[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 107 (Wednesday, September 13, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1475-E1476]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               VERMONT STUDENT CONGRESSIONAL TOWN MEETING

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. BERNARD SANDERS

                               of vermont

                    in the house of representatives

                     Wednesday, September 13, 2000

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the outstanding 
work done by participants in my Student Congressional Town Meeting held 
this summer. These participants were part of a group of high school 
students from around Vermont who testified about the concerns they have 
as teenagers, and about what they would like to see the government do 
regarding these concerns.
  I submit these statements for the Congressional Record as I believe 
that the views of these young persons will benefit my colleagues.

                     Mike Flower and Brett Michaud


               Regarding STUDENT NIGHTLIFE--May 26, 2000

       MIKE FLOWER: I am Mike Flower from Youth Build, and it is 
     an organization that we do construction and do school every 
     other week. And basically my subject is how there isn't a lot 
     of things for youth to do at nighttime. And I just think that 
     there should be a club for just youth or something every 
     night that they can do instead of drugs. So that is my 
     thought.
       BRETT MICHAUD: I basically have the same idea as him 
     because, I mean, without any clubs what do students resort 
     to? They resort to gangs and drugs, and that is not what 
     people want and that is not what people want to see in the 
     youth of Burlington. They want to see people active in their 
     community, and sometimes the activities are just not there 
     for the students and they just have no other place to resort 
     to.

                                  ____
                                  

 Hillary Knapp, Shawn Keane, Sue Martin, Laura Drummond and Joel Felion


               Regarding OTTER TEEN NETWORK--May 26, 2000

       HILLARY KNAPP: I would first like to thank you for inviting 
     us and giving us the opportunity to tell about some of the 
     things that we have been doing at Otter Valley Union High 
     School through our teen network organization, Otter Teen 
     Network.
       The issue that we would like to present to you is continued 
     support, encouragement and funding for organizations such as 
     Otter Teen Network that give teens an opportunity to be 
     leaders, putting continued emphasis on school funding, 
     opportunities for grants that support prevention programs and 
     funding for groups such as Green Mountain Prevention Projects 
     are very important. We feel that we as teens are the best 
     support and the best role models for each other and that we 
     have more of a direct influence on each other, but those of 
     us who want to become leaders need a clean and drug-free 
     school and even the right tools. In addition to supporting 
     prevention, we would also like to encourage research in 
     intervention programs that support teens in our daily lives.
       SHAWN KEANE: Otter Teen Network is an idea that came from 
     two students two years ago. Otter Teen Network is student-
     initiated, student-run and student-organized that promotes 
     teens working together to create a positive school, community 
     and safe school environment while promoting being drug-free. 
     Otter Teen Network is a great example of teens being given 
     the opportunity to express their opinions, share ideas and 
     improving their school environment and being encouraged to 
     make a difference. We have the opportunity to pull together 
     many resources and merge them into the program making it 
     quite a team effort. Safe and Drug-free Schools has funded 
     our advisor's position. It has been the advisor's goal to 
     work within the school soliciting support from 
     administration, faculty and staff. With the creation of OTN, 
     Otter Valley has created an umbrella organization to take 
     advantage of a number of outside resources, such as Green 
     Mountain Prevention Projects, which are stated in there, GMR 
     projects, leadership projects and teen institutes. We are 
     very close to DTLSP. We even have someone on the advisory 
     council. We participate in the Governor's Leadership 
     Conference and also VCAT. Otter Teen Network has also worked 
     with the office of Alcohol and Drug Abuse on presentations. 
     We have also developed them through the goal of working 
     through grant writing and awards to further our projects.
       In addition to Safe and Drug-free School mini-grants we 
     have also been given an award. We have also awarded ODAT 
     community grants.
       Another area of support that we have tapped into is our 
     outside community organization called Neighborhood 
     Connections. This is a team--it is this teamwork and 
     cooperation that has made us stronger and helped us to such 
     positive influence in such a short time.
       LAURA DRUMMOND: Otter Valley Union High School has 
     approximately 770 middle school and high school students. 
     This type of diverse program reaches everyone, Otter Teen 
     Network meetings are held weekly. Once a month we try to have 
     planning sessions where we talk about theme and how to get it 
     across to the school. Often we do informal bulletin boards 
     and school art displays. In many of our topics we focus on 
     prevention in school and community or showing how we are all 
     connected.
       JOEL FELION: We have teen leaders which initiate and head a 
     project. There are team members who do network on the project 
     and get it ready, and there are participants who are in 
     school who have not worked on the project but received direct 
     benefit and then there are recipients who are on the 
     outskirts, they are not picking up anything directly but they 
     still benefit from our program and our influence.
       HILLARY KNAPP: We would like to present to you this binder 
     showing some of the things that we have done, and we would 
     like to thank you for having us. And the next presentation is 
     about our Power of Choice Day which was held on May 3rd.

                                  ____
                                  

Chris Bullard, Becki Kenyon, Jenn Bearor, Angel Boise and Hillary Knapp


                Regarding POWER OF CHOICE--May 26, 2000

       CHRIS BULLARD: Hi. My name is Chris Bullard and I am here 
     to go over the concept of the Power of Choice Day. Through 
     attending many conferences with GMPP and GLSP we were always 
     greatly influenced on what we had saw or what we had done, so 
     we decided it would be good for the entire school to have 
     something like that. We began brainstorming ideas last year. 
     As we began brainstorming, the ideas just kept flowing. In 
     February of this year we finally had enough on paper to 
     present it to our administration. It was a go for May 3rd. 
     The Power of Choice was named an all day, schoolwide 
     conference offering teens at Otter Valley Union High School 
     an opportunity to learn, interact and discuss problems and 
     issues that teens face 3 today. And now I am going to turn 
     over to these two.
       BECKI KENYON: Hi. I am Becki. Here you have a Power of 
     Choice flyer or pamphlet you can use and it would help. Could 
     you please take it out just to look at it? It should be in 
     one of the pockets.
       JENN BEAROR: The meaning of this day was to give awareness 
     to our peers about alcohol and drugs and peer pressure and to 
     let them make their own decisions. We have a group of us 
     called the SOS Players which emphasized on all types of 
     issues that teens face today. We also had the pleasure to 
     have a couple of peers from Mountain View come as well as 
     many celebrities, like the Middlebury Men's and Women's 
     Hockey Team, and all of this was possible by the funding of 
     grants from the Governor's Highway Safety Program, New 
     Direction, OBCC, Refuse to Abuse, and many more.
       BECKI KENYON: In the back of the program we had different 
     workshops that our students went to throughout the day, and 
     some of those workshops are Addiction and Intervention, 
     Dealing with Tragedy, Health, Home and Phobia Resolves, 
     Parties, Respecting Yourself, Does Your Body Meet Your Image, 
     Healthy Habits. And the students gave different--well, it had 
     their names on them for drawings throughout the day so we

[[Page E1476]]

     kind of rewarded them for coming and participating with us. 
     And then in our school we have three different lunches which 
     we use to invite different groups and which we go there.
       We have also been working with several groups throughout 
     the whole process. Some of these are Fine Family Resources, 
     Vermont Liquor Control, OBCC, Trapp Coalition, Department of 
     Health, VTLSP, GMPP, and all these groups working together 
     helped us to meet the Vermont standards adopted by the state 
     for all students in the state.
       And we would like to turn it over to Angel.
       ANGEL BOISE: As Becki Kenyon already said, my name is Angel 
     Boise. I would Just like to say we have received positive and 
     negative comments about this day. We had several students 
     absent that day because they thought they would be 
     ineffective. The day had turned out to have a big impact on 
     the faculty, students and community members. The students 
     that missed Power of Choice realized that they had missed out 
     on a great day. Some of the positive comments were that it 
     was a wonderful day, it had a big impact and it was 
     unbelievable. Thank you for all your time.
       HILLARY KNAPP: It has been a privilege to be here today. As 
     a small token of our appreciation, we would like to present 
     you with our Otter Valley mascot, the otter, and it is from 
     us at Otter Teen Network and Otter Valley Union High School.

     

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