National Youth Rights Association

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Update 5/13/13: We did it!

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Takoma Park, MD is poised to become the first city in America to let 16-year-olds vote. To make such a change, the city council must go through three public ceremonies. First, a public hearing where members of the public give their views on the proposal. Second, a vote of the city council. Finally, a second vote of the city council at a later date to affirm they really meant it.

Monday, April 8, 2013, Takoma Park held its public hearing. Young people turned out in droves, and the overwhelming majority of people at the hearing voiced support for a lower voting age. (Video of hearing)

The following Monday, April 15, the city council had its first vote: 6 to 1 in favor of lowering the voting age!

Why is this city council so supportive of an idea that has yet to pass anywhere else in the US? Partly, it is because of the outstanding leadership of council members like Tim Male and Seth Grimes who knew this was right and were willing to risk their popularity for the good of their city. But this progress is also happening because of the activism of young people such as those who spoke at the public hearing.

Do politicians listen to teenagers? Sometimes they do. And at the April 15 city council meeting, council members Kay Daniels-Cohen and Terry Seamens both admitted they had initially opposed this idea, thinking 16-year-olds unfit for voting, but when they heard the articulate 16-year-olds in their public hearing, they could no longer cling to their stereotypes. As Daniels-Cohen told the youth in attendance, “You made a difference to me last week.”

Some like to believe that youth are apathetic, but Council Member Tim Male pointed out that roughly 15% of all Takoma Park residents aged 16-17 had attended the April 8 hearing. If the same percentage of adults in that city ever attended a city council meeting, he noted, there would not be nearly enough seats for them.

The second and final vote is expected to occur Monday May 15. If no council-member flip-flops, the proposal should become effective this summer.

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Update: winner chosen!

On social media, people love to share pictures that are interesting, funny, or make a good point quickly. An image that says something about youth rights could make a real impact if it goes viral.

So NYRA is inviting youth rights activists to submit images for our meme contest. Make a graphic related to youth rights. It can be funny, thought-provoking, informative, or just plain fun. You can use photographs, charts, quotes, or anything you feel appropriate.

Email your entries to bbystricky at youthrights.org with the subject line “Let’s go viral.”

The best image will be posted on NYRA’s website and Facebook page, and the winner will receive public recognition plus a free 1-year paid membership in NYRA, or if already a member, will have one full year added to his/her membership. If you have a lifetime membership in NYRA, we will give you membership for the first year of your afterlife!

Rules:

1. Image must have “www.youthrights.org” on it somewhere so people will know where they can go to learn more about the movement. A stamp in a lower corner of the image is fine, though if you want to do something more creative with the URL, feel free.
2. Email your entry to bbystricky at youthrights.org with the subject line “Let’s go viral.”
3. Entries must be received by Thursday Jan. 31, 2013.
4. Contestants may submit as many entries as they wish, and may attach them to the same email or to separate emails.
5. Entries become the property of the National Youth Rights Association.
6. Must comply with all applicable laws. Blah, blah, blah.

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Senator Al Franken has introduced the Location Privacy Protection Act (S. 1223), which would ban spyware that sneaks onto your cell phone and tells someone else your GPS location or other sensitive information. Such apps are being marketed to employers who want to spy on their employees, to people who want to spy on their spouses, and to parents who want to spy on their children.

Supporters of Franken’s bill rightly recognize the dangers such spyware poses. “It’s really, really troubling that an industry would see an opportunity to make money off of strengthening someone’s opportunity to control and threaten another individual,” says Karen Jarmoc, ED of the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

One problem with the bill: it specifically exempts parents who want to spy on their children. That’s right. An abusive husband wanting to keep watch on his wife would be denied this creepy assistance, but an abusive father wanting to keep watch on his daughter through her cellphone would still enjoy full access to such spyware.

There is still time, however, to change this. Senators can still make adjustments to the bill before passing it. So please write to your state’s Senators today and ask them to remove this exemption for abusive parents. Let your Senators know that you expect them to protect citizens of all ages, children included.

But I’m not old enough to vote, you say. Will they really care about my opinion? You don’t have to tell them your age. Just make sure they know you live in their state, and make it clear you want them to remove the exemption for parents and protect the privacy of all Americans.

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The Minneapolis Television Network recently held a live, one-hour special entitled “Youth & Politics,” and included among their guests Maxwell Hall (President, NYRA – Washington County) and Amy O’Connell (President, NYRA – Twin Cities).

Here’s the first half:

And here’s the second:

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In the 1970’s, feminist Gloria Steinem wrote a famous essay considering ways the world might be different if men menstruated and women did not. Among other things, Steinem suggested sexist men would use women’s lack of menstruation to argue women are unsuited for the medical profession (“Women might faint at the sight of blood!”) or for the military (“Can women be properly fierce without a monthly cycle governed by the planet Mars?”). Without a biological feature that measures the month, or any span of time, it would be argued women were less fit for roles that involved math or science.

We may soon see something like that in real life because a scientific “fact” that has long been used to justify restrictions on youth has now been, not just debunked, but reversed.

Old Brain Science

For years we’ve been told the adolescent mind is inferior (Undeveloped!!) and that this inferiority makes teenagers impulsive and disinclined to weigh risks before making decisions.

This stereotype has been used to rationalize many restrictions on youth. Teenagers are denied drivers licenses (or relegated to overly restrictive “graduated driver licenses”) on the theory that impulsive teenagers will drive dangerously, failing to think before they act. The drinking age is justified with the belief that teenagers are biologically less capable of weighing the risks and rewards of getting drunk. Curfew laws are needed, we’ve been told, because teenagers’ impulsiveness prevents them from acting civilized.

New Brain Science

New research suggests adults are actually more impulsive than teenagers.

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City conducted an experiment in which they had both teenagers and adults play a game in which players received points for correctly predicting which way a dot on the screen would move. Teenagers took longer than adults to make their predictions.

Was it because teenagers were dumber than adults? Was it because teenagers refused to pay attention to the game, their minds constantly on sex? Was it because the teenagers were stoned? No.

Brain scans showed what was going on in participants’ brains during this game. The teenagers showed significantly higher brain activity than the adults did in the prefrontal cortex and parietal cortex, showing that the teenagers were doing a more thorough job than the adults of examining the clues before making their carefully measured choices.

By the way, if “prefrontal cortex” sounds familiar to you, here’s why: that’s the part of the brain that the media kept telling us teenagers couldn’t use because it was undeveloped until adulthood. That’s the impulse-control part of the brain. It turns out, not only does the teenage brain have this feature, but it’s more active – more alive – than the adult-brain version.

Maybe this is why supermarkets are more successful at getting shoppers to make impulse buys than teachers are at getting students to do impulse homework.

The amusing thing will be watching how politicians and interest groups now defend ageist policies. What will they say after years of justifying restrictions with claims that teenagers are too impulsive?

For now, they are ignoring the science. The media are giving little attention to this new research, since it doesn’t support the narrative reporters enjoy pushing. The few outlets that are covering it are burying the lead, headlining “TEENAGERS CAN BE SMART, TOO, SOMETIMES” and waiting for a few paragraphs to add “smarter than adults.”

But eventually, the truth will get out. Will politicians then repeal all these ageist laws? Will they in fact ban adults from driving and from voting now that we know adults have poor impulse-control as their prefrontal cortex has over-ripened and is no longer as active?

Yeah, right. We all know the answer. Discriminators gonna discriminate, and not against themselves.

I imagine some MADD moron will soon defend graduated driver licenses by saying, “Driving calls for quick decisions. As the science now proves, teenagers’ immature brains lead them to examine things too thoroughly before reaching any decisions. This analysis-paralysis causes young drivers to over-think every move, and that delay can be deadly. Only adults, with our fully-developed brains free of excessive caution, can be trusted to make the quick life-and-death decisions that driving often calls for. It’s only logical.”

We’ll see.

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Friday, NYRA will host our national Votes for Youth rally. And we need some good chants people can do to show our passion for increasing democracy. So in this age of crowd-sourcing, we’re inviting you to post suggestions for chants.

The best submissions will be used at the rally!

To enter, just post your suggested chant below.

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Tonight, less than 2 weeks after they were elected, NYRA’s new board of directors (BOD) held their first board meeting, and it was a smashing success. It included friendly discussion, healthy debate, and great results. Among other decisions, the new BOD chose a very promising selection of officers.

Former President Jeffrey Nadel was the uncontested choice to once again take up the role of President. Former President Stefan Muller was elected Vice-President. New-comer Jaylen Bledsoe — in his first month on NYRA’s BOD — has already earned enough trust and respect that he was elected unanimously as NYRA’s Treasurer. And Katrina Moncure will continue to serve as our Secretary. Meet all these officers!

Additionally, the BOD formally adopted rules of order addressing concerns that arose in the previous board term, and they accepted the resignation of last term’s President, Usiel Phoenix. The board will choose a replacement for Phoenix at a meeting in the near future.

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Since fundraising is among the most important responsibilities a board of directors (BOD) has, many non-profits require each board member to raise or donate a minimum each year ($5,000 is a common minimum). NYRA has never set a minimum beyond that needed to maintain membership in the organization ($10/year or $150/lifetime). In our current board term, 6 of our 9 board members have brought in no money whatsoever, and not one has brought in more than $100 for the entire term.

Luckily, help is on the way. Some of this year’s candidates, determined to give NYRA the committed BOD it deserves, are pledging, if elected, to raise or donate at least $400 each over the next term. For NYRA, this is a big step in the right direction.

While raising funds is not the only valuable thing board members do, it is an important responsibility. And it has been my observation as Executive Director that the board members who bring in the most money are the same board members who give us the most time and the most valuable volunteer work. Those who are committed give us time and money, while those who lack commitment give us neither.

Therefore I hope every voter in this year’s election will consider giving high ranking to each candidate who has demonstrated their commitment by signing this pledge:

Pledge

Recognizing that raising funds is a key responsibility of a board of directors, I pledge that, if I am elected to NYRA’s board of directors for the 2012-2013 term:

1)      I will raise or donate at least $100 for NYRA every three months.

2)      The first time I fail to meet this minimum, I will resign from NYRA’s board and will remain off the board until the next board term.

3)      If another board member who signs this agreement fails to honor it, I will vote to remove him/her from the board.

4)      NYRA’s Executive Director will have my full support in informing all voters in future elections of how well I honored this agreement.

Signatories

Steven Hamrick

Megan Wanzo

Hardy Macia

Paula Flowe

Jeffrey Nadel

Jaylen Bledsoe

Erik Braghirol

For years, I’ve been a proud NYRA-member, voting in every election. But only after I began working in NYRA’s office, first as Campaign Manager, then as Executive Director, did I see the qualities that make a good board member. I used to think it was important to elect candidates who shared my vision for the world and my vision of the strategy NYRA should follow in pursuit of that dream.

Now I realize that’s the least important thing about a director.

Yes, our directors set our policies and lay out our strategies, but it would self-defeating for an organization to significantly change its vision and its strategy every year as soon as a new board of directors is seated.

The most important function of the board of directors, the most important role of each director, is to give the organization the resources it needs to thrive. Board members give financial resources through fundraising and they give human resources through volunteer work. Without these resources, the organization becomes too weak to follow any strategy. Without people willing to roll up their sleeves and work – raising funds, organizing campaigns, planning our Annual Meeting, writing our newsletter, maintaining our website – without that, it’s not a real board of directors at all, it’s just a social club with fancy titles.

This year, our BOD was overwhelmed with people who gave us many great ideas but little work and little money. As a result, NYRA suffered significant setbacks. We now have a smaller budget and a smaller staff than we enjoyed a year ago. We have organized fewer campaigns and enjoyed less success. Even our Annual Meeting this year may not measure up to previous years. And all those great ideas our board members brought us add up to nothing more than, at most, an interesting conversation, one we might have had just as easily on the forums while leaving a different BOD to keep NYRA running.

In 2012, more than ever, NYRA needs talented and committed directors to get us back on our feet. This year when I vote, I won’t care about who’s a progressive and who’s a libertarian. I won’t look at who’s a radical and who’s a moderate. I couldn’t care less about charisma or style. I’ll be looking instead at who has helped this organization in the past, and who is most likely to help us in the months ahead. I’ll be looking for a professional attitude and a serious commitment to this organization. Most importantly, I’ll be looking for candidates who can commit to helping NYRA succeed even when NYRA follows a strategy that is not theirs. That commitment is the duty of any board member in any nonprofit. When you cannot faithfully perform that duty, you step down and make room for someone who can.

When I moved across the country and took my job in NYRA’s office, the organization had broken into factions, and I had no idea which faction would prevail. I did not know if NYRA would be a moderate organization or a radical one. But I moved out here determined to help NYRA either way. I knew that, whatever opinion prevailed on our board, NYRA would remain the most important organization in the youth rights movement, and I knew that the youth rights movement deserved to succeed.

We need a BOD that understands that as well. Elect one for us this year, and I promise you NYRA will get back on its feet and charge ahead giving America’s youth the movement they deserve. Success is still within our reach. Let’s grab it.

-Bill Bystricky

Can’t attend the upcoming rally in Washington, DC against corporal punishment in our schools? You can still share your views.

During the second day of the event, NYRA Executive Director Bill Bystricky will join other activists in reading comments submitted from across America.

If you have a personal experience with corporal punishment in school, send us a note that can be read in 3 minutes or less.

It can be read anonymously or with your first name and city; just let us know your preference.

You can post your message on this thread, or you can email it to [email protected].

As you’ll find out everywhere, today is Mother’s Day. Over the years, I’ve made it no secret that I personally dislike Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, that they seem to be based on blind parental reverence and appreciation, often painting them as without exception selfless saints serving their unappreciative children. And any suggestion that such a day be made for those sons and daughters, who also very often are the ones serving and caring for their parents (even as adults when they aren’t being forced to in any way), is met with derision (well, there is a Children’s Day, but it’s different and not really a thing in this country).

As youth rights supporters and theorists, the methods, power, and sometimes very institution of parenting comes into question a lot. The home can be the most oppressive place for a young person. We’re not content to merely sit back and assume parents always have good intentions. The “sanctity” of parental rights can and MUST be challenged.

That is not at all to say parenting isn’t EXTREMELY difficult. I’m not a parent, though many youth rights supporters are and thus are familiar with the millions of complicated little things about it. But with such an extremely difficult job, full of anxieties and uncertainties, there can be a tendency to stick to what’s “tried and true”, no matter how actually harmful the “tried and true” may be. But even with acknowledging it’s a near impossible job, due to the inherent nature of worrying for a cherished person as well as social and economic issues just adding to the challenges, it still must be said that certain kinds of treatment are just plain unacceptable, that the importance of certain “results” in raising children should be questioned, that the difficulty of a parent’s job doesn’t mean their children’s basic human rights can go right out the window.

So I’d like to make a couple of shout-outs here.

One… teenage mothers. In all the placing of mothers on pedestals today, we can probably assume it’s only mothers who became so at an age society feels comfortable with. As hard as motherhood is even in the best of circumstances, these young women must do so in the face of anti-youth hatred by those who see their motherhood as a social problem, a depravity, a “bad influence”. And the derision of them is usually defended under the excuse of “we shouldn’t encourage this kind of behavior, we must make young girls realize motherhood isn’t glamorous!” This behavior not only shames the young mothers but also points fingers at and judges their peers, assuming every teenage girl is on the verge at every moment of such “immorality”. And all this does is make the hardship of teen motherhood even harder. It erases the personhood of both her and her child, all because of judgmental ageist contempt. So, if today is truly about honoring ALL mothers, teen moms had better be included and the cute little “statistics” about them and their children and their future can be put away.

And the other mothers who get a shout-out? The pro-youth rights mothers, of course! I mentioned above the difficulty of parenting, along with social and economic pressures, which can contribute to an oppressive household for the kids. But there are parents who break the mold. There are parents who, against any pressures, for a few examples, will not use corporal punishment, will unschool their children, will allow their children their own opinions and beliefs, and much more. And these children are just fine. They are happy and healthy, perhaps moreso than the general population. But in a society that implicitly believes the strictest parents are the best ones, that children should be treated as amoral creatures who need to be beaten into submission in order to be productive and suitable for society, these parents stand up and say NO, that they will not treat their children that way, that society can deride them as lenient all they want, but their children will be treated as people, as autonomous individuals, with respect, with love, and without coercion. They are the living proof that it can be done and that it is good. They are an example of how parenting, despite the concerning power it can have over the basic rights of youth, can in a way be radical youth rights in action!

I would add to that the parents who support their teens in their various legal actions against schools and other entities that violate their rights. Parents who defy the pressure to say “well, you shouldn’t have written about your principal in such a way anyway” and instead are truly supportive in these important defenses of youth rights. The teens deserve most of the credit here, of course, but it is a sad fact that, had their parents been unsupportive, they could have easily stopped them, and important campaigns may never have gotten off the ground.

I could go on, and feel free to post in the comments more about parenthood (or motherhood where it’s specific to mothers, to fit the day) and its relationship to youth rights.

So while mothers and motherhood in general is celebrated today with flowers and cards and crowded restaurants, let’s not forget the people whose mothers they are and how important the interests of both are for the health of that dynamic.

-Katrina

At NYRA, we get emails. Many write to thank us for our work. Some write to share new ideas or to provide thoughtful feedback. And some write to scathe us for supporting the rights of youth.

I thought I’d share one we got recently. Bear in mind, none of the “facts” in this email have been verified. Under the subject heading “Is this a joke?” “Paul” writes as follows:

Why would we want to lower the drinking age? I’m 16 and this outright is asinine.My friend was killed in a car crash by a 17 year old drunk driver. Why would we lower the age just to have a bunch of immature drunks in our cities. If anything, they need to raise the drinking age. We can go to war at 18 so we can fight for our country. We don’t have an 18 year old drinking age so we can fill our cities with teen-drunks. This is ludicrous I thought our youth rights would fight for something a  little bit more reasonable.

This provokes several questions beyond just, “Does anyone really believe ‘Paul’ is 16?” The biggest question that comes to my mind is this: did this alleged death occur in a place where the drinking age is 17 or lower and where drunk driving is legal? Or is this just another example of the failure of our current laws?

Our ageist policies create a culture that encourages youth to engage in binge drinking and then leaves them few safe ways to get home. We’ve all heard the stories of taxi companies that offer free rides home on New Years Eve but refuse to offer such rides to those younger than 21 for fear of “sending the wrong message.” We all know of parents who cave in to peer pressure and forbid their children to drink, leading those youth to drink elsewhere and then fear calling their parents for a safe ride home.

Studies have shown that the drinking age causes more drunk driving deaths than it prevents. So “Paul,” if you really did lose a friend to a 17-year-old drunk driver, understand that both your friend and the drunk driver were victims of the policies NYRA works to change.

This is part of the Youth Rights 101 series. Please check out Youth Rights 101: Introduction for the rest of the series and more information.

Alcohol is dangerous! Why lower the drinking age? Do you actually want kids drinking?!

Lowering the drinking age is not about wanting anyone to be drinking nor ignoring any possible associated health risks. It’s about having the choice to drink, about bodily autonomy, and not being made a criminal for it just because you’re the wrong age.

Whether anyone wants youth to be drinking or not, many of them are. One motive behind lowering the drinking age is to make this inevitable drinking safer, to encourage or teach youth how to handle alcohol responsibly rather than set a blanket ban that if they touch it, they get arrested. The idea is that if they can drink legally in a safe environment, such as a glass of wine with family rather than chugging from a keg at a wild party, this would not only encourage better and safer drinking habits but remove the “forbidden fruit” effect.

Also, as is commonly but appropriately brought up in lower drinking age discussions, the drinking age is 21 yet the age to enlist in the military is 18, that you can choose to sacrifice your body and life on a battlefield but cannot yet very slightly endanger your liver with a glass of wine. Some suggest that then the enlistment age should be raised, but that is far from the only liberty gained upon age 18 that is or can be more dangerous than drinking, and it’s silly for young adults to lose more rights and liberties just because people don’t think they should drink legally yet.

Silly, though unfortunately not unheard-of. Many hotels will not allow under-21s to check in, claiming they don’t want people drinking underage in their rooms. So because of the drinking age, a non-drinking 19-year-old is still discriminated against when he just wants a place to sleep.

Some claim raising the drinking age to 21 in the 1980s saved thousands of lives, but this is questionable, as many other life-saving changes, such as greater stigmatization of and stiffer penalties for drunk driving and other non-age-based road safety rules, came about at the same time. States whose drinking ages were already 21, as well as Canada, whose drinking age is 18 or 19 depending on province, saw the same decreases in fatalities, so it is even less likely raising the drinking age was as life-saving as commonly claimed.

Some support the drinking age because they personally don’t think young people should be drinking, but that really is not what it is for. Drinking age simply makes young people criminals for drinking, allows many businesses to keep them away using alcohol as an excuse, and makes young drinkers afraid to seek help if they or a friend have an emergency. So whether anyone personally wants youth drinking doesn’t matter, since the drinking age does not stop drinking but does encourage discrimination and demonization of the young, and neither of these things can ever keep young people safe.

What do you think? In what other ways is the high drinking age problematic for young people? Tell us in the comments!

See Also:
Our Drinking Age page
Drinking Age FAQ
Legislative Analysis of Drinking Age History
Our Drinking Age blog posts and articles
Drinking Age papers and research
Our Drinking Age forum
Why I care more about lowering the drinking age
The Drinking Age Misconception
Choose Responsibility

And that’s now 27 runs of #16tovote on the 16th! And going strong!

Being the April edition, the event occurred right at tax time, when we are reminded that you don’t have to be old enough to vote to pay taxes! Yet shouldn’t taxpayers get a vote? A say in the money they are paying into the system? Alas, the under-18 taxpayers are still voiceless. And why is that? What is there to fear about teen suffrage? And if people are so certain teens as a whole don’t care aboout voting, what’s the point in legally preventing them from doing so?

These are some of the things pondered about the voting age, and we ponder them again and again, encouraging others to ponder them as well. And some day, enough people will ponder them and realize there’s no good reason to keep the voting age way up at 18, and change will happen. We’ll make it happen!

Next #16tovote on the 16th is, of course, Wednesday, May 16, but for now… the recap!

youthrights And it’s time again for… #16tovote on the 16th! Here’s Top 10 Reasons to
Lower the Voting Age!!! http://bit.ly/mPxJfZ
Tweet

sciville My polling place is a school, where kids were shoved out of the way so adults
could vote but they couldn’t. How rude! #16tovote
Tweet

Amy33Amy33 #16tovote because if young people could vote, then young people would have a say in society, and if young people had a say in society…
Tweet

Amy33Amy33 #16tovote @Amy33Amy33 and if young people had a say in society then they would want to change society
Tweet

youthrights Disempowerment leads to hopelessness, a dangerous thing for anyone. Enfranchisement would definitely help youth out of that! #16tovote
Tweet

Amy33Amy33 #16tovote @Amy33Amy33 and if they wanted to change society, they would want a bigger say in society…
Tweet

Amy33Amy33 #16tovote @Amy33Amy33 and if they had a say in society then they would be insulted by censorship
Tweet

Amy33Amy33 #16tovote @Amy33Amy33 and if they were insulted by censorship they would try to outlaw the various entertainment censorship boards
Tweet
(more…)

2012 will mark a milestone for youth rights activism:  supporters of all ages are engaging in an effort to empower youth by lowering the voting age. The “Votes for Youth” campaign gives voice to youth who are fed-up with having no say in electing the leaders who claim to represent them. They have strongly held beliefs on domestic and foreign policy issues that should not be ignored. They know that, without the right to vote, meaningful change cannot be protected from the whims of politicians with their own agendas.  Youth know that lowering the voting age will enable them to make a difference to improve the country they love.

What is “Votes for Youth”? It’s Americans, young and old, protesting to give youth the right to vote, that most precious right of democracy that so many adults take for granted and fail to exercise.

It’s people of all ages spreading the news by all means available that youth want and need the right to vote and they will gain the right to vote: uploading videos, blogging, tweeting, contacting local, state and national leaders, writing letters to the editors, and growing a network of supporters.

This movement will achieve big things, but it will require your support. Here’s what you can do to help it grow:

• Join our Votes for Youth Facebook group.
• Find a protest in your area and spread the word to your entire social network.
• Come to the October 12 DC rally.
• Donate to the cause.
• Use a “Votes for Youth” image as your Facebook or Twitter profile pic.
• Create a video explaining why youth need the right to vote. Then upload it to http://www.mediafire.com/ and send the link to [email protected] NYRA will choose the best ones to add to NYRA’s youtube.com channel and its special “Votes for Youth” playlist.
• Send a Facebook message or tweet to all of your friends (include the link to NYRA or the “Votes for Youth” page)
• Blog about the “Votes for Youth” movement on youth sites, political sites, and news sites
• Write a “Letter to the Editor” to your local newspaper
• Contact your local city council member, state legislator, or member of Congress and let them know the voting age must be lowered.

Working together, we can achieve great things in 2012. This is our moment. Let’s make it happen!

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Matt Smith, principal at Garrett High School in Indiana, recently expelled a student for Tweeting a swear word on his own time. In response, NYRA’s new Executive Director sent Smith the following message:

Dear Mr. Smith,

I was disappointed to hear reports that your school chose to expel a student for a Tweet he wrote about the F-word. What a student writes to his Twitter followers is hardly any of the school’s concern. To violate his privacy is bad enough, but on top of that you pass judgment on his word-choices?

To even reprimand Austin Carroll for his off-campus communication with friends would be inappropriate, but to expel him is way out of line.

I would urge you to promptly own up to your mistake, apologize to Mr. Carroll, and assure the public that your school will never again snoop through students’ messages without good cause and will never again punish a student for discussing a feature of the English language.

Please let me know what steps you are taking to rectify this situation.

Sincerely,

Bill Bystricky
Executive Director
National Youth Rights Association
1101 15th Street, NW, Suite 200
Washington, DC 20005

Those who would like to send their own message to Matt Smith may reach him at [email protected] .

This is part of the Youth Rights 101 series. Please check out Youth Rights 101: Introduction for the rest of the series and more information.

Every teen I know is an idiot. I don’t see them possibly able to handle rights and responsibilities!

Assuming the relatively very few teens you know in your life are an accurate representation of the entire age group is itself a logical fallacy (Hasty Generalization). As for the ones you do know, one might ask how it is you are judging them to be “idiots”, that you’re not merely looking only at their seemingly less informed choices and ignoring the smarter ones. You may assume the less informed choices are the rule and the smarter ones the exception, but how do you know it isn’t the other way around?

Perhaps, because our society encourages a negative view of youth, you expect everything they do or say to be “stupid” or wrong, even when identical things would be unremarked upon regarding an adult. Some even believe the way a teenager dresses or what music she listens to indicates her social awareness or competence.

In the case of particular youth who actually might not be very aware or competent, whatever that may mean, it is suggested this is because they are not expected to be, that because of their young age and the age restrictions that come with it they have had little to no opportunity to build up social awareness or competence outside of their specific home and school lives.

In any case, it is very harmful to harbor and spread the assumption that youth are inherently incapable of understanding things or functioning in the real world outside of where there are adults to help them. Every individual is different, of course, even teenaged individuals. If instead we remember that young people are people like the rest of us, with each individual having her own strengths and weaknesses, with them not being inherently “bad” or incompetent, we can lift this negative expectation and encourage them to prove themselves more, in whatever way, rather than casting them off as all-around inadequate because they have lived too few years. When you stop looking at a group of people negatively and as inferiors, and start treating them with respect, as equals, as being capable of good, it is amazing how much better they will seem!

So what do you think? How can this widespread negativity toward youth be overcome? Tell us in the comments!

This is part of the Youth Rights 101 series. Please check out Youth Rights 101: Introduction for the rest of the series and more information.

Aren’t teen driving restrictions meant for protection of new young drivers?

Teen driver restrictions may be meant for protection, but not all new drivers are teens, and older new drivers are often subject to fewer such restrictions despite being equally inexperienced. A 16-year-old who has been driving tractors on his family farm for years is likely to be more ready to drive than a 25-year-old who’s never been behind a wheel, yet the 16-year-old is considered the more dangerous one merely because of years lived.

You generally only receive a license to drive after passing some sort of driver education and road tests, as well as meeting other standards. This raises the question of why any driving age is needed at all, since you still need to satisfy so many other requirements even when old enough.

While teen driving fatalities may be high, often the proposed solutions, ones by lawmakers the teens are mostly too young to vote for, are merely more useless restrictions that do little to nothing to make people better drivers.

Some propose forbidding teen drivers from having same-age passengers, that they would be a distraction, which forgets that parents riding along can be just as distracting.

Some propose teens shouldn’t be allowed to talk on cell phones while driving, even though this restriction is probably a good idea for ALL drivers of any age!

New Jersey’s “Kyleigh’s Law” even requires drivers under 21 to have a special decal on their license plates to signal they are young, a law whose entire purpose is not to help improve driving skills but make it easier to bust youth for violating age-based driver restrictions, making youth just an easier target for police (and undesirables).

Others have suggested raising the driving age outright, a move whose only purpose would be to make a slightly older age group have all the new driver traffic fatalities.

What those supporting and setting these restrictions forget is that teens drive for the same reasons as everyone else, to get from point A to point B (and on weekends, point C), and for some, particularly in rural regions, inability to drive means inability to go anywhere at all.

Just like anyone else, teen drivers really do want to keep safe and drive carefully, and are simply driving to school, work, events, driving a friend home, picking up a sibling, or whatever else. But teens are mostly voiceless about restrictions on them, and the adults who can vote on and set these unrealistic driving rules see only stereotypes and misleading statistics, and the teens themselves as “other”, so these fears and poorly conceived “solutions” make the rules rather than any real insight into teens’ lives.

Teen driving crashes and fatalities may be a problem, sure, but you do not become a better driver through fearmongering or being made to wait, but through the same way you become better at anything… through actual experience, through actual driving.

What do you think? How can the safety of new drivers be ensured in a way that does not scapegoat or discriminate against the young? Tell us in the comments!

See Also:
California’s GDL Law Effects on Older Teens
Teen Drivers: What Are the Real Risks?
Young vs. Old: Driving Reaction Times
New Jersey’s Kyleigh’s Law Puts a Bullseye on Youth
Teen Driving Fallacies

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The 26th run of #16tovote on the 16th was a little slower and less participated-in than usual, but it still went on and went pretty well anyway. One special thing was how this one took place in the planning stages of an upcoming voting age campaign that’s in the works (which there will be more details on soon).

Next is of course Monday, April 16, but for now, the recap! Also, I have linked to each tweet as well as copied.

youthrights Here we go again! It’s… #16tovote on the 16th! Here’s Top 10 Reasons to Lower the Voting Age! http://bit.ly/mPxJfZ
Link to tweet

ErikBraghirol If 16 year-olds could vote,spanking in schools wouldn’t still be legal in 19 states. #16tovote.
Link to tweet

youthrights Political candidates aren’t restricting their voters when they restrict teens. So they are free to scapegoat! #16tovote
Link to tweet

sciville People think teens are “too stupid” to vote, yet plenty of those who can vote voted for Santorum. Really? #16tovote
Link to tweet

youthrights Students can’t vote for the school boards that run the schools that control them every day. #16tovote
Link to tweet

zombieramen #16tovote: Reinvigorate your social studies curriculum today!
Link to tweet

cornfedblonde @ErikBraghirol 16 year olds get taxes taken out of their paychecks as well #16tovote
Link to tweet

kstarks17 YES #16tovote for 24 more hours! best day of every month. definitely beats soup day in the cafe. @youthrights
Link to tweet

youthrights Our Voting Age page: http://www.youthrights.org/issues/voting-age/ For all your voting age needs! #16tovote
Link to tweet
(more…)

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This is part of the Youth Rights 101 series. Please check out Youth Rights 101: Introduction for the rest of the series and more information.

I saw a sign at a store saying anyone under 16 must be accompanied by an adult at all times. Is that legal?

Depends on the store and where you are. This is illegal in some states (Maryland, Virginia, Michigan, and New Jersey, to name a few) and only partially legal in some others. Of course, regardless of legality, there’s no question such policies are very wrong!

Even in states where it is illegal, many stores still put up policies like this, usually unaware of the law forbidding it.

Similar policies include allowing only two teens in the store at a time or having an express line specifically for non-students. Such policies have been found at convenience stores, department stores, restaurants, party supply stores, bowling alleys, pet stores, music stores, and many more. And these businesses are under no legal obligation to discriminate against the young. They freely choose to.

Common excuse is they believe teens are more likely to shoplift, which forgets that people of all ages can and do shoplift, and there’s no guarantee someone will shoplift simply because of age.

Others claim they sell age-restricted or other somehow sensitive products that merits limiting presence of youth, assuming the youth would disturb the merchandise or try to buy something they aren’t legally allowed to.

In any case, the real answer to such problems is the same, which is for store staff to keep better watch over what’s happening in the store, regardless of age of patrons. For all they know, while they’re keeping a close watch on an innocent 15-year-old browsing the shelves, a 45-year-old may have just pocketed something and walked out!

Many hotels will not allow under-21s to check-in because they fear underage drinking in their rooms, but that would still be a risk even if the young people were with their parents, and this ban serves only to inhibit innocent independent youth.

Malls are increasingly setting teen curfews, requiring all unaccompanied youth to vacate the premises after a certain time, usually explicitly admitting the purpose is to make adult shoppers more comfortable. They’d rather have youth-hating adults as customers than youth themselves!

Similarly, some stores, bothered by the presence of teenagers, install “Mosquito” devices, which emit a high-pitched sound audible only to young people meant to annoy them and drive them away! Like pests!

And all of these policies completely disregard any profits these stores might have made from young people buying something if they had been welcome!

Discriminatory signs and policies do not save businesses from robbery or other misfortune, and serve only to reinforce the social idea that young people are “other”, that it’s acceptable to explicitly tell them they are not trusted and not welcome because of when they were born, because of who they are.

What do you think? What are some other ways businesses senselessly discriminate against the young? What experiences have you had with this? Tell us in the comments!

See Also:
Pet Store
NYRA Defeats Giant
Age Discrimination in Maryland sheet

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