Blaize Wilson Harrell of Sierra Vista High School comments in a Law and Crime session during the 2019 Las Vegas Sun Youth Forum at the Las Vegas Convention Center Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2019. Sonhai Crittendon of Silverado listens at left.
Thursday, Dec. 26, 2019 | 2 a.m.
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Second in a series
For 63 years, the Sun Youth Forum has given Las Vegas teens an opportunity to discuss the important issues of their day with their peers from high schools across the valley.
But the event isn’t just for students -- it also provides the community a glimpse of how the young people of Las Vegas feel about current events and what improvements they would like to see in their city, their state, their nation and their world.
This year’s version of the forum drew more than 1,000 students from 52 schools to the Las Vegas Convention Center, where they were divided into discussions in seven topic areas — Law and Crime, America, Around the World, School Days, Home in Nevada, Teen Topics and Potpourri. Afterward, a student representative was selected from each group to report to the community about their discussions through local media.
This week, the Sun is presenting a series about the forum based on interviews with student representatives from across the topic areas.
Here’s what we feel the community can learn from this group.
They’re committed to reducing gun violence.
Students reported strong consensus for such measures as a ban on assault-type weapons and high-capacity magazines, universal background checks and red flag laws that allow authorities to confiscate guns from people who’ve been legally deemed a threat to themselves or others. There was also support for creating a central repository for gun registrations.
As the first generation raised during this age of mass shootings and spiraling day-to-day gun violence, students described being affected by the problem both in school and at home.
“At Spring Valley, we experience a soft or hard lockdown once almost every two weeks now, and that’s just destructing our classes,” senior Spencer Dee said. “These lockdowns cost us time for instruction and to study for our exams. Everyone in our (School Days) group felt the same about this issue: that there needs to be stronger control over these weapons and maybe a daily (weapons) check at school.”
Dee and other students praised efforts in recent years to improve security at schools by adding security guards, reducing the number of entry points, removing lockers, etc. But they also noted that not all schools have adopted such measures.
When it came to arming teachers, students were deeply divided.
“We talked about this in the sense it was quite counterintuitive to have more guns to stop gun violence,” said Andres Carrasco, a senior at Spring Valley. “As far as arming teachers goes, teachers already have a difficult job without putting the lives of students in their hands. It could also lead to an abuse of authority. Teachers are human — you never know what actions they might take, or what internal biases they might have.”
But in Bishop Gorman senior Tate Nowell’s Teen Topics group, there was no consensus.
“We had to stop the discussion, because I think we all just needed to calm down,” he said. “We didn’t come up with the right answer. If we had all the time in the world, I don’t think it’s possible to come up with one, because there’s always going to be another what-if scenario.”
Wyatt Layland, a senior at Advanced Technology Academy, said students in his Home in Nevada room were disappointed in the lack of progress on gun safety measures in the community and beyond. Layland said that although the Vegas Strong movement resulted in an outpouring of support for the victims and the community in general, students “were underwhelmed with the way our community reacted” in terms of adopting gun safety policies.
“We still live in the reality that gun violence is a serious issue and can still affect us,” he said. “It’s not necessarily just Nevada’s problem. We’ve tried enacting reforms in the past on a national level to make it so that access to guns isn’t that common, but then there were people in my room describing having to go to bed at night to the sound of gunshots. And you sort of say, there’s something wrong here.”
Reflecting the national debate on the issue, some students argued that gun safety measures were a violation of Second Amendment rights.
Ana Campanico, a senior at Green Valley High, said her Potpourri group spent two hours on the topic.
“We were in agreement on gun reform in general, but there were a few students who felt that taking away that free will infringed on the autonomy of American citizens,” she said. “It was interesting to see that clash, because some took that stance while others thought that guns are a tool to infringe on others’ personal rights, and that’s when it becomes not constitutionally sound.”
Jade Guzman, a senior at Cimarron-Memorial, said her Potpourri group agreed that gun ownership was an American right but concluded that assault-type weapons should be restricted.
“One one side in our room, you had people saying that if we’re going to have guns, we should be able to have any type of guns we want as long as we pass background checks. On the other side, you had people saying you can protect yourself, but why do you need a military-grade weapon to do so?” she said.
Another Potpourri representative, Valley High senior Liliana Pinto, said her group’s discussion took an entirely different avenue.
“We all acknowledged there is a problem, but the problem lies with the person pulling the trigger and not the gun itself,” she said. “We talked about health care and how it should be more affordable so people could get the health care they need.”
They’re not fans of President Donald Trump. But that doesn’t mean they’re impeachment hawks.
In at least two different rooms, discussions about impeachment revealed almost unanimous disapproval among students about Trump’s performance as president.
But in discussing specifics about the accusations against Trump, students generally agreed that impeachment wasn’t the best way to address the matter.
“We slowly came to the consensus that forcibly removing him from office would just cause so much more divide,” Layland said. “We know that if he gets acquitted in the Senate, it will only really fuel up his base because it will show the system tried bringing him down but he emerged victorious.”
In both rooms, students were confused about the facts, asking questions about Trump’s withholding of aid to Ukraine in return for an investigation that would benefit his re-election campaign.
“It was nice seeing people fill that gap in their knowledge,” Layland said. “In the end, people agreed that abusing power is wrong and should be grounds for punishment, but we shouldn’t be using methods that aren’t exactly foolproof to remove him from office. Rather, we should exercise our vote. The best way our democracy can respond comes down to the ballot.”
Their eyes have been opened to the dangers of vaping.
Nowell said vaping was prevalent among his peers, far more than smoking cigarettes, partly because teens had been raised believing vaping was a safe alternative to tobacco products. But as the health hazards of vaping have become more evident, he said, many teens have recognized a need for tighter regulations on the industry.
He said his group agreed that the minimum legal age for using vaping products should be raised to 21, and flavored vaping liquids should be banned.
“We talked about how we, as the demographic of young, naive teenagers, were the industry’s target market,” he said. “That’s sad, because we shouldn’t have access to these things, especially now since we’re learning about the negative effects. So we agreed the flavors need to be banned, because that’s what is drawing attention to vaping among younger people.”
