Students lay down the law at mock legislature

Youth assembly tackles tough issues

The 200 high school students who debated bills Sunday resembled their real-life counterparts in many ways.

They dressed in suits and passionately argued hot-button issues. They passed notes through pages, made motions and surrendered their time after speaking.

But can you imagine a crowd of North Carolina legislators lined up to argue that tobacco use should be banned statewide?

At the annual Youth Legislative Assembly, a three-day Raleigh event that ended Sunday, high school students passed bills to allow therapeutic cloning and ban corporal punishment in public schools, among others.

Now in its 36th year, the event put on by the state Youth Advocacy and Involvement Office helps students learn about the legislative process and polish their speaking skills by debating the hot topics of the day.

This year, they weighed the competing values of civil rights and public safety and pondered checks on the judiciary. They tried to gain a voice in decisions that affect their classrooms and offer aid to disaster victims.

Youth assembly members come from across the state, but they aren't elected. (Most are too young to even vote.) Nor are they influenced by lobbyists, campaign contributions or political parties.

And unlike elected officials, they don't shy from touchy subjects.

"We're a lot more open, not swayed by politics," said Quincy O'Neal, a Clayton High School senior and one of the three assembly speakers.

The teens have a pretty good track record. Last year, they passed an education lottery in a landslide. But don't expect their discussions to sound too much like the real thing.

"It's the youth voice of North Carolina," said J.T. Bost, a science teacher at Salisbury High School who brings students to the event every year and participated in it himself as a teenager. "They look at things completely differently than we do."

He said students' sophistication grows as the sessions progress. Financial arguments creep up more often, idealistic ones less.

By the last day, some students were certainly talking the talk.

North Brunswick High School junior Randall McCready was disappointed Sunday. His committee's bill to allow the governor to appoint Supreme Court justices passed, but an amendment he supported, for justices to serve life terms, failed.

The eight-year terms that passed "completely undermine what we were trying to accomplish," McCready said. "It's practically the same as being elected."

In his floor speech, McCready urged his peers to consider how an elected judge would have ruled in Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark civil rights case that integrated public schools.

"A judge isn't supposed to be a politician," he argued. "Wouldn't an elected judge be less likely to make a bold decision?"

Some bills were more quixotic, such as one that would allow students a vote on local school boards. But students' youthful idealism at times gave way to surprising sophistication.

Shivani Sud, a sophomore at Jordan High School in Durham, said she chose to keep the term "cloning" out of a bill she co-wrote, instead proposing to legalize "somatic cell nuclear transfer." "If they see that word, 'cloning,' they have that initial reaction against it," she said.

She also cast her argument in economic terms. "If we can bring this research to North Carolina, it will help our people and our economy," she said.

Her bill passed.

Jarrett Ross, a Raleigh Charter High School senior who co-sponsored the tobacco bill, blamed history for its failure.

"Tobacco has been such a large part of our society," he said. "It's going to be a while before that changes."