Students to speak out on sex

Teens to air issue at Boulder Valley School Board

Kevin Vaughan, Rocky Mountain News

Published June 12, 2007 at midnight

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A sex-and-drug debate fueled by talk radio and commentator Bill O'Reilly opens its next chapter at tonight's Boulder Valley School Board meeting, where a group of students plans to add its voices to the chorus.

The presentation, expected to include as many as a dozen students, represents the ongoing fallout from an April 10 panel discussion at Boulder High School. Students were told, among other things, that sex with condoms "doesn't feel as good," that masturbation is an "appropriate" sexual behavior for a 12-year-old and that buying drugs is easy.

That 80-minute discussion quickly took on a life of its own. KHOW's Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman talked extensively about it, and O'Reilly, of FoxNews, called it an "educational outrage in Boulder that makes Ward Churchill look insignificant."

Into that world, a group of students plans to stand up tonight for their school administrators.

"We just want them to know as students we support our administration and we don't believe the panel was as damaging as everyone thinks," said Mansur Gidfar, one of two students who has collected roughly 400 signatures seeking a formal apology from O'Reilly.

The uproar began shortly after the presentation of "STDs: Sex, Teens and Drugs" at Boulder High as part of the University of Colorado's Conference on World Affairs. A drug-policy expert, a psychologist and storyteller from California, and a "community engagement leader" for Ernst & Young in the Americas spoke at the event.

Daphne White, who will be a junior in the fall, told the school board in May that she believed the discussion was a "completely irresponsible and dangerous invitation to Boulder High students to have sex and take drugs."

She wasn't alone.

Caplis and Silverman took up the cause. They've pushed the school district to send letters home to all students telling them the messages of the panelists were inappropriate. To date, the district has not done that.

"I'm a live-and-let-live guy, but don't be going into a public school and telling the kids to do drugs and have sex because it's inevitable that they will during their high school careers," Silverman said. "Don't be recounting your own sexual exploits to the kids at a public high school. Those panelists crossed so many boundaries in terms of what they said and the way they said it.

"I'm sure it was entertaining to the kids, but it was inappropriate."

In the midst of the uproar, George Garcia, the district's superintendent, concluded that mistakes were made.

While Garcia determined that the panel discussion was "appropriate" for high school students, he was bothered by language that he found "unnecessarily crude" and by statements that directly contradicted district health and conduct standards.

And he found that "at least some students were required to attend."

"To the degree that this occurred, it violated existing district and school practice," Garcia wrote in his report of his investigation.

Finally, Garcia concluded "that the makeup of this panel was not in compliance" with district policies requiring that a "broad range of views and perspectives" be provided when controversial subjects are taught.

Tonight, the school board is expected to hear from students on both sides of the issue - including some who organized a petition drive demanding an apology from O'Reilly.

On one show, O'Reilly talked about the controversy with a photo of a school on the screen next to him with the words "Boulder out of control" underneath it.

But Gidfar said O'Reilly and everyone else should back off and realize that even though they are high school students they can think for themselves.

"I think honestly that people need to give us as students a little more credit," he said. "You'll be hard-pressed to find a single high school student who says, 'I'm going to go out and do Ecstasy now' just because a psychologist from L.A. mentioned it in passing during a 90-minute panel.

"I think people need to realize that we can think for ourselves to some extent."

The controversy

• The spark: An April 10 panel discussion involving questionable talk about sex and drugs.

• Media attention: KHOW's Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman discussed the incident. FoxNews commentator Bill O'Reilly also weighed in.

If you go

• What: Boulder Valley School Board meeting

• When: 6:30 p.m. today

• Where: District administration building, 6500 E. Arapahoe Road

Online

• To read a transcript of the Conference on World Affairs' panel "STDs: Sex, Teens and Drugs," go to BVSDWatch.org.

vaughank@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5019

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