STUDENTS AIRING THEIR VIEWS

Airing their views: Students say no Local middle school students
enter anti-drug video contest

Middle school students in the Time Warner Cable Hang Tough Video
Contest focused on topics ranging from sports to what it takes to be
a winner in "hanging tough" against drugs and violence.

Teams from 18 schools have been selected as finalists in the contest
in which fifth-, sixth- and seventh-graders developed 30-second public
service announcements or scripts for cable television.

The top three winning teams will be selected at 10:30 a.m. Jan. 21 at
the Time Warner Cable Hang Tough Premiere, which will be broadcast
live from Milwaukee Area Technical College's Cooley Auditorium, 1016
N. 6th St. More than 1,500 people are expected to attend, ranging
from students to politicians.

The first-place winners will be flown to Orlando, Fla., by Midwest
Express Airlines and will receive a VIP tour of Nickelodeon Studios
and Disney World. First-, second- and third-place teams will receive a
television and VCR for their schools. All 18 finalists will receive
trophies and Hang Tough T- shirts.

All the videos were produced at Time Warner Cable, and finalists'
public service announcements are being televised on 10 cable networks
each week. These cable channels are: USA, CNN, Lifetime, Headline
News, TNN, the Discovery Channel, A&E, Wisconsin Sports Network, BET
and TNT.

"We're trying to get them aired on national channels such as MTV and
Nickelodeon," said Beverly Greenberg, vice president of community /
government relations at Time Warner.

Two local schools among the 18 finalists are St. Mary's Catholic
School in Hales Corners and Whitnall Middle School in Greenfield.
While the St. Mary's public service announcement already ran on local
cable channels, Whitnall Middle School's spot will run on cable
channels Jan. 20 through Jan. 26.

At St. Mary's School, sixth-graders in Mary Rose Sanger's class who
placed as finalists were Megan Grabowski, 11, Caitlin Czajaka, 11,
Cheryl Gaa, 12, and Holly Keskey, 12. The girls came up with a spot
called "Winners."

"It's about a track meet we're at and we're warming up," Caitlin said.
Before the start of the race, the girls ask one another, "Should we
do dope?" "No" is their response as they take off around the track.

"Our motto was, `You can be a winner too if you don't take drugs,' "
Holly said.

At Whitnall Middle School, seventh-graders Kate Riebe, 12, Kayla
Szymanski, 13, Allison Karwoski, 13, and Ashley Huth, 12, taped a
public service announcement called "Your Future."

At the start of the spot, Ashley asks, "Which person do you think
would be most likely to use drugs?" Then the girls go through four
scenarios of popular students, athletes, a nerd and a library bandit.

But their belief and advice to their peers is: "Your future is what
you make it to be."

According to Kate, the project came about when their literature and
language arts teacher, Mary Cleave, gave them a choice. "If we didn't
do a reading project, we could do the Hang Tough video," Kate said.

"It was fun," Ashley added. "First we wrote the script. Then we went
to Culver's."

More than 1,000 students from public and private schools submitted
about 400 entries for the 1998 contest, Greenberg said.

Schools in communities in southeastern Wisconsin were extremely well-
represented, she said.

"We started with about 20 schools six years ago. This has increased
to 131 schools," she said. "Schools wouldn't keep coming back if it
wasn't valuable."

Other finalists whose videos will be judged Jan. 21 are: Bay Lane
Middle School, Muskego; Grand Avenue School, Lloyd Street Global
Education, Wisconsin Conservatory of Life-Long Learning, Tippecanoe,
Story School and Spanish Immersion School, all of Milwaukee; Kennedy
Middle School, Germantown; Glenbeulah, Elkhart Lake; Asa Clark,
Pewaukee; Glen Hills Middle School, Glendale; Washington Middle
School and Lincoln Elementary School, both of Kenosha; Ashippun
Elementary, Oconomowoc; Webster Middle School, Cedarburg; and Randall
Elementary School, Waukesha.

Besides Time Warner, other sponsors for the 1998 contest were Midwest
Express, MATC, Channels 10/36 and Milwaukee County Fighting Back Initiative.