NAME — Megan Brown
AGE — 21
What situations are worth fighting over? What choices are right when it comes to defending yourself or your friends?
The Domestic Violence Network of Greater Indianapolis, along with the Peace Learning Center, created the portable "Peace Street" maze to help youth build healthy relationships.
After participants enter the 1,000-square-foot indoor/outdoor maze, made of vinyl sheets and metal tubing, they see written scenarios illustrating potential sources of conflict. They must choose their response from a list; that choice determines which way they turn. Each choice can help lead them out of the maze -- or lead to a dead end.
In February, the maze was at the Children & Parents Expo, sponsored by Riley Children's Health Partnership, at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. There, Y-Press talked to five middle-school students to find out the choices they made in the maze and their feelings on friendships in general.
"A friend is someone who I can tell something to and know that it won't be around the whole school by tomorrow, and someone who can help me out in tough situations or give advice," said Christine Beyer, 14, who attends St. Michael School.
"I think a friend is somebody who will like you for you, who doesn't try to change anything about you, is always there for you," said MicA Stafford, 14, from St. Thomas Aquinas School.
Matthew Doss, 14, also from St. Thomas, said: "If one of you is going through a tough time, you know you can have someone to go to and talk to."
Joey Gaines, 14, St. Michael, said he believes males make better friends because, in his experience, males are more loyal.
"I think males are much more trustworthy when it comes to he said/she said stuff. We don't really get involved in that -- at least, I don't," he said.
All said trust and truthfulness are important in friendships and all relationships. These traits also help in a maze scenario about arguments between friends.
Conflicts arise for various reasons, some trivial. "If I've had a bad day, something little just sets me off sometimes," said Kerry Barmann, 14, St. Michael.
Disagreements with friends usually are resolved more quickly than differences with others.
"When I get into a fight with one of my best friends, it usually lasts about an hour because we talk to each other all the time. . . . But when I get in a fight with someone that I don't talk to that much, it usually lasts a lot longer 'cause, you know, I don't feel like I have to go apologize to them because I don't care," Christine said.
But friends can't abuse friends either. "If someone jokes around with me, and they say they're kidding, but they just keep doing it and keep doing it, I get real sensitive about things like that," Kerry said.
MicA believes the best way to deal with disagreements between friends is to put yourself in the other person's shoes. "When you're telling white lies, I think you should use your good judgment. How would you react if somebody told you the truth, or how would you react if they just told a white lie?" she said.
In the maze, participants are asked about situations involving physical conflict, such as when you accidentally knock over someone's books and he or she becomes aggressive.
The teens agreed they would not respond violently to most situations, especially one as minor as that.
Other problems, such as violence between friends, are more troubling. Joey offered two situations that could justify violence.
"If somebody's fighting a friend, then you'd back them up. . . . Also if somebody is threatening maybe your brother or sister, you might want to step in and say something. But then again, if they throw a punch or whatever, I don't know."
Violence in other situations is just plain wrong, they agreed.
"I think even one time if a guy hits you, or if a girl hits a guy even, you know, it's not right. They don't have self-control, and it's just gonna happen again when they're mad. You shouldn't put up with it," Christine said.
MicA sees the situation as somewhat more complex.
"I've seen girls be like, 'I love him,' and it's basically kind of like they think that love is keeping them there. Sometimes people don't really understand what love is," she said.
Kerry said to resolve problems, people "need to have more respect of yourself and more self-awareness of what is really hurting you," she said.
"If you don't have respect for yourself, then you're not gonna have respect for anybody else," agreed MicA.
The students also agreed their upbringing has helped them treat others well. "I think all of us have been brought up in a Catholic family or gone to a Catholic school, and they teach you morals and values and stuff, not just about religion, but about life in general and not being mean to others and treating people with respect," Joey said.
When faced with the choices in the maze, the students had no problems avoiding dead ends.
"Some of them were kind of obvious choices," Christine said.
"One point that would help the maze is giving you an issue that you would have to make a hard decision on, like if somebody attacked your friend. (Do) you break it up, or do you fight automatically?" Joey said.
But Kerry said no matter what people say ahead of time, their actions can be unpredictable.
"I say I won't do something, but then I wonder if I'm really in that situation, how I will act. It depends on your surroundings, I think. You say 'I will never do that,' but you know, once you're really pressured to do something, you don't know if you can say that's true," she said.
REPORTERS: David Glass, 13; Izaak Hayes, 13.
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Y-Press is a nonprofit news organization with offices in The Indianapolis Star building. Stories are researched, reported and written by teams of young people ages 10 to 18. For more information, call (317) 444-2010 or send an e-mail to ypress@in.net.
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