ROLE MODELS MAKE A DIFFERENCE

IF you pay much attention to the presidential campaign (and these days
our numbers seem to me to be remarkably few), you will hear a lot of
talk about who is setting the best example to young people and who
isn't.

President Clinton's scandal with Monica Lewinsky has made this a
particularly strong issue with Republicans. Some viewed with alarm a
front-page Washington Post story last spring about an apparent
increase in oral sex among students at a local middle school. It
quoted one eighth-grade girl as excusing her act with, ``President
Clinton does it.''

I, too, was startled by her statement. I could easily imagine what my
dearly departed mother and father would have said to that: ``If
President Clinton jumped off a bridge, would you do that, too?''

More recently, the question of who sets a good example jumped party
lines. Republican front-runner George W. Bush set tongues wagging by
refusing to give a flat ``yes'' or ``no'' to the question of whether
he had ever used cocaine.

Bush's refusal to say he didn't has led many to presume he did, which
his opponents suggest may lead to countless youths staggering around
with coke up their nose, muttering, ``George W. Bush did it, too!''

To which Mom and Dad undoubtedly would have said, ``If George W. Bush
jumped off a bridge, would you do that, too?''

Such talk of bridge jumping was common among the parents in my
neighborhood. It was one of those inane things we kids swore we would
never tell our kids, until we actually had kids. Now we find ourselves
saying things that are just as inane, if not more.

That's because of a simple reality: Examples matter. We look
everywhere for role models who can provide good examples of behavior
that might work for us, too.

Unfortunately, when life does not provide you with good examples, bad
examples rush in to fill the void.

Elijah Anderson, a University of Pennsylvania sociologist, has spent
years studying the lives of youngsters who didn't have enough good
examples to follow. His laboratory is the high-crime, low-income
mostly African-American ghettos of cities like Philadelphia, where he
lives.

Many of these ghetto kids find themselves in a constant tug-of-war
between upstanding ``decent'' people and the morally questionable,
often-violent people of ``the street,'' according to Anderson's
disturbing, yet also encouraging book, ``Code of the Street.''

Too often, since civil rights reforms of the 1960s opened new
opportunities for ``decent'' families to move out to better
neighborhoods, the values of the ``street'' have gained dominance for
those left behind, making it tougher than ever for them to move up and
out.

46or many otherwise ``decent'' youths in such areas, adopting the
``street'' pose is a means of social and physical survival.
``Regardless of race, alienation sets in when people see advances for
everyone but their group,'' Anderson said in a telephone interview.
``Alienated people begin to feel that they are on their own for
personal safety and security. That's the code of the streets. Decent
people often feel they have to mimic the street people just to get
along, so decent kids get into code switching back and forth.''

46ortunately, good examples of hope, ambition and decency can be
found in the grimmest ghetto. Anderson presents several encouraging
cases of decent people who learned the code, yet escaped the life of
the ``street.''

The most impressive is Rob (whose full name Anderson and I are
withholding at his request) who decided while serving time for drug
dealing that he was going to go straight after his release. Defying
the suspicions of those who knew him on the street, he actually helped
move drug dealers out of his old stomping grounds and replace them
with a fruit stand and later a hot dog stand. He has returned to
college, and Anderson helped him get a computer job at the university.

When I asked Rob by phone what made the difference in his life, he
cited two older men. One was a fellow inmate who assured Rob he was
too good to return to crime. The other was an older community
activist, Herman Wrice, who Rob approached for help. Wrice did help,
after Rob helped Wrice clean up a vacant lot.

There's a lesson in stories like Rob's: Role models matter. The best
example that any of us, including presidential candidates, can set is
to involve ourselves in the lives of troubled youths. If decent folks
don't keep them from jumping off bridges, no one else will.

Clarence Page is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.