A week from today, in this space, students from Hampden Academy and Brewer, Orono and Old Town high schools will launch an ambitious communications project. Writing collaboratively on topics of their choice, they plan to offer diverse perspectives on issues important to their peers, and relevant to the broader community.

The genesis of this project, a cooperative effort of the schools, the Bangor Daily News and Acadia Hospital, began more than two years ago in the aftermath of school shootings in Springfield, Ore. First gathering at the newspaper, and later at Acadia Hospital and the University of Maine, community leaders discussed how local institutions and individuals could take constructive action to prevent or respond to a similar tragic event in the Greater Bangor region.

It quickly became apparent to the participants, who amalgamated with a similarly charged UMaine group as the Task Force on Safe Schools, that the forces behind the violent behavior manifested so tragically in Springfield and later at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., were rooted in the broader society and public culture. Schools should be sanctuaries, but they are extensions of larger communities, the group acknowledged. It is imperative that communities examine themselves. Their members must communicate.

The community wanted to talk, and in October 1999 nine simultaneous Community Conversations were held in towns in the Greater Bangor Region. Those sessions led organizers, including Acadia Hospital, the University of Maine and the Bangor Daily News, to a snowy Friday last March, when more than 120 teachers, community leaders, law enforcement and social service representatives, and most importantly students attended the inaugural Youth Wellness and Violence Prevention Conference at Eastern Maine Technical College. Late in the afternoon, offering opinions on what steps the community should take next, students repeatedly asked for a forum in the newspaper. They wanted a regular place to display their ideas, and their perspectives on their schools and community.

This is that place. Next week, four schools will begin taking turns in rotation. They are eager to be read. They want feedback.

Writing from Brewer are Matt Allen, Kara Geaghan, Emily Goodness, Megan McKay, Mandi Oechslie, Lindsay Thornton and Sasha Yesikov. This team wants “the opportunity to voice our opinions publicly. We want to gain experience working with others as well as improving our journalistic and writing skills. We want to understand the issues of other schools and their communities.”

From Hampden Academy, the writing committee includes Zackery McGuire, Erica Maltz and Kate Taylor, all of whom are department heads of the school newspaper, the Bronco Roundup. Adam Field, Sam Gaudette, Hans Hassel and Tamara Jones are working with them.

The committee is “optimistic about the chance to present positive elements of our community to the Greater Bangor Area. As high school students, we are rarely provided the opportunity to express our creative talents, voice our opinions, or have hands-on exposure in the mass media.”

Nadja Blagojevit, whose observations on the project appear at the top of this article, is a member of an Orono writing team that includes Ian Babbitt, Bronwyn Bryant, Naomi Kirk-Lawlor, Katherine Lamson, Kathryn Meade, Katy Mitchell, Marilyn Nichols, Keir Peterson and Dustin Sleight. The students write for Inside, their school’s award-winning newspaper.

“I think it’s important to get the student voice out,” senior Kirk-Lawlor believes, to which Bryant, Inside’s editor in chief added, “this is a great opportunity for the paper.”

Other members of the staff hope to use the column as a platform for understanding.

“It’s crucial to display a rounded voice to the reader,” according to Babbitt.

“Old Town High School is not a well-understood part of the Old Town community,” according to the writing team from Old Town. “While the recent attempts to revitalize Old Town’s downtown and riverfront have attracted notice, what occurs inside OTHS remains a mystery to most outsiders. The building’s stark exterior belies the vitality and diversity within.”

The group that will demystify their school, expound on its rich variety of extracurricular activities and the “surprisingly diverse” cultural and ethnic communities “that feed into OTHS” includes Matt Chilelli, Frederick Greenhalgh, Candice Hamm, Kyle Noonan and Elizabeth Saucier.

The writing teams will work with Letitia Baldwin, NEWS style editor. Alan Comeau, Acadia Hospital’s director of community relations, has been instrumental in coordinating the project, which would not be possible without very important people at these schools, including: Principals Jerry Goss, Brewer; Katie Donovan, Hampden Academy; Terry Kenniston, Old Town; and Catherine Knox, Orono, and the writing teams’ faculty advisers Tanya Baker and Sherri Thomas, Brewer; Lee Ward, Hampden Academy; Karen Marley, Old Town; and Tamra Philbrook, Orono.

“One of the best ways to minimize the potential for violence among young people is to offer them opportunities to be part of their community,” Comeau said, adding that this column featuring high school students “is one of the projects that provides just such an opportunity. It’s been wonderful to work with the partnering schools on the project, and it demonstrates the power of collaboration.”