BROWNVILLE – There is a clear legal definition for the term “civil rights.” Members of the civil rights teams at the schools in SAD 41 put their own spin on the words at a meeting Wednesday.

“No being mean,” wrote one.

“Respect everyone,” penned another.

“It means being kind and having respect for all people,” mused a third.

On a large poster in the multipurpose room of Brownville Elementary School, team members scrawled what civil rights means to them.

The workshop for SAD 41 students in grades four through eight who are on civil rights teams was organized late last month after a $25,000 statewide conference was canceled because of budget cuts. About 50 students attended.

SAD 41 is composed of Milo, LaGrange, Brownville and Lakeview Plantation.

To meet the students’ need to network and share their success stories from the past year, a dozen or so regional meetings have sprung up to replace the larger one, according to Thomas Harnett, head of the Civil Rights Division in the Maine Attorney General’s office, who runs the program.

B.J. Bowden organized the program in Piscataquis County because she knew how much the students had been looking forward to the meeting usually held at the Augusta Civic Center. The daylong meeting in previous years has included national speakers, workshops and teams showcasing their activities.

“The kids were looking forward to highlighting the things they’ve done,” Bowden said. “It also helps them see that the program is bigger than just their schools.”

Bowden, the adviser for civil rights teams at the Marion C. Cook Elementary School in LaGrange and the Brownville Elementary School, invited teams from throughout the area but only those in her own district were able to attend.

More than 3,000 students across the state participate in more than 200 civil rights teams. The program that originated in 1996 encourages students to act as role models and intervene when someone is teased or harassed, according to a story published two years ago in the Bangor Daily News.

“I’ve been to 135 different events this school year,” Harnett said, noting that he had not had to cut back on visits because of budget constraints.

One of the workshops Wednesday asked students to choose personality traits that are important for team members to have.

Hardworking, nice, friendly, caring and sympathetic were important qualities, the fourth- and fifth-graders decided. Being athletic, smart and brave weren’t really necessary the group concluded. Their reasons for joining the teams were just as varied.

“I like helping people,” Sha-Lynn Trafton, 10, of LaGrange said during lunch.

Kineo Wallace, 12, of Milo has been a member of a civil rights team for two years. A seventh-grader at Penquis Valley Middle School, he joined “to help make his school a better place.”

“To help people stand up to the bullies so they won’t pick on people,” is what 10-year-old Philip Cook, a student at the Brownville school, said was his team’s goal.

Krishanna Cook, 13, joined the Penquis Valley civil rights team to make a difference.

“I want to make a difference in the community so that people don’t feel put down or left out,” she said. “People on teams make a difference in their schools by doing things like learning what they can do when people are rude.”

Conservative religious leaders in the state have criticized the program because the program at the middle and high school levels talks about discrimination and bullying based on sexual orientation. A referendum sponsored by the Christian Civil League of Maine calls for funding for the program to be eliminated.

Susie Davis, team adviser at Milo Elementary, said Wednesday that students in her district benefit from the program. The survey she does at the beginning and the end of each school year has proved to her that there’s a need for civil rights teams in the schools in her district, she said Wednesday.

“The survey shows that at the end of the year they feel safer in school [than they did at the beginning of the year],” Davis said, “and that schools are better places when there are teams like these made up of kids.”

She said that kids who are being bullied often aren’t comfortable going to a teacher or school official but will go to a team member and ask for help.

“We also have kids who were bullies on our teams,” Davis said. “After they’ve been on a team for a year, they understand what they had been doing and how it affected other kids.”

jharrison@bangordailynews.net

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