SAN GABRIEL TRIBUNE 12-5-72

VOICE OF VALLEY

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System Needs Courageous Kids

What do you do with a sixteen-year-old who does not agree with our war policy and informs his band director he will not play as a band member at a Nixon rally?

The answer. You tell him that the Ontario Presidential Rally two days before the election is not political. You do not tell him that the food and transportation will be paid from the Republican Campaign Fund. And when he gets there you give him Nixon stickers and special election music to play.

We are all groomed on America being a land founded on free political expression and filled with courageous men. We expect our schools to inculcate independent, courageous thinking into your youth’s minds. Rowland High seems to have a strange manner of instilling such lofty ideals.

Today, George Koeningshofer remains expelled from the band. George’s political views and his desire not to be forced into expressing against them grates on certain influential groups in the Rowland community. George’s philosophy also seems to clash with the band director’s who has said, “I don’t think any kid -ought to be able to defy me.” George’s defiance and consequent expulsion from the band stems from his placing a McGovern sticker on his trombone when he realized he had been tricked into performing against his will.

Some rights are supposed to be as old as our Constitution. Yet we always seem to have to battle anew to possess them. Sometimes students can learn more about profiles in courage from their peers than from their elders. Yet, often we demand them to unquestionably respect all elders. Sometimes it seems like the young are being led by a Pied Piper to the Land of the Lord of the Flies. Then we complain about our misdirected youth, when it may be too late and too misplaced.

Why don’t we complain loudly when one right and one act of courage is rent and mislaid? The system and its rights might hang tight longer—if we fought for every, single right whenever one was challenged.

I wish the Koeningshofers well in getting their son back into the band. The system needs courageous kids like him plugging into it, not out of it...

Sincerely,

Dwayne Hunn

Glendora