Setting an example for our children

To all political candidates: In your quest for political office, I pray that you will represent the families in your bid to restore not only our economy but the social strength of our families as well, by promoting decency and respect.

Monday’s letter to the editor by Catherine Anderson definitely needed to be written. She is not alone in her outrage at Saturday’s wet T- shirt show.

This is a wake-up call to everyone in the community that, if we truly value our children and the youth of today, if we truly want them to turn out well, then the adults need to model and promote the qualities we expect them to have. As an educator, I find it appalling that the school system is expected to help groom our students to become educated, decent, hirable, well-presented young individuals, yet outside the school boundaries, companies that direct their marketing toward our youth promote indecent, offensive behavior.

Car shows enthusiasts are often young, impressionable teenagers and truly this kind of “promotion” is a disgrace to our family-loving community. Did anyone involved in promoting the “car show”—the sponsors, promoters, or participants stop to think, “Could our public audience include children?” The parental discretion “clause” is a joke! My teenage students laugh when I tell them they aren’t supposed to watch “R” rated movies. The “R” rating makes seeing the movie all the more exciting. The parental discretion clause probably attracted the teens to watch the show. So then, we, as adults, who we all hope are wiser, should then guide our youth and not predispose them to negative entertainment.

A few of my students came up to me and said, “Yeah, miss, I saw the contest, it was gross. I heard those girls were from our local strip clubs. It was so perverted, I can’t believe they allowed that show in public!” But despite their disgust, the students who told me about this still watched the whole show in its entirety.

Saipan has a reputation on Guam and Japan as a destination filled with prostitutes. One factor for this tarnished reputation is Saipan’s prolific prostitution seen publicly, nightly, and without fail, at all the tourist districts. Saturday night’s public show validates this reputation.

Everything falls and rises on leadership, and I hope and pray to God that, as you aspire to lead our great Commonwealth, you will know that voters like myself are looking for leaders with integrity, character, and the guts to stand up and do what is right for our CNMI community.

Cherlyn Cabrera
Marianas High School