WASHINGTON POST
The Senator vs. Silver Chips
In a season of apathy, a voice of reason

SOME OF THE loneliest places in America last
Tuesday were polling places in Virginia. A
statewide primary was underway to select the
Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, but so
few Virginians stirred themselves to vote that
poll workers sat bored for long stretches fanning
themselves. Turnout was 3.45 percent -- and
probably a good deal lower than that among younger
voters.

Meanwhile, across the Potomac in Maryland, a
politician and a high school principal were
reprimanding some teenage student journalists.
Their sin? Taking an interest -- and taking sides
-- in a state Senate campaign.

The journalists, students at Montgomery Blair High
School in Silver Spring, work on the school's
award-winning paper, Silver Chips. They had the
audacity to write an editorial supporting law
professor Jamin Raskin, who is challenging state
Sen. Ida G. Ruben (D-Montgomery) in the September
primary. The incoming co-editor of the newspaper,
Isaac Arnsdorf, said a staffer for the paper tried
repeatedly to contact Mrs. Ruben, leaving multiple
messages and even reaching her once, fleetingly,
by phone; she didn't call back. Mrs. Ruben, who is
irate about the paper's endorsement, said she
doesn't recall getting the messages.

Now Mrs. Ruben is making demands (equal time!).
Montgomery Blair's principal, evidently squirming
at having provoked a state senator, has harrumphed
at the editorial ("not appropriate"). As for the
paper's main readers, students at Montgomery Blair
.. . . well, mostly they're too young to vote. The
only real grown-up in the debate seems to be Mr.
Arnsdorf, who is 16. "Silver Chips is a public
forum for student expression," he told The Post's
Lori Aratani. "It's an unsigned editorial
representing the viewpoint of the editorial board
and not necessarily the school."

Mrs. Ruben has been a member of Maryland's General
Assembly since 1975, twice as long as Mr. Arnsdorf
has been alive. Yet in this tussle he looks like
the cool-headed pro and she looks like an
ill-tempered rookie. Why is Mrs. Ruben so worked
up about an editorial in a student newspaper? And
why shouldn't a student newspaper write about and
express its opinion on political races? It clearly
serves an educational purpose, and, who knows, it
might even generate some interest among students
in local politics -- the same sort of interest so
clearly lacking in too many parents.

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