Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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Editor’s note: About 550 Clark County high school students participated in the annual Sun Youth Forum on Sept. 11 at Clark High School. The students were divided into groups to discuss several topics. A spokesperson was chosen from each discussion group to write a column about the students’ findings. Rianna Patton, a senior at Del Sol Academy of the Performing Arts, tells of the students’ opinions in the session entitled “Home in Nevada.”
As students gathered at the 2023 Las Vegas Sun Youth Forum, the existence of the challenges in our schools, communities, state and world was unsurprising. While some adults are prone to dismissing the opinions and perspectives of high school students, we live in this world too, and we see the problems that surround us.
Student Representative Rianna Patton, Del Sol Academy of Performing Arts, poses during the Las Vegas Sun Youth Forum at Clark High School Monday, Sept. 11, 2023.
Homelessness, inflation, a struggling education system and a rise in violence in our schools are challenges we see and face every day, right here in our home state. Some of those issues, like school violence, affect students in ways that adult policymakers can’t understand or imagine.
And yet, while the students gathered at the youth forum came from many backgrounds and perspectives, we used our collective expertise to form a consensus on several solutions to curb violence in high schools.
Violence in schools can be an uncomfortable topic, especially for students who have been personally affected by it. However, the students in my group were passionate about this matter and were dedicated to discussing how to stop fights and prevent weapons from being brought to school.
The group agreed that Nevada high schools are often too lenient on students who engage in violence on campus. Stricter rules and repercussions are needed to dissuade students from being violent. Technology is also needed to detect weapons before they can be turned on victims — putting would-be offenders on notice that they cannot successfully bring a weapon to school and escape undetected.
These are immediate and concrete actions that will help students feel safe at school, which we believe could help prevent arguments and interpersonal conflicts from escalating into violence.
Of course, we cannot stop all forms of violence or prevent students from choosing to engage in it, but we can promote resources to help make schools a safe space for all. One suggestion was to require anger management classes for students who get into fights or otherwise engage in violence, providing them with the tools needed to manage conflict in a healthier and more productive way. These types of classes can also help address conflict and challenges at home, which are often the precursor to violence at school.
Greater attention must also be given to resources that already exist, such as SafeVoice, an anonymous reporting system used to report threats to the safety or well-being of students. Despite the fact that SafeVoice has existed since 2017, numerous students at the forum reported that they had never heard of it before.
More than anything, participants expressed that although school violence is a complex problem, we need adults to realize that students care about the issue, want to address it and must buy in to proposed solutions in order for them to be effective.
In this regard, the Sun Youth Forum gave us a rare opportunity to share our opinions and have others listen. We are all invested in our schools’ and community’s safety. I aspire to continue to have these kinds of discussions that will motivate others to take a stand, too.
