As time seemed to freeze in the audience seats,  the atmosphere on the stage became more and more intense. 38 parents wearing T-shirts with “No cell towers in schools”, along with eight young kids, were deeply concerned about the future of the high school students in Cupertino. However, few high school students could be seen in the room.

People who were in the meeting were members of the FUHSD trustee and AT&T representatives, discussing about the renewal of the AT&T cell towers in Lynbrook High School. Many parents had voiced out their opinions opposing the cell towers in school, concerning their children’s health and the future of high school campuses. Nevertheless, high school students generally were not well-informed about the issue, which resulted in few high school students influencing the debate.

Cell towers may bring both positive and negative effects to the school, but high school students not participating in an event that deeply affects them and their environment is a noteworthy problem. This merely allows others to voice out opinions and decide for our future.

Parents, who have taken care of their teenagers for years, are naturally concerned about changes in the environment that might bring risk for our general environment. However, when high school students are not as well-informed as the parents are, they are being passive about the cell tower debate. After all, it is we who may be influenced by the cell towers. It is our life that might be either filled with radiation or super-strong cell phone signals, or other impacts of the towers. It is our learning environment that might be disrupted.

So why don’t we care?

Nowadays, high school students are busy with their homework, activities, college application and so on, and they are definitely worthy of praising for their hard work. But it would be beneficial for us to learn to carry some responsibilities for ourselves, even if it means that we need to use some of our precious spare time to participate in related events. Who knows, maybe what parents want turns out to be different from what we want; maybe we have better ideas and stronger points to persuade others for whichever side we believe in. Since there will eventually be one time when we need to think over the situations and decide for ourselves, we should gradually be more aware of what may have impact on our life and take our responsibilities to obtain what we want.