Student newspaper, Las Vegas Sun

A Class! act Lisa Sciortino Thu, Sep 5, 1996 (11:59 a.m.) A newspaper for the students, by the students. That's the concept behind Class!, a monthly paper that offers an extensive roundup of the goings-on at high schools around the valley. Sports stars, thespians and chess champs. Movie reviews, poetry and surveys. They're all featured in the free magazine that's written, for the most part, by high school journalism students. "If they weren't writing for us, we wouldn't be doing this," says Class! Editor Sari Aizley. "We take them a step beyond the high school newspaper -- but then, everything we're about is the high schools." Back from summer vacation, Class! is set to begin its third year, with the first edition for the new school year hitting news racks in libraries, rec centers and restaurants later this month. The paper is also distributed to high schools and five middle schools, where teachers have used it as the basis for reading and writing assignments. "It's introducing them to newspapers. It's creating a whole new generation of newspaper readers," Aizley says. Class! is the brainchild of David Phillips, a local photographer who came up with the idea of a student newspaper while working for the Henderson Home News several years ago. "When I was in high school ... a lot of my friends were at other schools, so I always knew more about the other schools than I did my own," the Bishop Gorman High School graduate ('83) recalls. "I thought what a neat idea it would be if all the schools could pick up one newspaper and read about what each other was doing, not only in sports but in all other kinds of interest." "We have the opportunity to tell each high school, 'Give us your best. Tell us what's going on,' so the students get to read about good, positive things that are going on at each high school, and informative things. It makes a good jump over to what they're reading in the larger papers." Earlier this year, Class! introduced a Spanish-language section that features translated versions of stories as well as articles geared toward Hispanic students. But the paper's content isn't always lighthearted and perky. "I think the stories that touch me the most," says Phillips, who serves as the paper's business director and photographer, "are when the students will ... talk about when their friend was killed because of drunk driving." Also, "We did a story about a kid who was into a gang and into drugs and he came clean and straightened out his life. You read those and think, 'Man, it is a war zone out there for some of those students.'" One girl, Aizley recalls, wrote about her experience being sexually assaulted. It was the first time she'd ever told anyone. "Another one wrote about life with her grandmother, whose mind is failing and how she deals with the tensions of having sympathy for her and being annoyed. Some of the stuff they write really tears me up," she says. "We portray the kids the way they are, the way they see themselves. The kids have depth that you rarely see in school because there's often not an outlet for them to express themselves in poetry and art and photography." Or their opinions. Cimarron-Memorial High sophomore Peggy Berger got on her soapbox in a recent issue of Class! to debate the role of religion in school. Students come to school to get an education, not to learn about their religion. This is what temples and churches are for. Let each do what it is meant to do. "My argument," Peggy explains, "was that religion should not be mixed up in school because it causes too much controversy." She enjoys the Class! format. "Personally, I think it's interesting to read about the other schools and see what they're planning to do for the year." "We put a lot of stuff in there that's going to be important to the kids," Phillips says, "not just information, but fun stuff to read. Seventy or 80 percent of what's written is teens talking to teens."