Columbia College Chicago Digital Commons @ Columbia College Chicago New Expression Youth Communication Chicago Collection May 1981 New Expression: May 1981 (Volume 5, Issue 5) Columbia College Chicago Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.colum.edu/ycc_newexpressions Part of the Journalism Studies Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Columbia College Chicago, "New Expression: May 1981 (Volume 5, Issue 5)" (1981). New Expression. 40. http://digitalcommons.colum.edu/ycc_newexpressions/40 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Youth Communication Chicago Collection at Digital Commons @ Columbia College Chicago. It has been accepted for inclusion in New Expression by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Columbia College Chicago. Vol. 5, No.5 May, 1981 Photo by Oscar Moresi Learn how to ride a motorcycle ,_~~~;":.i:~~en suicides • and nervous breakdowns thiS summer . ~~yrocketing? See page • Find out the best places to buy punk glasses. You'll find all the survey .. or take a course in modern jazz dance or results on page 9. • College professors list be a tour guide at DuSable Museum. books they wish their For more information, see our list of sumnier opportunities Freshmen had read BE­ for teens on page 6. FORE they got to college. See page 13. State boosts driving age to 17 ll~!ll1!111!111!~~l~llll Next year teens in Illinois will have to be 17 instead of 16 to get a driver's license, and be 16 instead of 15 to be admitted to a Driver's Education class. Such an amendment to the Illinois Ve­ hicles Code, which just passed the State General Assembly, would take effect Sept. 1, 1982. Prime sponsor of the amendment, Representative Hurbert Huskey said, "This amendment wasn't really the House's idea. It was started by a group males from 18 through 22 must serve for •••••••••••••••• of students from a law class at at least nine months in the military, plus Doctors are now required to notify Eisenhower H.S. in Blue Island. added time in the active reserve. Col­ parents before performing an abortion "The law class passed the amend­ lege students would not be exempted on unmarried girls under 18. Doctors will Daley combats ment into law in a mock assembly. Later because of studies as they were during now face criminal charges for failing to a group of students asked me to intro­ the previous draft. Students would not notify parents as a result of a recent violent teens duce it formally into the House, so I did." be called up until after they had Supreme Court ruling. "At the public hearings the students graduated from high school (or reached Married, self-supporting, indepen­ from the law class testified in its favor. age 20) and would be allowed to finish dent, or "mature" (able to make in­ They felt it would make teens more ~e­ their current semester of college before formed decisions about their own health sponsible if they waited a year before beginning basic training. and welfare) women are the only ones getting a license, it would cul down on The Hollings Bill also adds some exempted from the ruling. the number of teen accidents, and "persuaders" to interest draftees in a Even though the U.S. Supreme Court In January we reported that Illinois encourage some teens to stay in school four year enlistment - a free college has made a ruling on parental notifica­ was the first state to pass a law longer." education. tion before an abortion, spokesmen for sentencing habitual juvenile offenders to Representative Huskey said that very The draft registration issue is also three area abortion clinics admitted they confinement until they reach age 21 few teens have protested the raise in before the U.S. Supreme Court right had never heard of the ruling. The without any chance of parole. age. Maybe that's because they've now. Last month the Court heard oral Michigan Avenue Medical Center, Now State's Attorney Richard Daley arguments in the Rostler vs . Goldberg Women's Core, LTD., and Wells Family has announced his support of a law that never heard of it. case, which will determine the constitu­ Planning Center had never heard of the would try juveniles as adults if they are ••••••••••••••• tionality of an all-male draft. Goldberg ruling nor did they plan at the present to charged with a violent crime. The Hollings Bill, which is Congress' change the present procedures for girls Despite the fact that the Chicago latest attempt to start a new all-male has charged that the present all-male registration for the draft discriminates to obtain an abortion. Crime Commission just reported a de­ military draft, is now being considered by against men. He is supporting a "un­ cline in violent crimes (22 percent over the Senate Armed Services Committee. the past five years), Daley claims that According to the Hollings Bill, all isex" registration. the state must get tougher to combat juvenile crime. "These young violent offenders are terrorizing many com­ munities," he said, "and the criminal jus- - '!Tte system needs to change in order to deal with them." This proposed change is a dramatic one. If the proposal passes the State Assembly, all teens 14 through 17 with Recently, the National Association of dent governments, according to the sur­ records who commit a violent crime will Student Councils (NASC) surveyed vey, is the principal's veto power. One­ be transferred to the criminal courts to 7,000 members nationwide in order to hundred percent of those surveyed said be tried as adults. Teens who are con­ Governor Thompson has introduced a evaluate student governments in the principal has the power in their victed will face imprisonment for as bill that would require all high school America. schools to veto any decisions that the many years as any adult who is con­ personnel (teachers, custodians, bus The major complaint of the student student government wants to act on. victed of the same crime. drivers, etc.) to report any students sus­ council members surveyed was the lack However, when New Expression Daley referred specifically to the pected of using or selling drugs. If they of support from their fellow classmates surveyed 22 Chicago-area high school gangs. He claims that gang leaders give fail to report a suspect they could lose when their councils try to get policies student governments (February, 1981}, the violent "jobs" to younger teens be­ their jobs and/or teacher's licenses. changed. we found two local schools where the cause they won't be given heavy A telephone information hot line would "The problem is that students don't principal had no veto power, sentences if they are caught and sent to be set up for school personnel to report care; councils have to work to get stu­ Josephinum and Curie high schools. the juvenile court. He believes that drug information. Teachers and princi­ dent backing before they can ever grasp The NASC national survey found that younger teens will refuse to carry out pals in Chicago are already fighting the any power in school," explained Rocco most student governments served more some of these orders if they know that governor, declaring that they are not Marano, Administrative Director of as social committees than as govern­ they can be sentenced to jail in an adult hired as policemen. NASC. ments, JUSt as the NE survey dis­ courtroom with a jury. •••••••••••••••• The second largest obstacle for stu- covered . I~ You'll never forgive yourself if you miss ... (b -_, - -,_L_ _ _ I 2 NEW EXPRESSION "Be a man, a real man," his parents always told him. Joe's parents had been teenagers during the 60's, and they couldn't accept the fact that Joseph, at the age of 15, believed that he was gay. Joe felt guilty. The struggle inside himself was like "two people trying to survive as one." His parents seemed to ignore his struggle. The problem worsened. One side of him couldn't tolerate the other. He ended the struggle by committing suicide. Joe's suicide was one of 4,000 teen suicides in the United States last year. And the teen suicide rate has doubled in the past two years, according to a recent study by psycho­ logist Carl Tisher of the Ohio Children's Hospital. Approximately one thousand teen suicides are attempted each day. The experts see this alarming teen suicide rate as a clear symptom of serious new stress among teenagers. But the experts don't tell us where this new stress is coming from. Somehow, the life of a teenager in 1981 must be more stressful than it was in 1971. But how? That's what New Expression attempts to explain in the three investigations that appear on pages three and four. We hope they will help you analyze your own situation. ~~;~,c:,'f1 More academic pressures ~ by Shirley Mitchell on,"' she satd. " But now teens are grade point averages," she said. being convmced that a htgh " Instead, they publish thetr AC.T. "The teenagers of 1969 cared school dtploma Wlll not provtde a scores openly Back in 1971 they more about their high school av­ comfortable ltvmg - and so they dtdn t talk that openly about those erages than they did about thetr have to plan now lor careers and scores or see the scores as de- A C T scores. accordtng to Mrs. college.'' termtners of thetr future Sharon Hupp an English teacher ''If they come from mtddle class The college test scores place at the Academy of Our Lady Mrs.