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If you had to talk to other students who were being approached about doing a CC to resolve a conflict, what would you tell them?
Sean: No teen is going to say, "Oh yah, I'll go to Community Conferencing, sounds like fun!"
I'd tell them you can't see what the outcome will be, you'd be surprised. It's definitely worth a try because what do you have to lose? You get to hear what the other parties are thinking, how they actually feel, rather than what you think they feel. It's also a controlled environment. Nobody is going to pull anything. It's only two or three hours, and you get to voice your opinion. We didn't want to go at first, but we didn't know what the possibility of the CC could be.
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Like saving our friendship.
Matt: I'd say go for it. Even if it has
nothing to do with friendship, just to get it all out of your way is worth it. If you just leave it, it's going to be in your mind. When you do this thing, you feel so good getting all of your feelings out and just saying what you need to say.
The theme of our newsletter is the new YCJA, which encourages people to look at other ways of resolving conflict or incidents instead of laying charges. What kind of benefits do you think a program like CC can have?
Sean: A definite benefit is resolving the problem. Charging someone is how you get it out of the way, real fast, without trying to solve it really.
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It doesn't really solve anything. CC definitely did because it solved everything for everybody and nobody was permanently affected by having a record or anything like that. I'm really glad that I did it because in the end, it wasn't that big a deal. It was a couple hours and for that, we saved a friendship, I got accepted to a new school and I'm not charged. There are just so many more benefits.
Matt: Yah, I think a definite benefit is that we resolved it. And not just for us , it also answers other people's questions. Like the parents, they want to know everything. If you just get charged, there are so many questions left to be answered. I think there are better solutions such as this. Getting charged, what does that resolve?
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