Editor’s Note: Student Union’s weekly columns are a joint effort of the region’s high schools, the Bangor Daily News and Acadia Hospital. This week’s column was written by a Hermon High School student. His adviser is Vincent Marzilli.

Leadership, honesty, integrity and self-motivation, qualities that make an individual well-rounded, seem to be missing from the personalities of so many of today’s youth. Instead, it is becoming apparent that those characteristics have been replaced with rude, arrogant, random and disrespectful behavior due either to poor parenting or new lifestyles.

Some critics are quick to blame it on the fact that the lifestyle in America is much too laid back, and young people are not taught to show respect toward others, especially elders. However, whatever the cause, there is at least one organization working to reverse this situation: Maine Youth Leadership.

Maine Youth Leadership, commonly known as MYL, is an organization for area sophomores who are highly motivated, respected, and honored among their peers and the school community. They are seen through the eyes of people around them as individuals who, when given the chance, could really make an impact on their community. Each school has its own methods for choosing representatives to attend the MYL convention held at the University of Southern Maine campus. Regardless of the selection method, those who attend the four-day conference have an experience they will never forget.

“When looking back, I see a complete transformation for myself from pre-MYL to after MYL. Not only have I strengthened my abilities as a leader, but I understand how to lead. I can better relate with my peers, thus enabling me to be a more efficient leader,” comments Junior MYL representative Jason Tarr.

“When in MYL we participated in many activities, and were able to listen to many people speak,” Tarr continued. “These speakers would share their life stories, their success stories, and even their life tragedies. Speakers would discuss the varying amounts of sexual discrimination, racial discrimination, and even discrimination against gender preference. While listening to these stories, I, along with everyone else in the room, was able to understand triumph, defeat, and fear.”

MYL is a fairly young organization, in existence for approximately three years. It was established when Maine students chosen to go to the nationally recognized leadership organization, Hugh O’Brien Youth Leadership, or HOBY, were being charged about $150 to attend. The Maine chapter of HOBY didn’t believe it was acceptable to charge students to attend, so it started its own version of it, and named it Maine Youth Leadership. Since then, there have been annual meetings held in southern Maine for high school students statewide. Schools select their representative to attend and send them to USM for four days and three nights not really knowing what to expect from them when they get back.

“My experience at the MYL seminar is one that has truly impacted the way I live my life. It has also given me confidence that I as a person have the ability to truly make a difference,” said Junior Allison Coleman, ambassador at the 2003 MYL convention.

Although the underlying concept of the convention is to take your personal leadership qualities and use them to better your surrounding communities, so much more can be taken out of the experience.

“At first I thought it was kind of scary,” said Hermon junior Malerie Hall, “because I didn’t know anyone from any of the other schools. But once I got to see people and how they were all participating together in the activities, I got to see that everyone, no matter how different we are, all strive for the same goals deep inside. It made me stop and look at things totally differently. I would attend another one in a second and definitely encourage anyone to try to be a part of one because it has the potential to really change your life.”

The organization has been in existence in Maine since 1978 and to this day has not paid one cent to any staff member or student councilor. More than 2,000 volunteer hours go into planning and executing the seminar. Volunteerism is one of the seminar’s major themes. The people who put on the convention prove to the students, who come from all over the state, that anything is within reach through effort and will. Each speaker emphasized that volunteerism not only makes individuals better people, but is also a contagious action, one that can spread. With everyone doing his or her part, and volunteering just a few hours a year, society would be in much better shape.

With so much news about teenagers getting into trouble either with drugs, alcohol or violence, it leaves people wondering what, if any, good is being done by today’s youth. Nothing seems to make it into the news about the positive things being accomplished, so the good goes unacknowledged by society. Consequently, youths who do try to make a difference often are looked at as “not cool.” When doing good is ignored and is not regarded by peers as “cool,” it can make it hard for youth to step up as they get ready to become tomorrow’s leaders.

“At MYL we all learn a lot about ourselves and really dig deep to figure out who we really are,” concludes senior and 2003-2004 Ambassador Brett Danforth.

Schools participating in Student Union include Hampden Academy, Brewer High School, John Bapst Memorial High School, Old Town High School, Mount Desert Island Regional High School, Stearns High School in Millinocket, Nokomis Regional High School, Hermon High School, and Schenck High School in East Millinocket.