High School Students

Five Carroll County high school students have written winning love poetry for a contest sponsored by the Carroll County Poetry Forum.The winners take the stage tomorrow night at the forum's "Poems for St. Valentine's: A Poetry Reading."A winning entry was chosen from each of the high schools. The subject of the contest was in keeping with the spirit of Valentine's Day -- love. Not all of the compositions started out with that theme in mind, however.Nicole Welsh, a 15 year-old sophomore at Francis Scott Key High School, says her untitled entry did not start out as a love poem.

Two Carroll high school students were arrested Friday and taken away in handcuffs after drug-sniffing dogs alerted officers to marijuana in two cars, police said.The students, a boy at Westminster High School and a girl at Liberty High School, were charged as juveniles with possession of marijuana and turned over to juvenile authorities, police said. Their ages were unavailable.Troopers from Westminster and the Special Operations Division of the state police were joined in the operations, performed at the request of school officials, by sheriff's deputies, assistant state's attorneys and K-9 units.

Three Columbia high school students will escort 1996 Olympic Torch bearers as the flame comes through Baltimore this week on its way to Atlanta.Rachel Nelson, Stephon Petro and Kevin Williams, all 17 and graduates of Oakland Mills High School, are among 28 students from across the state chosen as escorts by Powerade, the official sport drink of the Olympic Games.Kenneth Fischer, 18, of Sykesville, also will be a torch bearer escort. "I'm really excited," said Nelson, who will attend University of California-Davis in the fall.

WASHINGTON -- In a disturbing trend over the past six years, more high school students are using drugs and fewer consider drug use harmful, a new study indicates.Almost a third of American high school seniors -- and 13 percent of eighth-graders -- have used marijuana at least once in the last year, federal officials said, citing overall drug rates that are higher than in recent years but still lower than in the 1970s and early 1980s.As drug use climbs, the number of teen-agers expressing disapproval of drugs and concern about negative health effects from drug use have gone down, according to the federally funded study released yesterday by the University of Michigan.

WASHINGTON -- The United States' best and brightest high school students have become more aware of the dangers of AIDS but are doing little to protect themselves against the deadly disease, a recent survey indicates.Nearly all the 1,150 high school seniors who responded to the survey said they know how AIDS is contracted. However, few of the students said they used condoms or changed their behavior to guard against getting the disease.Among the 28 percent of surveyed students who indicated they were sexually active, 42 percent said they would continue to have sexual intercourse even if a condom were not available.

Five Carroll County high school students have been selecte to serve as pages on the floor of the Maryland House of Delegates and Senate in the 1993 General Assembly session.Carroll County will be represented by Jennifer Baker, Francis Scott Key High School; Katrina Hill, Liberty High School; Francine Hewes, North Carroll High School; and Amanda Kilgore, Westminster High School.Margaux Locklear of South Carroll High has been selected as an alternate.The student page program is designed to give high school seniors, selected by local committees, the opportunity to work for two weeks as pages and to interest them in the operation of the legislature.

Brian Douglas was one of many black high school students at Festival Hall yesterday who had not decided whether to choose a historically black college or a predominantly white school after graduation.Mr. Douglas, 18, a senior at City College in Baltimore, remained undecided after attending the KGF Historically Black College Fair at Festival Hall, where representatives from some of the 107 black colleges and universities touted the virtues of their schools."I think a black college can do more for a black man. And I think a black man going to a black college can make the institution stronger," said Mr. Douglas, who plans to major in communications or journalism.

Over the past decade, the percentage of high school students who say they are virgins has risen significantly, according to a report published Friday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last year, the report found, high school virgins outnumbered those who had engaged in sexual intercourse, 54 percent to 46 percent. A decade earlier, the percentages were the opposite. The study, based on self-reported data from more than 10,000 high school students, also found other evidence of more conservative sexual behavior.

The ninth-graders of 14 school systems will hear the business community's message this year that high school grades really do matter. The Maryland Business Roundtable for Education is scheduled to announce today an expansion of its campaign to have successful young people meet with high school students to emphasize the importance of academics. The speaker's bureau is part of the roundtable's Achievement Counts campaign, a 3-year-old effort that encourages businesses to consider high school transcripts in making hiring decisions.

Baltimore County high school students would spend less time in social studies and physical education classes and more time in science and elective courses under a proposal for new graduation requirements presented to the school board last night.The proposal would make the county requirements identical to new state Department of Education regulations, which take effect next September.The new requirements also would allow students more flexibility and broader choices in course selection, making school more exciting, said Catonsville High School Principal Donald Mohler.