What’s the beef with
letting kids settle their
own fights?Budget cuts threaten peer program
By James A. Kawachika
that teaches youth personal responsibility
and peaceful problem solvingBudget cutbacks have prevented the state of Hawaii from having a full-time school mediation coordinator position or from holding a Youth Peer Mediation Conference for the past three years.
Last week, the "Ho'oponopono...Setting Things Right" conference took place because delegates to the Citizens Justice Conference, convened by the Hawaii State Bar Association and Hawaii State Judiciary, felt strongly that we needed to promote a culture of personal responsibility and peaceful problem-solving among Hawaii's youth. This commitment to go "upstream" in teaching our youth how to solve problems, was identified as an initiative that would make the biggest improvement to our justice system.
This is why our volunteer Citizens Justice Conference Youth Education Action Committee, headed by Tracey Wiltgen and Dee Dee Letts, has worked tirelessly to develop a Mediator-Mentor Program that puts volunteer attorneys and community mediators into the schools not only to serve as mentors to student peer mediators, but to mediate adult school-based disputes and coordinate workshops for parents, teachers, administrators and students so that positive problem-solving behavior is modeled in all aspects of our educational institutions.
Hawaii's youth demonstrated their commitment to mediation by volunteering time and energy to organize and facilitate the Statewide Youth Peer Mediation Conference. This massive effort, involving nearly 200 intermediate and high school participants, was coordinated under the leadership of student chairwoman Linda Morris of Nanakuli High School who attended a national conference in Orlando to gather ideas for Hawaii's conference. The students themselves decided on the conference format and put together the workshop sessions, which included anger management, boyfriend/girlfriend and rumor mediation, teen-agers and stress and ho'oponopono techniques.
The goal of the conference was to strengthen school peer mediation programs by giving student mediators an opportunity to sharpen their skills and exchange ideas and strategies for improving their school's program.
Although this year's conference was made possible through the generosity of Bank of Hawaii, Chevron, Lexis-Nexis, McInerny Foundation, state Department of Education, Princess Kaiulani Hotel, Neighborhood Justice Center, Judiciary Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution, Society of Professionals in Dispute Resolution and Hawaii State Bar Association, there is no long-term funding solution for mediation in our schools.
We know that Hawaii's intermediate and high schools are hotbeds for conflict and violence in light of all the pressures our teens face. We also know that mediation works to dispel conflict and begin the healing process to set things right.
As the state grapples to balance the budget, we hope that the Legislature will consider the long-term implications of conflict and violence in our schools, and find a way to increase rather than cut funding for peer mediation programs in our schools.
James A. Kawachika is president of the Hawaii State Bar Association.
