Women in England just won the
right to become priests for the
Church of Engiand, and women
in other parts of the world are still
fighting to be treated equally. Arc
female teens discriminated
against? Do vou believe in equali-

Today’s teens need places of their own

WHEN I asked adults what
they did on their weekends
when they were kids, they
said: Drive-in movies,
rollerskating and teen dance
clubs full of be-boppin’
hip-hoppin’ crazy kids.

LARAAAAAAAAAAAL

It was all in good fun. It was
safe and did not cost a lot.. They
had their dilemmas, and the occa-
sional fight over a girl where the
worst that could aappen was a
black eye. There was the occa-
sional spike of the punch, but on-
ly minor pranks.

What do the teens of today
have to do for fun? If you go toa
movie, it is $8; if you go once a
week, it’s $32 a month. Most
teens can’t afford that.

We can’t hang out in the malls;
the security tends to pick on teens,
telling us to go somewhere else.
The question is, where? Most
Parents aren’t too crazy about the
idea of a house full of teens. They
say: ‘‘Go out and find something
to do.”

Then the’ question again arises,
what do we do?

We can’t go to the parks
because it is getting cold. If we
are drinking our hot chocolate
while sitting around listening to
tunes, we have police officers
shining flashlights in our faces
and checking for alcoho! in our
hot chocolate. They seem almost
disappointed when they find none.

Hearings hark back to McCarthy era

IVE BEEN doing a lot of thinking about the McCarthy
era in the United States when you could be thrown into jail
for being a communist, or even for what Senator Joe Mc-

ALTHOUGH TEEN clubs like this one at the recCentre Karen Magnussen are attracting youths, most

stili complain of not having enough to occupy their time.

They say to us: ‘**Get lost, stop
hanging out here.’? And again the
question arises, where do we go?
Everyone wants kids to stop hang-
ing out. The thing is we want to
stop hanging out, but we need an
alternative.

About two weeks ago a youth
worker I know told me about a
coffee house located in the rec-
Centre Lonsdale. This coffee
house was put together by the
students and the youth worker.

At first I thought, ‘‘Oh great,
another youth group where we'll
be watching cartoons and playing
fish.’’ | was gladly mistaken.

I saw a few of my friends there.
They had music playing, refresh-
ments and snacks at a small price
(the money carned goes to next
week’s goodies and activities).
There was art work drawn and

Carthy considered to be anti-American.

According to well-known and
noted historian David Darling, it
was an era of “uncertainty;
freedom of speech and freedom of
thought were suppressed greatly,
and stuff was dug out of people’s
pasts to prove cases of an-
ti-Americanism.”’

I’ve also been following the re-
cent McKenna Senate hearings,
where Verrence and Brian
McKenna, two CBC journalists
who put together the Second
World War series, ‘‘The Valour
And the Horror,” are being tried

for allegedly portraying fiction as

fact.

Personally, ! watched the series
and [ thought it was great, but as
to whether it is the truth or not, I
am not going to pass judgment
and call it either way.

But what disturbs me is that
here in Canada, where we cali
ourselves a free nation where

people’s opinions are respected,
these journalists are not allowed
to provide another look at the
horrors of war.

They have been called anti-
veterans and some say that they

displayed by the students.
Posted on the wall were 10 rules
or mottos, including:
@ no drugs or alcohol consump-
tion on premises; promote a
healthy lifestyle;
@ promote different groups and
open membership to such groups;
@ be accessible to, and promote,
local music and art talent;
@ provide a variety of work-
related opportunities for youth
and encourage participation at all
levels;
® promote a sense of community
for youth-focused resources;
®@ promote and support youth
concerns and work towards a
youth alliance and representations;
@ promote peace and happiness.
These commandments are made
up by students, youth and social
workers who help run the coffee

are belittling the veterans after the
fact, but what they are merely at-
tempting to do is to point out the
culprits, the orchestrators of civil-
jan bombings, and they are being
called evil for showing the bomb-
ings for the sham that they were.

But that’s OK. The real prob-
lem is how this is being handled.
At the outset.of these Senate hear-
ings, the CBC’s ombudsman, who
had previously backed the series
100%, suddenly said that the
McKennas were in the wrong.

Then one Conservative senator
began an appalling line of ques-
tioning, bringing into question the
McKennas’ Canadianness, their
national pride and loyalty.

The senator dug up a letter that
one of the McKennas had written
for a school newspaper over 20
years ago which dealt with some
of the things that were bad about
war in general.

He turned this around and
completely misconstrued the
nature of the article, saying that
the McKennas had always been
against these veterans, Canada’s
true heroes.and that their debasing

nee :
NEWS photo Mike Waketleld

house. This tells you the kind of
caring people who organize func-
tions such as this.

The coffee house is a wonderful
idea, although it has a limiting
size because there is only one
coffee house like this for the en-
tire North YWancouver teenage
population.

There was talk about opening a
teen dance club in the area of
Lower Lonsdale. It was unfortu-
nately voted down by North Van-
couver City Council. The issue did
not even make it to a public hear-
ing.

I think the council should know
that the kids who made up these
10 commandments are the kind of
people who can make this dance
club work. They are the kind of
people who will be using it.

Why should a few bad apples

of war was a direct shot against
the veterans, when nothing could
be further from the truth.

What makes this sad is that
even when what someone says cr
believes comes into question, and
certain individuals are assigned to
judge its proverbial correctness,
that people are unable to view the
issue.

It, according to some unwritten
law of man’s personality, must
always become some fiasco where
the individual becomes the target,
not his argument.

Forever we have believed, as a
nation, in the philosophy of ‘‘in-
nocent until proven guilty.’’ So
why as people can we not con-
vince ourselves to stop attacking
people, and just look at the
issues?

Maybe it is time that we look at
ourselves and ask ourselves who
we are to pass judgment on other
people, because when we do, we
may not find ourselves to be as
perfect as we would like.

And we should look at
ourselves, if only to preserve
justice for all here at home.

ruin this opportunity of work ex-
perience, getting to know other
teens and providing the youths of
today with a warm, safe environ-
ment? There are always going to
be a few bad apples, that’s the
way life is.

I can say that teens are getting a
lot smarter because we have to.
Most kids by the age of 13 have
enough common sense to know
what’s right and what’s wrong.
We are not easily persuaded.

We are teens, we’re stubborn
and we fight to stand our ground.
I am sure I can speak for the ma-
jority when I say we would all
rather dance the night away and
spend it with our friends rather
than hanging out outside of 7-
Eleven smoking cigarettes and
making spit piles on the ground.

We have the support from other
students as well as youth and
social workers. We are the ones
who know what it is like for the
teens today.

We are there; we live it; we
know how the people feel who are
hanging out at the 7-Eleven. We
know what kind of people they -
really are.

City council has statistics on all
the dirt that has happened involv-
ing teens, but have they looked at
all the wonderful things teens have
done? Look at the students who
put together the coffee house, the
ones who made the 10 com-
mandments.

§ think council tends to look at
us as just a bunch of numbers
with statistics. We are all different
and need to be looked at as indi-
viduals, forget the stereotyping. I
know council doesn’t have time to
spend with us, but that is what the
youth and social workers are for.

I believe if they think it will be
a@ success, it most likely will be.
Now all we need is for the council
to approve it and help us get
started on something that will
benefit us all in the long run.

There needs to be a change, and
we will need council’s help. We've
got the ideas and they have the
authority. Now we have to work
together and make it happen.

Last week we asked if alcohol
or drugs are problems among
teens.

I don’t drink or use drugs,
neither do my friends. Drugs
are a probiem for teens, and
so is drinking. We should ali
get tegether and de some-
thing about it. Sooner or later
people begin to realize how
devastating the effects of
drinking and drugs really are.

I don’t drink myself tut a
lot of my friends do and you
can see it affects them. A lot
of peopte do drugs and their
parents are not aware of it,
but they should be because it
really affects them.