By JANET MANKO
Reprinted with permission, The Lakeville Journal, © Copyright 2010.

FALLS VILLAGE — The amphitheater in Room 133 at Housatonic Valley Regional High School overflowed with adults and students on Friday evening, May 14, as the Salisbury Forum explored freedom of speech in an event called, “The Constitution in Our Midst.”

Two documentary films were presented by the teams of Housatonic students who had created them. The students, all members of the senior class and all enrolled in a media studies class taught by John Duval, had been mentored by documentary film producers Dominique Lasseur and Catherine Tatge of Cornwall.

After the films were screened, members of the audience had a chance to ask the students about their projects, and about the social issues that inspired them.

One film, “No Speech Zone,” was about the back-to-school speech made in September on television by President Barack Obama. The students who made this film interviewed community members, including fellow high schoolers, about the speech, and the fact that no one asked their opinion about whether the speech should be shown at school.

The group that made this film included students Zach Ackerman, Elizabeth Cuoco, Tyler Gelbar, Emma Osborne, Kayla Robinson, Dylan Morehouse and Justin Taylor.

The other film, “The D Word,” was about a lawsuit filed by Connecticut high school student Avery Doninger against her school. She had posted comments critical of her school superintendent on her Internet blog. School administrators saw it and took punitive action.

This film was made by Housatonic students Madeleine Bambery, Steven Bartomioli, Bill Bunce, Alyse Couture, Nick Dignacco and Ryan King.

The upshot of the post-screening discussions was that students, parents and teachers would welcome more opportunities for open discussions, such as that at the forum.

For more on the forum, read the editorial below:

Housy students find their voices
Editorial
May, 20, 2010
Reprinted with permission, The Lakeville Journal, © Copyright 2010.

Some smart, talented Housatonic Valley Regional High School students were given an unusual opportunity to show their skills at The Salisbury Forum Friday night, May 14, which was held at their school. (See story above, which appeared on the front page.) They presented to the adults of their community some very strong opinions, questions and answers, all through the filter of a lens: Two teams of students produced their own documentary films, on topics of their own choosing, relating to their rights as citizens which are afforded them through the U.S. Constitution. The two films which came out of this initiative, “The D-Word” and “No Speech Zone”, were screened at the event.

There were, of course, adults who should be recognized who gave their time to mentor the student teams and gave them the chance to produce the documentaries. The Connecticut Project for the Constitution, Global Village Media, The Salisbury Forum, the administration at Region One and many more all came together to give the students who stepped forward support for this project.

But the real credit for the outcome must be given to the students themselves, who worked very hard to produce 25 to 30 hours of recorded interviews, and who did research and visited with community and educational leaders to learn about their topics. Those many hours of video were edited down to about 20 minutes for their final products, not an easy task.

However, the student filmmakers had to have learned much in the process which could not have been easily communicated in a classroom situation. They were required to remove themselves from their comfort zone and go out into the community to find information on their topics. As Harold Schramm, professor emeritus at Western Connecticut State University and co-founder of Connecticut Project for the Constitution, said in introducing the event on Friday, the qualities of a documentary filmmaker are the same as the qualities of a good citizen.

Those qualities include curiosity, open-mindedness, the ability to understand both sides of an issue and to empathize even if not in agreement with one side or the other. The students who worked on the documentaries will be able to take what they’ve learned and apply it to many aspects of their lives in the years to come, but most especially to their role as active, responsible U.S. citizens.

The two documentaries covered topics that these students will find continue to be relevant in adult life. “The D-Word” dealt with the issue of free speech, and “No Speech Zone” with the issue of information being withheld from high-school students by adults without any discussion. Should students be able to make statements online, from home, that could be seen as insulting or disruptive in school? Should students have been allowed to see the speech given by President Obama at the beginning of this school year, in real time in their classrooms? These were the questions the students sought to answer through this project, and they may well have been surprised themselves by some of what they found.

One clear realization was that as high school students, they are not easily given the chance to voice their opinions openly and honestly in their day-to-day lives. Even as they enter the adult world, these students will find that free speech and open information are not rights that are as automatic as might be expected. The Freedom of Information law in Connecticut is only 35 years old this year, and every year there is some reason to feel that the power of the law is eroding on the one hand, yet on the other hand being upheld by those who firmly believe in the importance of open information.

These students will find in the future that they will need to continue to be vigilant in order to support and maintain their rights as citizens. They’ve made a good start.

By Bruce T. Paddock

April, 15, 2010

Reprinted with permission, The Lakeville Journal, © Copyright 2010.


SALISBURY — The Salisbury Forum brought two favorite guests back for an appearance last Friday, April 9, at Salisbury School.

For journalist and best-selling author Todd Brewster, it was a second appearance in Salisbury, while Yale Law School professor and constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar was back for his fourth visit.

At a Forum event in October 2008, Amar and Brewster discussed what the Constitution does and does not say about the presidency, as well as what qualities American voters have historically tended to look for when choosing a president.

For Friday’s presentation, “The Presidency in the Age of Obama,” the two men discussed 10 moments that they felt defined the young Obama presidency, and that would be seen in years to come as also defining the era in which they occurred.

Some of the moments, such as the inauguration and the passage of health-care reform, were obvious choices.

Others, such as Obama’s first meeting with Gen. Stanley McChrystal on Oct. 1, 2009, were perhaps less so. One or two (“The Tea Party”) weren’t technically moments.

For each one, first Brewster and then Amar explained what he felt the event had to tell us about the president and about the country. The common theme running through all the discussions was the many burdens that Obama finds himself under.

One example was the Beer Summit, in which Obama invited black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley, the white police officer who arrested Gates in his home, to share a beer at the White House.

According to Amar and Brewster, the incident showed that the first African-American president had become the arbiter of all things racial in the country.

Despite the political topic, both men were generally politically neutral. For example, while Amar made no attempt to hide his negative feelings about the Tea Party, his criticism focused solely on what he considers their misunderstanding of the Constitution and of American history, not on their political positions.

In the brief question-and-answer period that followed the talk, audience members asked about health-care reform and about the Supreme Court. The final question of the evening, about the deterioration of the political debate in recent years, served as a segue to the next Salisbury Forum event, in which local students will show documentary films they made as part of a program with Global Village Media and the Connecticut Project for the Constitution. The latter organization was co-founded by Brewster, and is dedicated to improving the quality of public dialogue about constitutional issues. “The Constitution in Our Midst,” will be held at Housatonic Valley Regional High School in Falls Village on Friday, May 14, at 7:30 p.m.