In the suburbs, youth complain about a lot of things – poor living conditions, lack of education, joblessness, boredom. But tense police relations often top the list.

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Everywhere you look, you see pregnant teens – in schools, at the mall, on TV, in the movies.

In this series, five Y-Press journalists explore the relationships between minority youth and the police in the Indianapolis area. Over the last several months, the team interviewed teens involved with 100 Black Men, the Latino Collective and teens participating in the four-year-old Our Kids (OK) program. In addition, local police officers told of us about the issue from their vantage point.

Scientific studies have found volunteering actually makes people happier and healthier. Last year 61 million Americans volunteered 8.1 billion hours of community service. That‘s nearly $158 billion in donated labor and happiness.

With the rise in gas prices Indiana families still had hidden treasures in the state. One is about a little an hour and half northeast of Indianapolis the Peru amateur circus.

George Yancey, an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Texas, studies interracial dating and marriage. He shared some of his findings with Y-Press.

Several Indianapolis teens – be they Indian, black, Latino or white – said they would consider marrying outside of their race, now that they have been part of the interracial dating scene. Raymond Jami, who is black, and Rocio Mendez, who is Latina, have been dating for more than three years.

As the political gambits of the 2008 campaigns kick into high gear, involvement by youth is higher than in any election. According to the Pew Research Center, overall youth turnout - voters ages 17 to 200 for the primaries has increased five percent from the 2004 election.