Giving teens a voice

When Councilman Mike DeVleming first gathered the group of 10 teens together, he ran the show. The Spokane Valley Student Advisory Council was, after all, brand new. But after a few meetings – and just minutes after the group elected its officers – Michael Green, the council’s new chairman, turned to DeVleming and asked: “Is this my meeting now?”

DeVleming was happy to pass the baton.

Last year, the Spokane Valley City Council created the Student Advisory Council, or SAC, to give young people a voice in community affairs. Now, the group is discussing a citywide campaign against school violence. The students are planning ways to educate their peers on how to find jobs. They’re debating how to call attention to the overcrowding in some of the Valley’s schools. In short, they’re tackling their assignment like Reggie White used to sack quarterbacks.

Each member applied for a seat for different reasons, including influencing local government, standing up for youth issues, promoting tolerance of diversity and getting involved in the community. The group holds public meetings every other Thursday evening.

Last week, the group discussed keeping weapons out of schools. Charlie Hollen, a safety resource officer with the Central Valley School District, explained to the group why even pocket knives can become dangerous weapons in the wrong hands. While the students understood the problem, they raised circumstances where the line between right and wrong is smudged.

“But I have horses,” council historian Randee Berg said to Hollen. “It would make perfect sense for me to have a pocket knife in my car.”

Hollen showed the group a video of a police officer wearing a baggy T-shirt and a pair of jeans. The officer in the video slowly revealed the weapons he was concealing, demonstrating how seriously schools and police must take the school violence issue. In his waistband alone were five guns, a baton, a martial arts star, nunchucks and an ice pick. Elsewhere on his body were four other guns, 13 knives and some other weapons.

The video made an impact on the council. The students discussed asking their schools to air it on their closed-circuit TV programs. That led to other ideas, and by the end of the meeting the students ordered posters with an anti-weapon message for their halls and were drafting a letter to Comcast asking the cable company to consider airing a public service announcement on the issue.

“I think it’s important to say, ‘On this council there are people from all over the Valley,’ ” vice chairwoman Katie Osterback suggested as Berg took notes.

Osterback, a University High School junior who wants to study foreign diplomacy in college, has been involved in other, larger youth councils in the Spokane area. She was drawn to the more intimate size of the Spokane Valley council.

“I felt like here my ideas had a chance to be recognized,” Osterback said.

At the start of Thursday’s meeting, the council members introduced themselves for the benefit of visitors. When it was Debi Gallagher’s turn to say hello, she said, “Hi. I’m Debi, and I’m old.”

Gallagher, the community relationship manager for the American Cancer Society, is the group’s new adviser from the business community. She said she volunteers as a way to help young people other than her own children, just as teachers and other adults have positively shaped her kids’ lives.

“A parent’s advice can only go so far,” Gallagher said. “If I can be a role model to another child, I hope there’s someone out there who can be a role model to my child.”

Gallagher said she’s excited that they’ll have a say in shaping the community – a concept Gallagher said was foreign to young people when she was in school.

Having a say is important to Victoria Benson, a student at U-Hi.

“I feel like I have something to offer to make the community better,” said the senior, who hopes to attend a school like Stanford or Princeton next fall. She said she especially wants to teach people to be accepting of diversity.

“Tolerance is my passion,” Benson said.

Berg, a Central Valley High School junior, said she joined the council because she has “a lot of community issues that directly affect me.” Berg is active in other organizations such as 4-H.

“I can tell all these groups I’m involved in that I have a direct link to the mayor,” she said.

Discussion at a recent meeting swung from suicide – in light of a Lakeside High School student’s decision to take his life at school last month – to Valleyfest – with a suggestion to add events to the annual community fair with teen appeal, supplementing the face painting and bouncy castles that attract young children.

Gallagher said she was eager to learn from the students on the council, whom she called the “crème de la crème.”

“There are so many times in the news you hear all the stuff kids are doing bad,” Gallagher said. “Anything we can do to show that kids are doing good things, that’s important to me.”