Fiona MitchellP/NW BOCES, School Communications Specialist
When North Salem High School sends its students off to college it wants to make sure they are prepared in more than just academics. Every senior in the high school takes Pre-College 101, a short course that covers young adults and the law.
Lawyer and former teacher Amy Wallace doesn't mince words when it comes to telling students just how strict the law is about drinking, drugs, hazing, sexual harassment, using fake I.D.s and other activities that college students might get involved in. Ms. Wallace is program coordinator of JLaw, a service of Family Services of Westchester, and she's seen it all.
Presenting a series of scenarios, Ms. Wallace explains to the students the many consequences of illegal behavior. Because of the 1998 Clery Act that requires colleges to disclose information about crime on and around their campuses, Ms. Wallace explains, college crimes are no longer swept under the carpet and more students are being prosecuted. "Alcohol arrests in colleges have increased 100 percent in the past 10 years," she says.
Ms. Wallace also makes clear the long-term implications of being convicted of a crime: "It will impact your college acceptances, financial aid, job applications ... dishonesty is something companies really do not want to deal with," she says.
To really send the message home, the two-session class concludes with a moving video about four students who died in a car accident on an upstate New York campus. In this real-life example, the students were neither driving fast nor far.
"We don't want to be alarmist," says North Salem High School teacher Jay Jazayeri who sat in on the session. "But we want to make sure the students are safe."
