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Photo by Bob Pennell Gordon Smith talks with Rogue River High School students and those from other high schools around the state via a video link from Washington, D.C. Video link puts senator in schools Rogue River students join in cross-country talk with Smith By VICKI GUARINO ROGUE RIVER -- U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith visited students in a dozen high school classrooms across Oregon Thursday, without leaving the nation's capital. He fielded students' questions about school safety, gun control and Internet pornography by way of a new, $1.5 million video link with high schools from Phoenix to Wallowa. In Rogue River, when junior David Timme asked the senator why there aren't more controls on Internet pornography, he became the first student in his school to use the interactive video network. He was among 16 juniors and seniors seated before a video camera to participate in the cross-country conference. They watched the senator on one monitor, and on a second monitor saw each classroom as students asked questions. Smith praised the new video network, and told students he was working on legislation that would give more money to public schools, and more discretion to local educators in deciding spending. Many of the questions from students focused on safety -- from gun control to school security to media-driven exaggeration of youth violence. Smith urged students to take on more responsibility for their own actions. "We always want rights," Smith said, "but it comes down to individual responsibility to control your actions." To student leaders, Smith advised, "With rights come responsibility. I would promote responsibility a lot more than I would rights." He supports the rights of law-abiding citizens to have guns, and said safety has to come from a sense of respect. "I think we're seeing way too much (violence in schools) because, quite frankly, we don't have a culture that values life as it should," Smith said. To Timme's question, Smith urged personal action, telling students to ask their school librarians to put controls on access, and to simply not call up pornographic sites themselves. "It's trash, it's garbage, stay away from it," Smith said. Questions were far-ranging. Sherman High School students wanted to know about timber harvest policy, noting that the United States imports lumber from countries that permit clearcutting. "There is a balance," Smith said, "to allow a responsible degree of harvest." Each of the 12 classes got the chance to ask one question. The session was cut to about 20 minutes because Smith was a half-hour late getting to the U.S. Customs office, where the nearest matching video linkup is located. While they waited for the senator, students traded small talk with far-flung classmates. Cheers went up when program coordinators at Parkrose High School, Portland, finally got all the classrooms and all the microphones up and running. "There's a little bit of tension, but it's working," said Rogue River's coordinator, science teacher Steve Plotnick. The video system linking classrooms across Oregon is the foundation of a distance-learning project. By fall, teachers hope to offer classes and seminars to broaden students' learning opportunities. So far in Rogue River, the system has been used for teacher training. Students were chosen from a psychology class to participate in the inaugural session. David Timme said everyone submitted questions, and students gave his pornography question top priority in a poll. David, a wrestler, said his Internet searches for wrestling information have yielded thousands of pornographic sites. "It's nasty," he said, "and it takes up too much of my time." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA