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Youth 411: Youth in the News
Volume I, No. 2, September 16-30, 2006
Contents
State Watch
Research
Legislature
STATE WATCH
- Centers in New York City provide services to homeless lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) youth.
- Some universities are disclosing students’ contact information to credit card companies.
- Several Arizona municipalities have established youth advisory boards.
- Virginia’s former governor launches a campaign to get youth to register to vote via text messaging.
- MySpace.com is partnering with a national youth voting campaign to encourage people to register to vote.
- Officials in Kansas discover runaway youth are being forced into prostitution.
- Kentucky’s Workgroup on Civic Literacy and Engagement releases its recommendations on how to engage youth in government and politics.
RESEARCH
- Researchers and juvenile justice decision makers question the treatment of juvenile offenders as adults based on new research on adolescent brain development and behavior.
- According to a survey, the more positive youth development assets some Wisconsin teens have, the less likely they are to be engaged in risky behavior.
- An organization at the University of California, Berkeley, is researching causes and prevention of youth violence.
LEGISLATURE
- Two Iowa legislators advocate for legislation that would protect gay and lesbian students from bullying.
- Legislators in Vermont and Pennsylvania consider regulating violent video games.
ARTICLES
NEW YORK CITY
Building A Humane Model
Ali Forney Center attacks queer homelessness with tools aimed at leveraging strengths
By Paul Schindler, Gay City News
New York City, dating back to its days as an early American manufacturing center, has been known for its large population of homeless young people. In the past several decades, it has become clear to experts who have studied the phenomenon of “street-involved” youth, both here and elsewhere around the nation, that a disproportionately high percentage of those in need of shelter are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered together with those just beginning to question their sexual and gender identity.
Yet it’s only been in the past few years—really, no more than four—that political leaders in the city have begun to focus specifically on homeless LGBTQ youth, and the way in which their special needs and the stigma they face in large institutional shelter settings create problems difficult to tackle.
And it’s only recently, as well, that major gay organizations have turned their gaze—and their financial resources—toward this problem.
Among those responsible for creating this changed climate is Carl Siciliano who, in 2002, founded the Ali Forney Center, a residential opportunity and housing stabilization social service agency targeting LGBTQ youth in need of shelter in order help them find permanent solutions. Ali Forney was a homeless gay youth working as an HIV prevention peer counselor when Siciliano got to know him through his own work. The young man was murdered on the streets in 1997. When Siciliano founded the Center in Forney’s name, he had already worked with homeless young people for a decade, and for several years before that with adults in need of shelter. He decided that the problem of LGBTQ homeless youth needed specialized attention.
In the years since 2002, Siciliano has built an organization that currently houses 28 youths, aged 16 to 24, in four facilities, both emergency and transitional—the latter aimed at preparing residents for life on their own—in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Within six months, that number will grow to 54—30 emergency and 24 transitional—with one new facility already coming online on the Upper East Side. Ali Forney has a $3.2 million budget—$1 million from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (distributed, however, out of a New York City planning council), $1.4 million from the federal Housing Opportunities for People With AIDS program, $400,000 from the City Council, and the remainder from individual donors, benefits proceeds, and foundations.
Most important, to Siciliano, is that he is able to maintain a Chelsea Day Center that provides programming, medical attention, psychiatric counseling, employment planning, housing support, and intensive case management to LGBTQ youth well beyond the numbers it is able to house at any one time.
Back in 2002, there was precious little government money targeted for queer youth needing shelter, yet at that time Siciliano was just as disturbed by the lack of interest in the problem in the LGBT adult community.
“Our movement’s message is to come out, but we’re not thinking about what it takes for gay youth to come out,” Siciliano, who was once a Benedictine monk, said in a 2003 interview with Gay City News. “The gay community is ignoring its own. We need a safety net for our kids who face prostitution, murder, and HIV. There needs to be much more done.”
More to be done, indeed. In recent years, experts have pegged the population of homeless youth in New York at between 12,000 and 20,000. In 2003, spokespeople for both the Empire State Coalition of Youth and Family Service and Safe Horizon’s Streetworks program agreed that a good estimate was 15,000.
And, in all probability, as many as 6,000 to 8,000 of those homeless youths classify themselves as LGBTQ. Over a 15-year-period, the question of what percentage of all kids on the street are queer has been examined over and over again—by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, by the Seattle Commission on Children and Youth, by the FBI, by the Journal of Pediatrics, and by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, among many groups—and the findings have uniformly set that figure at between 20 and 40 percent.
Gaining a decent estimate of how many LGBTQ kids are among the homeless on American urban streets is important because advocates and researchers have also consistently found that this population is among those with the greatest need. A 2002 study by a team from the University of Washington psychology department—thought to be the most comprehensive to date—found that homeless queer youth, compared to their straight peers, were more likely to leave home as the result of physical abuse and alcohol problems at home and once on the streets were at far greater risk of being victimized physically and sexually. A wide array of groups—including the Adolescent AIDS Program at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, the Cézar Chávez Institute at San Francisco State University, and the Child Welfare League of America—have examined institutional responses to the challenge of homeless LGBTQ youth with an aim of improving the standards of care and services.
But on the ground, especially here in New York, the situation remains critical. Covenant House, founded by a Catholic priest more than three decades ago, is the nation’s largest provider of shelter for homeless youth, but advocates and queer youth who have turned to Ali Forney agree that it is at best a problematic solution for LGBTQ kids. One Ali Forney Center client told Gay City News that a gang had taken hold among the youth population there, forcing him to keep to himself. Another said while he was at Covenant House several years ago, he witnessed male residents harassing queer youth and even heard staff members call gay males “faggot.”
The Urban Justice Center agreed that Covenant House has problems “protect[ing] queer-identified youth,” but has worked with Covenant in recent years to improve the climate there. Still, Siciliano said his housing waiting list of roughly 100 is swelled by those with bad experiences at Covenant or unwilling to chance it there in the first place.
Siciliano’s aim at Ali Forney is to replace the institutional, and too often hostile, environment of a Covenant House with a clean, safe, comfortable, and nurturing environment that queer youth many times forfeit because of problems they encounter with their families of origin.
“The kids have been told, ‘You are so worthless and horrible that we are going to cast you aside,’” he explained, mentioning that roughly 40 percent of the youth he sees have suffered serious violence at home. “It is such a trauma, a kind of catastrophe that they were neglected and assaulted during this part of their life. I want them to find a place where they can heal the wounds that they’ve incurred.”
The Center’s three sites in Brooklyn—an emergency apartment and a transitional one in Clinton Hill and an emergency apartment in Park Slope—are recently-rehabbed and spacious, with clean, comfortable furniture and modern appliances including cable television. The three locations vary in layout—with one housing six residents in a three-bedroom duplex, while another puts all six emergency tenants in a dorm-style bedroom downstairs, though a very large one with a vast common living area one flight up. A large backyard in the Park Slope apartment is a locale where all Ali Forney residents gather for summer barbeques.
The emergency placements are targeted to last about six months, while the youths work on a housing plan that could lead to a transitional situation or permanent independent living. About 20 percent of Ali Forney clients have mental health issues that require more intensive intervention but also make them eligible for other supportive housing from the city. Siciliano said that many of the youths he sees drink alcohol and smoke pot, but that substance abuse problems are not among the most serious issues Ali Forney faces. Those with problems must incorporate some kind of treatment or recovery component into their housing plan.
Interestingly, the most serious drug problems Siciliano has come across are with white youths who come to New York from elsewhere and often get caught up in the crystal meth scene before they arrive at Ali Forney. Most of the New York-born youth who show up at the Center are black or Latino and use pot or alcohol more or less recreationally.
The more common pathologies among the youths Siciliano serves are depression, anxiety, and panic attacks, and the Center also sees a large number of kids who are infected with HIV. Among those Ali Forney clients who spoke to Gay City News, a number readily acknowledged experience in street hustling to get by, though most hope that having a regular place to sleep will allow them to focus on finding less risky employment opportunities.
The requirement for those youths living in transitional housing—where a stay might last two years—is that they somehow be connected to the world of work: a full-time job, part-time work, or an internship, perhaps coupled with college courses. Anyone without a high school degree needs to finish or earn a GED.
Despite their past trauma, its psychological aftermath, and any health or skills handicaps they may have, Siciliano believes that the youth Ali Forney serves can best move forward if they are offered hope and opportunity pegged to their strengths.
“As I thought about the shelter efforts targeting these kids, it all felt pathology-based,” he explained. “If someone is mentally ill, there’s housing. If he has a substance abuse problem, there’s housing. If he has HIV, there was housing. The kid who was struggling with a part-time job or working at McDonald’s had no real way, with the real estate market in New York, to get by. I want to support their strengths and encourage their strengths rather than asking, ‘What’s wrong with you?’”
One key upside he said is that most LGBTQ youth living on the streets or shuttling between temporary places to sleep do not identify as “homeless,” and therefore lack the “battered” sense of failure more hardened adults often suffer from.
The success of those youths he’s watched move beyond transitional housing convinces Siciliano that the approach is correct—and much needed.
For someone who began an organization on his own four years ago, with only his ideas and a very good reputation in the field, Siciliano has made significant strides. In addition to winning a renewable stream of federal revenues of at least $2.4 million per year, he has joined a group of other advocates and service providers and political leaders in winning City Council approval for funding targeting the needs of LGBT homeless youth. In the most recent fiscal year, the Council made available $1.2 million—one third each to Ali Forney, Sylvia’s Place, an emergency shelter run by Metropolitan Community Church/ NY (MCC), and Green Chimneys, a diversified children’s service agency that houses more than 60 LGBTQ youth in more than a dozen locations in Manhattan, including a boarding house that serves six children 12 to 16 years old.
Siciliano gives credit to the Council for stepping up with funding, citing in particular Youth Services Chair Lew Fidler of Brooklyn, Alan Gerson, who represents Lower Manhattan and is on Fidler’s committee, and Speaker Christine Quinn, an out lesbian.
Going forward, Siciliano would like to increase support for Ali Forney among non-profit foundations, a direction many social service agencies aim to move in given the vagaries of government funding. Still, he does not aim at an ever-growing organization, and said once the growth to 54 beds is completed early next year, he will not add residential capacity for several more years.
“I don’t want to get a whole lot bigger in terms of scope of services,” he said. “These kids need intensive care that they usually can’t get from large institutions. I want Ali Forney to be a model, to become a core response to LGBT youth rejected by their families. I believe we are building a very effective model for a humane response to this problem.”
Indeed, Siciliano’s efforts at modeling a solution are winning high marks within the gay community. Earlier this year, the Center was honored by the Stonewall Democrats of New York City and similar recognition is forthcoming from the Empire State Pride Agenda at its fall dinner next week and at the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project’s Courage Awards in November.
But Siciliano’s acknowledgement that he wants to show the way rather than pressing forward with unbridled growth underscores the scope of the challenge still facing advocates for queer youth. Ali Forney will provide up to 54 beds, Green Chimneys roughly 60, MCC/NY hosts a handful of homeless youth at Sylvia’s Place in its Midtown basement and last year opened a similar facility, Carmen’s Place, at the Church of Saint Andrew in Astoria. SafeHome, a facility for 20 HIV-positive youths, is run by Safe Space in a Manhattan brownstone, and there are a few other beds available around the city.
MCC/NY is also set to open at 24-hour drop-in space, the Marsha P. Johnson Center, at 127th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard in Harlem next month, to supplement day programs run by the Greenwich Village Youth Council, Gay Men of African Descent, or GMAD, and Streetworks. The Urban Justice Center works to provide legal services to homeless LGBT youth, and the Anti-Violence Center also provides critical advocacy when they are victims of crime and abuse. The LGBT Community Center’s Youth Enrichment Services provides a wide variety of outreach, education, and mentoring programs, and FIERCE!, the Fabulous Independent Educated Radicals for Community Empowerment, works on the streets to protect LGBT youth from being displaced from the West Village.
Yet, we are talking potentially about thousands of queer kids, often rejected at home when young, many of them living on the streets, some trading sexual favors for a place to sleep, with few job skills at their ready. The progress Siciliano has made is impressive, and others, quickly, need to follow in his wake.
UNIVERSITIES
Schools Give Student Data to Banks
Deals give credit card issuers campus marketing rights
By Kathy Chu, USA Today
Despite rising concern about college students' debt loads, the nation's largest four-year colleges are disclosing students' contact information to credit card-issuing banks and earning up to millions each in annual fees by giving the banks the right to market on campus.
A USA TODAY survey reveals that each of the largest 10 universities — through its alumni or athletic association — now partners with a bank to issue co-branded cards to alumni and students. The deals exist at hundreds of colleges.
“They're getting less revenue from state governments and looking at everything they can to raise revenue,” says the American Council on Education's Jacqueline King.
The partnerships don't violate any laws. But they're facing more scrutiny because they undercut some states' efforts to crack down on credit card marketing to students.
Legislators in states such as Tennessee have sought unsuccessfully to curtail these marketing agreements. In 2004, the latest year for which figures are available, three out of four college students had credit cards, with undergraduates holding an average outstanding balance of $2,169, according to Nellie Mae, a student-loan provider.
Universities can receive more than $2.5 million a year for marketing deals with one card company, says Robert Manning of the Rochester Institute of Technology. Under these deals, colleges typically give banks contact information of alumni and students. They often also give issuers the exclusive right to solicit at certain campus events.
USA TODAY's survey also finds that eight of the 10 largest universities, all of them public, say they allow other marketers access to student contact information as well under state laws that deem campus directories public information.
Consumer groups worry that these disclosures infringe upon student privacy and that card companies are preying on financially inexperienced young adults.
Travis Plunkett of the Consumer Federation of America adds that some students might get a co-branded university credit card as a show of school loyalty and pay little attention to the card's terms.
Universities point out that it's typically the alumni association, not the university itself, that strikes deals with the card issuers. (Alumni associations typically fund university programs, though.) They also note that the schools' logos on cards help promote the schools.
Kevin P. Hegarty, the chief financial officer of the University of Texas at Austin, adds that UT doesn't want to “block free commerce” by barring students from the university's co-branded card.
ARIZONA
Teen Advisers Help Cities With Youth
By Erin Zlomek, The Arizona Republic
October 1, 2006
Teenagers, we just don't get them.
It is a mantra repeated by cities from Surprise to Tempe.
"When they meet me it's, 'Oh, look at that old lady,' " 79-year-old Surprise Mayor Joan Shafer said. "I know what they think underneath."
So, when the mayor wanted to create after-school programs for 13- to 17-year-olds, she was clueless on how to serve MTV's new generation.
Several Valley cities are bridging that age gap by adding youth advisory boards.
Ten to 20 high-schoolers typically serve on a city youth council or teen advisory board, whose mission is to give out-of-step government officials advice on how to serve the sometimes fickle demographic.
Surprise, Queen Creek and Tolleson recently appointed their first youth boards.
Such programs in Tempe, Chandler, Mesa and Phoenix have been around awhile, and there is a good reason city officials keep the programs funded.
They work, said Braden MacDonald, 15, of Surprise.
Not long ago, Chandler police detained teenagers at a local mall for breaking curfew.
However, the youths didn't know they were violating the city's unpublicized curfew ordinance, which restricts those younger than 16 from being out past 10 p.m. without adult supervision.
The Mayor's Youth Commission pleaded the teens' case and suggested a compromise: The ordinance stayed in place, but teens would not be penalized until a campaign advertising the curfew was completed, program coordinator Sara c de Baca said.
Teens petitioned the council to attract more safe hangouts for youths, such as indoor go-cart, laser-tag and arcade centers.
Other examples:
- In 2001, the Peoria City Council amended its rules governing motorized scooters. City officials knew that not many adults were buzzing around on them, so they consulted the city's Youth Advisory Board. Teens on the board tweaked the ordinance to make it more youth-friendly, allowing scooters on trails and parking lots but not on roads.
- In 2006, the Surprise City Council approved funding for a multimillion-dollar recreation center. The council contacted the city's Teen Advisory Board before confirming design plans.
"Historically, game rooms have ping pong tables, pool tables, etc.," said Mark Coronado, director of Surprise's Community and Recreation Services.
"Our group got together and said their kind of game room had more of a coffeehouse feel. A place with Internet and DVD players."
After listening to the teens, officials scrapped plans for a traditional, sports-themed recreation center.
The new center will focus on performing arts and house a game room in tune with what teens wanted.
Such efforts are designed to bridge the gap between teenagers and government.
"Young people feel that politicians don't pay attention to them," said Mark Lopez of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
That feeling in the teenage years soon carries over to the voting years, Lopez said.
Those ages 18 to 29 had the lowest voter turnout rates in recent elections, the group says.
Arizona had among the lowest. In the 2002 general election, 14 percent of Arizona's young voters went to the polls, compared with 22 percent nationally, according to the organization.
To remedy the problem, Lopez said government must show an interest in youths as early as junior high. When teens develop a curiosity in government early on, they become more civically involved as adults, he said.
"A lot of kids think its something only the nerdy, overachieving, honor-roll kids do," Baca said.
Chandler has struggled to bring diverse applicants to its board, she said. Spots in the city's program remain vacant. But participating teens routinely manage to get peers involved in activities.
Erika Hendrickson, 16, of Surprise, is helping her city plan arts, sports and technology after-school programs.
"I want to get teens my age involved."
"When they get involved, drug and teen pregnancy rates go down because they are not sitting at home bored," she said.
VIRGINIA
Cellular Registration
Former Gov. Mark Warner launches drive to register voters via text message
By Rachana Dixit, James Madison University’s Student Newspaper
September 28, 2006
Cell phones are changing the way people do politics: text messages organize protests in South Korea, and even tipped the scales in Spain’s 2004 election by eliciting a higher voter turnout, according to a case study presented at the 2005 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association.
On Sept. 22, former Virginia governor Mark Warner launched a national voter registration drive using text messaging in conjunction with Mobile Voter, a non-profit, non-partisan group trying to “facilitate the process of civic participation via mobile technology,” according to its Web site.
Mobile Voter’s current priority project, TXTVOTER ’06, is to register young voters before the 2006 general election.
In 2003, Ben Rigby, co-executive director of Mobile Voter, thought to use mobile technology to do a social good instead of selling a product. Since the first time he entered a voting booth with his mom at 8 years old, Rigby has been passionate about voting and elections.
“It was a wonderland for me,” he said. “It was so exciting.”
This is the first year for the project.
“We’re targeting youth because they care about what goes on around them,” Rigby said. He added that youth voter turnout may be low since politicians do not typically address issues that apply to them. However, he thinks that is changing.
“[Politicians] are seeing that mobile phones and text messaging are becoming rapidly important,” Rigby said.
Recently youth voter turnout has increased, however, it still remains lower than any other age group of registered voters. According to statistics from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, during the 2004 presidential election there were 11,639 votes cast from registered voters between the ages of 18 and 24. There were 125,736 total votes cast across the nation.
JMU has also experienced low voter turnout amongst its students. For the Virginia gubernatorial election last year, a mere 3.5 percent of eligible student voters participated in the election.
Rigby hopes to register 55,000 through the project by Oct. 15, which is the registration deadline for most states. Thus far 13,000 people have registered.
The project is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts, which gave $250,000 to Mobile Voter. Though Mobile Voter will have to pay about $4 per voter to finance the project, Rigby said the registration process is still free for potential voters.
Warner’s campaign for registration through SMS began at a high school. He told students of Concord High School in New Hampshire to text “Warner” to number 75444 to be e-mailed their registration form.
The Concord Monitor Online, which reported the story, said those potential voters living in New Hampshire and two other unspecified states would be sent a message referring them to their nearest ballot clerk, the only way to register to vote in those states. Rigby said North Dakota and Wyoming also are not allowing their potential voters to register through their cell phones.
This may have a lot of potential for JMU students and college students in general. If voter registration forms are available by a text message and an e-mail, then maybe absentee ballots aren’t too far behind.
Freshmen Dan Holden and Blake Tankersley were too young to vote in the last presidential election, but now they’ve already registered to vote and they’re looking forward to this November’s election. Holden said this new move at ensnaring younger voters is a good thing.
“It shows how the world is changing,” Holden said. He said, however, this new scheme might not be “fool proof.” “Someone could type something wrong,” he said. Tankersley said there might be a danger if a cell phone was stolen — it might jeopardize a person’s personal records if voting records were lost.
MYSPACE
MySpace Launches Voter Registration Campaign
World’s Largest Social Networking Site Partners with Declare Yourself to Offer Online Voter Registration Application
Businesswire
September 27, 2006
MySpace.com, the world’s leading Internet lifestyle portal, announced today a partnership with Declare Yourself, a national nonpartisan youth voting campaign, to encourage Americans to register to vote for the upcoming 2006 elections.
Through the partnership, Declare Yourself’s online voter registration tool and comprehensive election information will be available on MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/declareyourself. Instructions to register to vote are available in both English and Spanish.
"Declare Yourself's research shows that young Americans are hungering to participate more in our democratic process, and the Internet empowers them to do that in a meaningful way through information, connectivity and the tools to become more active citizens, " said Norman Lear, founder of Declare Yourself. "We are thrilled to be working closely with MySpace to help energize its users and give them a voice in the November election and beyond."
According to Nielsen//NetRatings @Plan Fall 2006 Release, adult MySpace users are more than twice as likely as the average adult on the Internet to interact online with a public official or candidate, 59% more likely to view online video relating to politics or public affairs, 45% more likely to research politics and campaign information online, and 60% more likely to listen to online audio/radio related to politics/public affairs. According to comScore Media Metrix, over 80% of the MySpace community is 18-years of age or older.
"MySpace’s reach offers us an extraordinary opportunity to give millions of Americans, especially first-time voters, easy access to the political process,” said Chris DeWolfe, chief executive officer of MySpace. “By partnering with Declare Yourself, we are continuing to empower our online community to make a positive impact on offline communities across the country.”
“There’s that old saying, ‘fish where the fish are’ – the same thing applies to registering people to vote,” said Julie Barko Germany, Deputy Director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University. “It seems everyone is flocking to MySpace so it makes sense to go there to get them involved.”
To support the effort, MySpace will launch a promotional campaign running through October. MySpace users will be able to download an electronic “I Registered To Vote On MySpace” badge to their profile page to show they registered to vote online. Users can also forward a link to their friends to encourage them to register to vote. MySpace will post “Register to Vote” ads and links on its home page to drive traffic to the Declare Yourself page. Declare Yourself public service announcements, directed by David LaChapelle, will also be featured on the site along with information about upcoming events and election news.
About MySpace.com
MySpace, a unit of Fox Interactive Media Inc., is the premier lifestyle portal for connecting with friends, discovering popular culture, and making a positive impact on the world. By integrating web profiles, blogs, instant messaging, e-mail, music streaming, music videos, photo galleries, classified listings, events, groups, college communities and member forums, MySpace has created a connected community. As the second ranked web domain in terms of page views(a), MySpace.com is the most widely-used and highly regarded site of its kind and is committed to providing the highest quality member experience and will continue to innovate with new features that allow its members to express their creativity and share their lives, both online and off.
About Declare Yourself
Declare Yourself is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civic engagement campaign to energize and empower young Americans, ages 18-29, to register and to vote. Prior to the 2004 election, over one million young Americans downloaded voter registration forms from www.DeclareYourself.com using its voter registration tool provided by Votenet, contributing to an unprecedented increase in national young voter turnout. Declare Yourself has distributed first-time voter materials to over 20 million young people, and launched two public awareness campaigns, a nationwide spoken word and music tour on college campuses, a massive online voter registration drive, and special events around the country. Founded by producer Norman Lear, Declare Yourself has worked with education, technology, entertainment, corporate and media partners, and is continuing its online young voter outreach for the 2006 midterm elections on November 7th.
KANSAS
Below Radar, Local Gangs Perpetuate Prostitution
The Wichita Eagle
September 24, 2006
It began with a horrifying story early this summer that even T.K. Bridges and the other officers in Wichita's Exploited and Missing Child Unit hadn't heard before.
A young runaway confided what had happened when an older teenage girl befriended her on the street.
The older teen invited her to a home where men gang-raped her. Repeatedly. They forced drugs on her. They drove her to other cities and put her out on the street to prostitute. They forced her to perform in pornographic videos.
The further officers plunged into the girl's story, the more they found. Runaway girls as young as 12, forced into prostitution in cities as far away as Houston, New Jersey and the West Coast.
"It just mushroomed on us," Bridges said. "This thing has spun into a number of related investigations."
"Is it thousands on a grand scale getting snatched up? No," he said. "But we're seeing enough on a big enough scale that it's gotten our attention."
While drive-by shootings have hoarded the headlines, gangs have quietly taken over street-level prostitution and are targeting young runaways as an alternate money stream to the violence and danger of dealing drugs.
If you believe the gang problem exists in someone else's neighborhood, think again. Gangs now have girls of every race and every circumstance in their crosshairs.
"They're using girls their age or younger," said Lt. Jeff Easter, who heads the Wichita Police Department's gang unit. "A lot of the street-level prostitution is run by older gang members who use younger gang members as enforcers."
Easter's take is consistent with what they're seeing in the EMCU, Bridges said. Law officials are assembling a task force to combat the issue.
The 1,500 to 1,800 children reported as runaways in Sedgwick County every year -- plus teens kicked out of their homes -- are easy prey.
A 2001 University of Pennsylvania study said about 293,000 American youth at any given time are at risk of becoming victims of commercial sexual exploitation. Some 35 percent of runaways are approached for prostitution within the first 48 hours of landing on the street; many are running from households where they already suffered sexual abuse.
This human trafficking is much more lucrative than drugs or guns, and the prosecution penalties are far less severe, said Karen Countryman-Roswurm, who has worked with runaways and homeless youths for 10 years.
"From one prostitute, they can make $75,000 to $250,000 a year," she said.
The central question, she asks, is what are we doing that creates this demand for young girls?
"As a culture, we are truly fixated on youth and beauty," she said. "So why do we act surprised when a 30-year-old man is sleeping with a 14-year-old? Is he the hypocrite? Or are we?"
Sadly, beyond the runaway report, what happens after gangs trap the girls goes unreported.
Bridges said investigations often begin at the trunk of a tree that branches into all sorts of cases and crimes.
Follow it in the reverse, however, and it also spreads.
"Look at the demographics," he said. "It knows no racial boundaries in suspects or in victims. It's not a problem peculiar to black neighborhoods or Hispanic neighborhoods or white neighborhoods. It encompasses the whole thing.
"It should be on everyone's radar."
It should be, but it hasn't been.
When neighborhood boundaries confined gang activity to pockets of the city, it was easy to ignore or perhaps even move away from.
But as it has spilled over into fights at the mall, into shootings at public events, and into frightening new crimes, we're finding we can't ignore it or move away.
It should matter that gang activity pulls police from some neighborhoods into others where the violence is greater. It should matter that many of the kids shooting each other don't have insurance.
But it should matter more that human beings are shooting other human beings.
And that now they're aiming at young girls.
KENTUCKY
Civics Education Center Urged
Goal to Raise Youthful Interest in Government
Associated Press, Lexington Herald-Leader
September 19, 2006
A state center focused on civics would help boost interest among young people in government and politics, a panel of officials and lawmakers said yesterday.
The Workgroup on Civic Literacy and Engagement, led by Secretary of State Trey Grayson and Chief Justice Joseph Lambert, said that the Kentucky Center for Civic Excellence would be a key first step to help curb voter apathy. The center would craft engaging government-education programs and beef up school curricula.
"Statistics and anecdotal evidence strongly suggest a crisis in terms of the civic engagement and literacy of our citizens," Grayson said.
The panel met for three years to study ways to increase election participation and to ensure that teens are taught the basic concepts of American government, and released its recommendations in a report yesterday.
"This report lays a clear path to achieving these goals," Grayson said.
Other recommendations include:
- Running a pilot program in 10 schools in which civics education would be coupled with service in the community or at a government agency. The program would also encourage participation in extracurricular activities, such as the Kentucky Youth Assembly and Young Politicians of America clubs.
- Offering additional civics training for teachers, which would include reimbursement and incentives for them to attend a civics academy.
- Adding greater emphasis on civics and government questions in the social-studies section of the Kentucky CATS assessment tests that fifth-, eighth- and 11th-graders must take.
National data have shown that voter participation among young people has steadily declined since 1968.
Observers have said Kentucky's political climate often does more to inspire cynicism than enthusiasm, given its various problems over the last decade or so -- from improper state hirings to the last governor's sex scandal to bribery of lawmakers in the 1990s.
But Drew Trimble, a University of Kentucky sophomore from Johnson County, said he and the majority of his friends are more resolved than ever to try to change the system from within.
"Why not be able to learn how to manipulate it -- be a part of the process," said Trimble, a member of UK's College Republicans group. "They see it and say 'I want to fix things. I can make a difference.'"
RESEARCH ON JUVENILE OFFENDERS
Is Adult Prison Best for Juveniles?
By Marilyn Elias, USA Today
September 20, 2006
Get-tough laws that have put more teenagers in adult prisons since the early '90s conflict with a wave of new research suggesting how children can be set straight and society protected at the same time.
At a two-day summit starting Thursday in Washington, leading researchers will meet with juvenile justice decision-makers — directors of state juvenile justice systems, judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys — to discuss how the new evidence should affect treatment of teen offenders.
"We know so much more about the adolescent brain and behavior than we used to, and we want to get these facts into the hands of people who can make a difference," psychologist Laurence Steinberg says. He heads a network of researchers and juvenile-justice workers financed by the MacArthur Foundation, which sponsored the meeting.
Since 1992, every state but Nebraska has made it easier to try juveniles as adults, and most states have legalized harsher sentences. Many states limit judges' discretion, sending all teens who commit serious offenses to adult courts, or allowing prosecutors to opt for adult prosecution.
That sounds reasonable, but it can be unfair, says Kimberly O'Donnell, chief judge of the Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court in Richmond, Va. She points to 14-year-olds tried as adults for "assault by a mob" — in effect, ganging up on and hurting a child at school.
"And once you're tried as an adult, you're always an adult, which can have awful consequences," she says.
For example, if these teens are arrested again, prosecutors can use the threat of lengthy prison sentences as leverage to gain a plea bargain agreement that might not be in a child's interest, O'Donnell says.
There's firm evidence that teens prosecuted as adults are much more likely to commit crimes when they get out than comparable young people tried as juveniles, says Shay Bilchik, president and CEO of the Child Welfare League of America.
Juvenile facilities tend to offer better education, job training, and drug abuse and mental health treatment, Steinberg says. Plus, teens aren't learning from adults how to be career criminals, he adds.
That's not to say kids don't commit serious crimes before landing in adult jails. Some even score in the psychopathic range on written tests that predict which adults are likely to commit future crimes. These tests are sometimes used in deciding whether young people should get severe punishments or be tried as adults, says psychologist Elizabeth Cauffman of the University of California-Irvine.
She says it's a dubious practice. Her studies show that adolescents tend to move away from this psychopath profile when they're tracked for a couple of years, while adult scores are usually stable.
Some hallmarks of psychopathy — thrill-seeking, impulsivity, failure to accept responsibility — are all too familiar to parents of teenagers, Cauffman says. In effect, youths grow out of this behavior.
Many younger children aren't even competent to stand trial because they don't understand the trial process or can't make decisions about pleas, says Thomas Grisso, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester. He has developed guidelines to determine juvenile competence and is training U.S. juvenile court workers in using them.
New findings of other MacArthur network scientists challenge common assumptions about teenage criminals. For example, a study that has tracked 1,355 serious offenders for three years finds that less than 10% of those involved in a lot of criminal activities at the outset continued to be heavily involved over the years. "A lot of policy is driven by the view that if a kid does a felony assault, he must be a bad actor from here on forward," says study leader Edward Mulvey of the University of Pittsburgh Medical School.
Still, 57% had at least one more arrest within two years. "Plus, we know arrests represent only the tip of the iceberg. Who really knows how much else they did that they weren't caught for?" asks Adrian Raine, a psychologist at the University of Southern California who studies criminal behavior.
Long-term studies of highly aggressive children suggest that some are headed for a life of violent crime and should be locked up early because they're dangerous, he says. Brain damage or family qualities may cause their behavior, Raine says.
"But it's naive to think many of these very violent kids are going to stop, and we don't need to be protected from them."
In Mulvey's study, better parenting and long-term treatment for drug or alcohol abuse correlated with less criminal behavior.
Bilchik, a former prosecutor of juvenile cases in Miami for 16 years and former head of the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, can understand why research has been slow to translate into action.
"When you've got a kid in front of you who's done a vicious armed robbery with a beating, it's different than an intellectual argument about what works," Bilchik says. "Prosecutors think, 'Can I really make myself try him as a juvenile? Can I even get permission from my boss?' "
Sometimes prosecutors know a juvenile system has scant mental health treatment or rehabilitation, and they'd rather lock up a dangerous teen with adults than risk a slap on the wrist, Bilchik says. And often there's little follow-up monitoring by youth workers when troubled young people are let out. Still, he says adult prisons, despite their short-term appeal, aren't usually the long-term answer. "We have the research that tells us what to do. The tragedy is, we're not capitalizing on it."
WISCONSIN
Teens Have Assets to Resist Pressure
The Monroe Times
September 20, 2006
A majority of southwest Wisconsin teens report possessing high levels of internal and external assets that help protect them from engaging in problem behaviors. The Southwest Wisconsin Youth Survey (SWYS) evaluated 40 positive youth development assets, such as positive attitudes toward school, family love and support, self-esteem and use of time. The presence of these youth assets promotes positive attitudes and healthy lifestyles.
Eighty-six percent of southwest Wisconsin teens surveyed report possessing at least half of the 40 total assets, with 43 percent reporting that they possess at least 31 of the 40 assets. Less than 2 percent of teens report 10 or fewer assets. Research from the Search Institute says those teens with more of these positive development assets are less likely to engage in smoking, drinking, sexual intercourse and other risky activities, and the research on southwest Wisconsin teens finds similar results.
These are among the findings of the SWYS conducted by 15 school districts in the Cooperative Educational Service Agency (CESA) District 3 as reported by the University of Wisconsin-Extension. The school districts of Argyle, Belmont, Benton, Black Hawk, Cassville, Cuba City, Darlington, Fennimore, Iowa-Grant, Ithaca, Lancaster, Platteville, Potosi, River Ridge and Seneca surveyed more than 3,700 students in September 2005.
The assets that most southwest Wisconsin teens report possessing include: a sense that it is important to help others (95 percent), caring about other people's feelings (93 percent), positive view of personal future (90 percent), family love and support (89 percent) and accepting responsibility (89 percent).
Many teens also report that they can resist negative peer pressure (85 percent), they value honesty (85 percent) and that they are responsible (85 percent). The least reported assets were spending time in volunteer work (23 percent), spending time at religious programs (30 percent) and reading for fun (34 percent).
"Roughly equal percentages of males and females report between 26 and 30 positive youth development assets," Jesse Potterton, Lafayette County 4-H and youth development educator, said
However, almost twice as many females (68 percent) as males (31 percent) report the presence of 36 or more assets. It also appears that the number of assets tends to decline with age. Survey results indicate that 76 percent of seventh- through ninth-graders report 26 or more positive youth development assets, however, only 64 percent of 10th- through 12th-graders report the same number.
Ninety-two percent of the teens who report possessing 31 or more assets and 75 percent of teens with 26 to 30 assets do not smoke. In contrast, 26 percent of teens reporting zero to 10 assets, and 38 percent of teens reporting 11 to 20 assets do not smoke. When looking at alcohol use and assets, 82 percent of teens reporting 31 or more assets have not drank alcohol within the past 30 days, whereas only 34 percent of the students possessing zero to 20 positive development assets report not drinking alcohol within the past 30 days.
Ninety-three percent of teens reporting 31 to 40 assets report having high self-esteem and only 7 percent report having low self-esteem. For teens reporting zero to 20 assets, only 35 percent report high self-esteem, while 65 percent report low self-esteem.
CALIFORNIA
Focusing on High-Risk Teens and Their Communities
New ISSC center probes causes and prevention of youth violence. Visiting-speakers program launches next week
By Cathy Cockrell, UC Berkley News
September 28, 2006
What makes high-risk teens tick? What are some of the best strategies for keeping them out of harm's way?
A community of scholars at the Center on Culture, Immigration, and Youth Violence Prevention — a newly created campus entity — is putting these questions squarely in its sights. The center, based at the campus's 30-year old Institute for the Study of Social Change (ISSC), is not only embarking on two federally funded research projects but is launching a speaker's series, beginning Oct. 5, designed to stimulate dialogue on the causes and prevention of youth violence.
"The new center reflects many of our longstanding commitments to doing community-based research, building academic partnerships, and nurturing a new generation of scholars," says ISSC director Rachel Moran, professor of law. "We hope to move the policy discourse beyond the assumption that violence is an individual pathology by exploring how to build healthy communities for immigrant youth."
Research will focus particularly on Latino and Asian Pacific Islander youth in Oakland, reports Deborah Lustig, a cultural anthropologist newly hired to support the center's research agenda. The two ethnic groups, she says, are under-studied and have many issues in common — language being one, parent-child conflicts (when the parents are immigrants and the children are U.S.-born) being another. There are also differences within and between ethnic groups that may be informative. In general, Asian American youth are doing better in terms of school performance, graduation rates, and delinquency and arrest rates, Lustig says. Understanding why may be a key to helping youth of all backgrounds flourish.
One investigation, set to begin within weeks, will put Palm Pilots in the hands of 60 Oakland teens, who will use the devices not only to do their own thing but to enter their responses to probing survey questions on their feelings and activities — the idea being that they're much more likely to complete the comprehensive Roosevelt Village Center Outcome Evaluation if they use a PDA (which they get to keep if they complete the study) than if they're filling out printed survey forms. In addition, 450 teens will complete surveys on touch-screen computers.
Headed by lead investigator Thao Le of Colorado State University, the research will evaluate the effectiveness of an after-school program at Roosevelt Middle School, in Oakland's largely Asian and Latino Lower San Antonio District; community participation is built into the study design as well.
A second study, led by Emily Ozer, assistant professor in Berkeley's School of Public Health, will involve teenagers as collaborators in — rather than just recipients of — school-based violence- and substance-abuse-prevention programs. The research probes the implementation of prevention programs in local schools, looking at how youth and their teachers would suggest adapting these programs to their own circumstances and cultural values. The study also investigates how training groups of students in research methods can help benefit the social development of the youth and also potentially improve the schools they attend.
The ISSC research center has also selected three campus graduate students from education and epidemiology whose research relates to youth-violence-prevention issues to participate in its graduate-fellow training program. One of 10 academic programs chosen by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as part of a national research initiative on youth violence, it is run jointly by ISSC, the School of Law, the National Council on Crime Delinquency, and UC San Francisco, with a $4.2 million grant from the CDC. Law professor Franklin Zimring, an expert in criminal justice and family law, is the principal investigator.
IOWA
Key legislators urge anti-bullying bill for gays
Associated Press, The Des Moines Register
September 25, 2006
Legislation that would protect gay and lesbian students from bullying at school has been given a boost by two key lawmakers.
A letter signed by Senate co-leaders Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, and Mary Lundby, R-Marion, calls for a vote on anti-bullying legislation next session. A bill proposing the reforms has circulated for three years but failed to clear both houses of the Legislature, despite bipartisan support.
“We can no longer afford a ‘sticks and stones’ attitude,’” according to the letter, which is being circulated by anti-bullying groups.
“Name-calling and bullying have very serious consequences.”
Brad Clark is the executive director of the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Youth in Iowa Schools Task Force. His group his pushing for anti-bullying legislation, but he is not convinced the letter guarantees that the measure will clear the Legislature next session.
“It reinforces that this is a bipartisan issue,” he said of the letter. “In this season of political divide, that two leaders of two different political parties can come together on this is quite extraordinary.”
One reason Clark is skeptical is House Speaker Christopher Rants, R-Sioux City, has said anti-bullying legislation should not offer protections to specific groups.
Rants said he will consider the measure if he is still speaker after November’s elections, though he remains doubtful on its premise.
“We need to protect fat kids, kids with glasses, kids who are too smart, kids who aren’t too smart. ... Schools should be a safe place regardless of whatever sets you apart,” Rants said. “I think you need to be careful that you don’t start singling out kids for protection and leaving other kids behind.”
According the anti-bullying letter, 83.3 percent of gay and lesbian students in Iowa are verbally harassed because of their sexual orientation, and 33.6 percent are physically abused.
The letter reads: “This legislation is a bipartisan issue and brings people from all political perspectives together on a common value — that all students deserve to be free from name-calling, violence, and harassment.”
VERMONT
Students Have Voice in Video Game Bill
Local educator’s research focuses on related violence
By Rick Burnham, St. Albans Messanger
September 20, 2006
Julie Benay is taking aim at violent video games and what she believes is the havoc they wreak on the minds of young people, and she is enlisting the help of a Bellows Free Academy-Fairfax organization to help her do it.
Benay, associate principal of Mary S. Babcock Elementary School in Swanton, paid a midday visit Tuesday to “Tongues Untied” a BFA-Fairfax student organization designed to advocate for and celebrate diversity. The purpose of her visit: to enlist their help in the fight to highlight the dangers of such games.
Those in attendance for Tuesday’s discussion included Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, State Rep. Carolyn Whitney Branagan, of Georgia, and statehouse candidate Gary Gilbert, of Fairfax.
“I have worked in schools with young kids for 20 years, and over the course of that time I have seen a lot of differences in how kids behave and the kinds of things that they do,” Benay told the group. “I have become increasingly alarmed at the level of violence and the intimate knowledge with violent things that young kids know about. These are the types of things that really upset me.”
The issue bothered her so much, Benay told the group, that she began to research the problem, reading anything and everything she could get her hands on that related in any way to youth violence. Some of the literature she found was on display in the classroom Tuesday, including a pair of books by James Garbarino: “See Jane Hit: Why Girls Are Growing More Violent and What Can Be Done about It;” and “Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them.”
It was a third book, however, that she spoke about in great detail, one that captured the attention of the teenage crowd.
“Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture,” a 2004 book by David Kushner, speaks of the wildly popular game released in 1993. It details the work of John Romero and John Carmack, who first came up with the revolutionary 3D graphics that are commonplace in today’s video games.
“I started thinking about when video games were invented, and when did these really violent games come on the market,” she said. “I found that they first came on the market Dec. 10, 1993. Two guys invented Doom as the original ‘first-person shooter’ video game."
“It gave opponents an opportunity to not only beat each other, but kill each other as well.”
Benay went on to explain that the two teenagers responsible for the Columbine massacre in 1999 were both “Doom fanatics.” She added that strong evidence exists that such video games, particularly the games that have evolved since the early versions of Doom, can lead to violent behavior in young people.
“The correlational research between kids being exposed at a young age to very violent video, who eventually become violent themselves, is as strong as the correlation between smoking cigarettes and developing lung cancer,” she said. “Not everybody who smokes cigarettes gets lung cancer, and not everybody that plays ‘Grand Theft Auto’ when they are young turns out to have clinical mental health concerns. But there is a point at which the human brain is vulnerable to violence, and some humans are more violent than others.”
Earlier this week Benay spoke to the Messenger about the shooting rampage, which took, place Sept. 13 in Montreal. A 25-year-old, Kimveer Gill, shot and killed a woman and wounded 19 others on the campus of Dawson College.
It was later discovered that Gill was a fan of a video game called “Super Columbine Massacre,” based on the killings at the Colorado high school.
“Life is a video game. You’ve got to die sometime,” Gill wrote on his personal blog. He called himself the “angel of death,” and committed suicide as police closed in on him in Montreal.
On Tuesday in Fairfax, Benay finished with a proposal for legislation that imposes a user fee on violent and explicit video games, specifically those games rated by Entertainment Software Rating Board as being either Adults Only (AO) or Mature (M). The ESRB currently lists 1,013 games with such ratings.
The students, who will play a role in determining the final language of proposed legislation, wasted no time in weighing in, some with support for making violent video games harder – or illegal – for young people to get, and others with questions about how far a user fee or ban would go in deterring the rental or purchase of violent games. Some questioned whether the games were responsible for any spike in violent behavior in the first place.
Student Catherine McGuinness said more care should be given to the maturity level of the user, as opposed to their age.
“I understand and agree with the premise of the proposed bill,” she said. “However, in conversations with several friends … our problem came in deciding who (could not get the games.) Why is one person considered mature at the age of 18? It is not necessarily a matter of age that bothers us, but a matter of personal maturity, and the ability distinguish between right and wrong, and make-belief and reality.”
The governor was given a demonstration of “Grand Theft Auto,” a video game that awards a wide variety of illegal activities, from shooting police and innocent bystanders to engaging in sexual intercourse with prostitutes.
Later, Douglas credited the students with taking on an important problem, and giving it a thorough examination in terms of not only ethical and morale issues, but also legal and Constitutional matters as well.
“This has been a very thoughtful and important conversation, not unlike what goes on in the legislature,” he said. “A lot of the pros and cons, public policy, finance, constitutional issues that we have discussed here today are similar to what our lawmakers in Montpelier discuss on a daily basis. I think you are on to something significant, and I commend you all for your hard work.”
Branagan said she would continue to meet with the class, with a goal of formulating a bill that she can present to lawmakers at some point in the future.
“I will be coming back to work with the kids – we have a long way to go and a lot of work to do,” she said. “We want them to get in their minds what the process would be to get this to become a bill. So we are going to have a civics lesson along with this social issue.”
PENNSYLVANIA
Game On
State probes link between video games, violence
By Chris Mautner, The Patriot News
September 24, 2006
It's happened in Illinois. It's happened in Michigan. It's happened in California.
And it might soon happen in Pennsylvania.
What I'm talking about is video game legislation. A number of states have enacted or looked at enacting laws designed to keep violent video games out of the hands of underage children.
Most if not all of these laws so far have been struck down by federal courts as violating the First Amendment, as well as failing to show a direct link between game violence and the real-life kind.
The Pennsylvania Legislature tentatively began investigating the issue, and the House's Children and Youth Committee held a hearing last month on the effects of violent games on children.
State Rep. Ronald Walters (D-Philadelphia/Delaware), the prime sponsor of the hearing, said he was concerned about children's access to such games as "Grand Theft Auto," which allows one to take on the role of a rather homicidal gangster.
"I watch young people play these games, and they play them for long periods of time," he said. "It's hard for me to watch that kind of activity without wondering what kind of effects it's having on them."
Walters' main worry is that the Entertainment Software Rating Board, the main ratings board for the video game industry, does not enforce its ratings, so there's nothing to prevent a store owner from selling an M-rated game to an underage customer.
"What are we doing subliminally to our children that we allow them to entertain themselves with this type of activity and we're not watching or at least monitoring to see what the effect is," he said.
Clay Calvert of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment was among those testifying at the hearing. He says he understands Walters' concerns but doesn't think legislation is the answer.
"The Legislature is right to be concerned about violence in society. They are right to be concerned about violence in the media. The question is what is really the answer and from my perspective, I don't think legislation is," he said.
"The Legislature in Pennsylvania is stepping deeply into the culture wars when it decides to legislate about violent video games," Calvert said. "Being against violence is a very popular political decision. Who isn't against violence in society?"
Calvert added that legislation, or even some form of state-sponsored study into the issue, would be a waste of taxpayer money since, first, any legislation would be quickly overturned by the courts; and, second, it's difficult to show what direct effect a violent game has on an individual.
Such arguments hold little sway for child psychologist Marolyn Morford of the Center for Child and Adult Development in State College. From her viewpoint, video games are an educational tool first and art second.
"You can never predict human behavior 100 percent, but you can talk about probabilities, and it is more likely that [children] would engage in an antisocial behavior if that behavior is reinforced for them over many hours and if their cohort also supports those sorts of behaviors," she said. "That's how games operate."
Far from being anti-video game, Morford has used games like "The Sims" as a way to help patients who are socially phobic. Her fear is over access and education.
"There is entertainment, but there's also learning that's going on, and I think that anybody who ignores the learning factor is ignoring a very powerful motivating dimension of that experience," she said.
Morford said she did not view prohibitive or punitive legislation as the solution but instead stressed the need for more public education and awareness about the learning effects of video games.
"I would like the gaming industry to not be so stupid and ignorant or act like they're so ignorant, that this is just like watching a violent movie and not recognizing what kind of power they do have and how they can play into people's weaknesses," she said.
Walters said while he would support some sort of legislation, he was more interested in backing a study to investigate the influence of violent video games, much like the Children and Media Research Advancement Act recently passed by the U.S. Senate.
"I'm just asking for a study," he said. "Whatever the outcome of the study is, I'm willing to accept it. If we find that there is no consequences of this, then I will be someone who will say 'OK, I accept the study.'
"But if the study says yes, there are things we need to alarm parents about, then we need to make sure that parents know that," he said.
Whatever the committee eventually recommends, Calvert said the hearing was far from a kangaroo court and that the legislators showed themselves to be fair and open-minded.
"This was not a hostile group of people. They seemed like they were genuinely interested in these issues," Calvert said. "I think they wanted to learn about the situation. So I give them credit for having an open mind going in. It wasn't 'bash the video game industry day.'"
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