes, class presidents, advanced musicians, newspaper editors and community volunteers.

“These are the best and the brightest of Orange County,” says Bill Shane, head of the local chapter of the National Conference.

The Orange County Chapter of the National Conference revived the Knowledge and Social Responsibility program this summer after it was discontinued five years ago because of leadership changes and shifts in the organization’s priorities. The National Conference, founded in 1927 as the National Conference of Christians and Jews, is a human-relations organization that seeks to fight bigotry and racism in America.

When Shane took over more than a year ago, he immediately lined up sponsors and reinstated the program, which first ran from 1985-1991. Shane chose the presidential election as a way for students to practice what they had learned over the summer--and to send a message to the community.

“There is a commonly accepted myth that young people are not interested in currents events, not concerned with important social issues and are afraid of hard work,” says Shane, 44. “These students . . . blow away that myth.”

About 300 students, recruited by program graduates, will meet at 9 a.m. at Chapman University for a couple of hours’ training and discussion before the nonpartisan project. Afterward, the students will fan out in their neighborhoods and remind voters of the Nov. 5 election, inform them of their polling places and offer absentee ballots.

The voting project also reflects the spirit of community service and cooperation generated by this summer’s program, Shane says.

“After the program, I felt like going out and changing the world,” says Taku Nishi 16, a senior at Laguna Hills High School. “I see this project as a great beginning. I want to let people know--especially young people--that if you come together, it’s possible to change things.”

Nishi and the other high school students explored a range of social issues, including poverty and violence, gender questions, racism and multiculturalism. They began their intellectually demanding days at 7:15 a.m. and officially ended them at 11 p.m., though debates often pushed bedtime into the early morning hours.

In between, the students read, kept journals and attended lectures, workshops, seminars on everything from “Scapegoating Teenagers: Violence, Drugs, Sex and the Media” to “A Common Sorrow: Belfast, Jerusalem, and Johannesburg.”

“We call it the boot camp of the mind,” says UCI Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez, who has lectured at past Knowledge and Social Responsibility sessions. “It catches students when they are at a very important stage in their life when they are beginning to understand themselves. . . . It can literally transform them.”

Count Nishi among the transformed. Not that the young man, whose hero is Martin Luther King Jr. and who’s met and has exchanged letters with U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, needed an overhaul of his social conscience.

But the program sharpened Nishi’s idealism, which last year led him to organize a campaign to buy a seriously ill child access to a dialysis machine. Nishi, who left a job as a translator for a Japanese media during the Atlanta Olympics to attend the program, credits the intensive 10-day experience for instilling a greater sense of hope into his community service.

“After the program, I realized that simple things cannot only change one person’s life, but a whole group of people,” says Nishi, whose brushes with racism prompted him to sign up for the program. “There’s a ripple effect to these things.”

For senior Rebecca Sharkansky, the program exposed her to a world beyond the walls of Dana Hills High School. The 17-year-old girl, who has received all A’s and only two B’s (both in honors courses), was especially touched by a talk given by a Catholic priest from East Los Angeles.

Father Gregory Boyle, who has gained media attention for his extensive anti-gang efforts, told the Orange County students that to gang members, jail is preferable to the the grimness of poverty.

“It’s not that the gangbangers are bad people, that’s not the reason they do these things,” Sharkansky says. “It’s because they have no hope. If I were in their situation, I’d probably be on a suicidal trip too.”

During the program, students were forced to look inward as well. Gender differences sparked the most heated discussions, many students recalled. They were asked to discuss feminism and what it means to the different sexes.

“When the guys answered, they thought feminism was anti-men. We kind went on the attack,” says Charlene Sargeant, who adds that females outnumbered males 3 to 1 in her discussion group. “The counselor had to tell us to slow down. . . . I think we intimidated the guys a little.”

Some of the males agree.

“It was hard to speak out [about feminist issues],” Nishi says. “We tried to be so careful, and we didn’t want to say anything that would offend the girls. . . . But it seemed we ended up upsetting them anyway.”

Program organizers say when such discussions, though uncomfortable, are pursued, they often lead to greater understanding--something sorely needed in society.

“It helps young people break through stereotypes and cross arbitrary boundaries that we set up around each other’s differences,” Gomez says. “The bedrock lesson students come to understand is that they have far more similarities than differences.”