Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, August 24, 1993                   TAG: 9310280301
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GERRI GLASS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

KIDS AT RADFORD LIBRARY ARE NOT 'BAD'

As director of Radford University's Service-Learning Center, I was awarded a $2,390 grant from the Virginia Outreach Opportunity League to help provide after-school programming for the children at the Radford Public Library. During the spring semester, 21 Radford University students from three classes worked 584 hours at the library. Countless additional hours were donated by faculty, students and the library staff in developing the project. The project will resume in September at the Radford Recreation Department and will end in December. Those crucial facts were omitted from the article. Having spent months developing and coordinating the project, I feel qualified in addressing misrepresentations contained in the story.

The title of the article implies that the children's behavior is "bad" and in need of control when, in fact, they are behaving appropriately. Lest any parent fear that their child will be negatively influenced by the "growing crowd of often unruly adolescents" at the public library, it should be stated that these are well-behaved children who simply have no place to call their own. They are not a powder keg of juvenile delinquency waiting to explode. The children are not the problem, as suggested numerous times in the article. Volunteer help is not the solution. The fact that funds need to be allocated by Radford City Council to address the children's needs is the problem.

Radford's children need and deserve a safe, supervised place where they can socialize and simply be kids. They need and deserve a place where they can expend energy after being in school all day. They do not want to be quiet and should not have to be.

The Radford Public Library staff is to be applauded for the years they have provided de facto after-school care for scores of children. They have done their part. Radford University and its students, along with CADRE, have done their part. Now, it's time for City Council to do its part - by supplying the recreation department with the necessary resources to take over.

Gerri Glass of Radford is director of Radford University's Service-Learning Center.