Students Add a Voice to Weighty Issue

Students in Rob Collins’ government classes--who debated Friday whether President Clinton should be impeached--aren’t old enough to vote. But they are already cynical about politics.

Lying and cheating are facts of life for children of the 1980s, children reared amid broken homes and tabloid television.

“It’s not that big of a deal,” senior Ryan Marks said about the president’s predicament. “Go watch Jerry Springer. It’s the same thing every day.”

Although most students said they don’t particularly care for Clinton’s relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, the affair wasn’t anything out of the ordinary--or even anybody’s business, many said. And nothing in independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s weighty report merits ousting the president, a majority said.

Collins’ four government and U.S. history classes at Simi Valley High School spent their 55-minute periods hashing out the central question facing the country today: Should the president be removed from office?

In straw polls following lively debates, students voted by more than a 3-2 margin to let the president keep his job. Overall, 68 voted no, 42 voted yes and 13 were undecided.

Arguments in favor of impeaching Clinton were absolutist: opinion polls aside, he lied. That alone, students said, is enough to get rid of the nation’s leader.

“For him to have lied under oath, that is completely inexcusable,” said senior Mary Bowen, who argued for impeachment.

But those who opposed impeachment were more utilitarian. He has done more to help our country than to hurt it, some said.

“The economy has never been better and the affair is not enough to impeach him,” senior David Miller said.

Earlier in the week Collins asked for six volunteers from each class to conduct the debate, three on each side. The debaters spent the next few days studying news accounts, downloading Starr’s report from the Internet and studying the charges.

Collins asked all the students to stay focused on determining whether the president should be impeached.

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“I don’t want to get into a lot of detail on Clinton and Monica’s sex life. . . . Let’s stay focused on the topic,” Collins told his fourth-period class before the debate began.

After each side presented the arguments, students fired away with questions and comments.

Like many adults whose views are reflected in national polls, some asserted the president’s private life is nobody’s business but his own--and Hillary’s.

“Would you be that open to talk about your sex life?” senior Michael Roeder asked.

Bowen responded by saying Clinton had promised to be honest with the country when he took office.

“Perjury is a crime, whether you are the president or just some bum on the street,” she said.

But everyone tells lies and many commit adultery, senior Wes Schmidt argued.

“It’s just what happens,” he said. “It’s human nature.”

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Collins believes the resigned attitude shown by many of his students reflects what they have seen in the media: entertainment and news accounts demonstrating beyond any doubt that adults misbehave.

“There is a cynicism that everybody’s doing it, why should we just pick on Clinton?” Collins said.

But many students expressed concern about Clinton’s ability to lead.

“If he can lie to his own country, how can other world leaders trust him to tell the truth?” asked senior Josh Lang during the question-and-answer period.

Despite such attitudes, some students said the events of the past months have piqued their interest in politics.

“Before I didn’t even care but now I do,” said senior Albert Carnahan, who will be eligible to vote for the first time in the November election. “Maybe if I vote, I can get someone good into the system, instead of Clinton.”

And while senior Kyle Menzies doesn’t believe Clinton should be impeached, he is unhappy with the status quo and wants to use his first votes this fall to begin to change that.

“We do have a voice in this,” he said.