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Boulder Valley's questionable panel

Thursday, June 28 at 5:15 PM

This Speakout has not been edited

By Jose Lopez, Centennial

I read with interest the Saturday (June 16) Rocky Mountain News Home Talk article, “Masturbation: the real safe sex.” Although both of my kids are in college, I was president of their high school’s PTO and I am quite interested in this issue. After going to the BVSDWatch.org web site and reading the transcript, I cannot believe how one-sided Ms Winter’s article was. Although two of the speakers are “highly credentialed professionals", two are questionable. Antonio Sacre is a comedian and his expertise for the conference is dubious (Go to his web site, www.antoniosacre.com, read his resume). Andee Gerhardt has seven years social work experience, but I would not place it in high category. I could not find much about her in the internet. The other two individuals had reasonable credentials.

But they did encourage the kids to experiment and made fun of the opposite.

They provided some warnings, but the overwhelming message was to experiment. It was not gross misrepresentation, as Ms Winters claims. Read the transcript! One of the first students thanks them “because I figure you guys would come and, like, lecture us about sex, and, like, we shouldn’t do drugs and whatever, so it’s a relief.” Read the student questions; they only heard one part of the message: experimentation is OK! I felt that the tone, attitude, and message of the conference were inappropriate, unprofessional and biased. There was only one side!

Although Joel Becker denied he was trying to discredit abstinence; he really should review his words. His statements say the opposite. If there was one statement that shocked me, it was Joel Becker answering a question about teenager’s abuse of prescription drugs answering to “change your parents” because “You inherited this from a generation of parents who ran for pills for everything.” It took another student to bring him back to reality later on and he admitted the need for medicine for depression and other illnesses.

Sanho Tree promptly blamed the pharmaceutical companies. Well, Sanho, I thank those companies for making drugs to help my daughter’s severe migraine headaches, help to lower my cholesterol, help for medicating 84 year old mother for heart surgery and help for my 96 year old great-aunt to combat Alzheimer’s disease. Joel also forgets that when these kids get in trouble, he won’t be there to help. It will be the parents that will be paying for their children’s and their advisor’s mistakes.

If there was one bright spot in the transcript it was the courageous young lady at the end expressing her different view and exposing the panelists own biases. She deserves a school staff that really cares for her future.

READER COMMENTS

WIth all due respect, you were not present at the panel. I was, and I can voutch that what you are saying is compleatly false. I understand how you may interprite it the way you did, but you must realize there is a difference between reading it online, and hearing the full range of connotation live. On many occasions, the panelists were being sarcastic. On the occasions they were not, they were merely giving us another view on the issue. Just as this panel may not have been right in some cases, does that mean you should shelter students from what is the truth? I think thats more dangerious that this panel could have ever been.

Posted by Patrick Garrett on July 12, 2007 01:02 AM