 Catholic Newspaper of the Diocese of St. Cloud • September 21, 2006 |
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• Carpenter’s retirement at SJU ends 140-year Eich-family run
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Carpenter’s retirement at SJU ends 140-year
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3,000 passionate youths plus 11 Nobel peace laureates meet to subtract world violence, one injustice at a time
by Kevin LaNave
Special to the Visitor
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| In a world at war, a passion for peace is like a lighthouse beacon piercing through stormy darkness. Rachel Koch has that passion. So does Reiko Koyama. Both are students at St. Cloud Technical High School. From Sept. 15 to 17, they brought their passion to Denver, Colorado, mingling with 3,000 other peace-passionate youths from around the war-weary world. All were gathered for the 10th-anniversary celebration of PeaceJam, an international initiative linking Nobel Peace Prize laureates — such as the Dalai Lama, winner of the 1989 peace prize, who loomed on the jumbo screen, left, during his talk to the youths in Magness Arena at the University of Denver. (Photo courtesy of Kevin LaNave. Graphic: PeaceJam) Right: Young people from Burma share pictures and stories about the oppression experienced in their homeland, and appeal to conference attendees to “use your liberty to help us achieve ours.” |
DENVER, Colo. — The largest gathering ever of Nobel Peace Prize winners outside of Oslo, Norway — 11 of them — took place Sept. 15-17. Just as significant, however, is that the gathering included 3,000 youths from around the world committed to waging peace in their communities and beyond.
The site was Denver, Colo. The occasion was the tenth anniversary celebration of PeaceJam, an international movement that links Nobel laureates and young people who are passionate about peace.
Rachel Koch and Reiko Koyama, 12th grade students from St. Cloud Technical High School, were two representatives from central Minnesota. Koch, a member of Holy Spirit Parish in St. Cloud, was featured in the Visitor’s July 13, 2006 “Sharing the Spirit” column for being a part of a Partners Across Borders service trip to St. Cloud’s sister city, Tenancingo, El Salvador.
Both students are involved in the St. Cloud-based Center for Service-Learning and Social Change, a non-profit organization with a mission to empower and inspire youth from diverse backgrounds — and adults who work with youth — to be proactive agents of change in their communities and in the world.
EDITORIAL: The best defense for a not-so-bad offense
The Record, student newspaper for the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph and St. John’s University in Collegeville, is an informative, award-winning publication. But 33 years ago (St. Ben’s had no connection to the Record back then), the newspaper was pretty much a sophomoronic grab-bag of garbage steeped in suspect yellow journalism — not exactly your discerning reader’s cup of maturity.
The March 16, 1973 issue, for example — published (completely in red ink) on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day — boasted being an “anti-Irish” issue, complete with a dose of doggerel on the front page that started out: “It raises our ire/ each March 17/ to see all of Collegeville/ wearin’ the green./ We Germans see red/ at such Irish attire./ Stearns County’s no place/ for an Emerald Empire. ...”
Incredibly, it went downhill from there.
The editor at the time hoped to highlight the irony of a college campus situated in the middle of one of the most German-rooted counties in the country that annually celebrated St. Patrick’s Day as if it were Christmas, Halloween, the Fourth of July and St. Hubert’s Day all rolled into one.
Although no feedback occurred at the time, it is certain the anti-Irish issue offended many readers of Irish heritage and otherwise. Even innocent spoofs intended to be humorous can be hurtful to readers whose forebears may have been Irish immigrants who suffered discrimination and even persecution.
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