Class Of 2000 Begins Final Year In Spotlight -- Local High-School Seniors Tell How It Is, In Their Words

Surveys say they're stressed, depressed, smoking in larger numbers than before. Local and national media have been following them since 1987, when they entered kindergarten.

Finally, in high schools around the country, members of the Class of 2000 are entering their senior year. They were the subject of millennium madness long before the rest of us - and their future was laid out for the world before they had a chance to get a word in edgewise.

With high schools around the greater Seattle area opening, we decided to give members of this much-dissected group the chance to speak for themselves. Here, in an article by two reporters for Mirror, the youth publication of The Seattle Times, is an insider's view of the Class of 2000.

This year, Nick Clements' graduating class at O'Dea High School will spend prom night in style - atop the Space Needle.

Now, we know what you adults are thinking: Back in your day, kids didn't need to spend prom night overlooking downtown Seattle to have a good time, right?

But before you get started on all those sweet memories of the olden days when school formals were held in musty school gyms, consider this: To more than a few people, this year's graduating class is the most unique class in, well, 2,000 years.

That's right. For those of you who haven't done the math, the Class of 2000 is finally graduating. But you knew that already, right? How couldn't you? It's been 12 years now that we've been in the spotlight (at our best) and under the microscope (at our worst).

For over a decade we've been the media's little darlings. We were ushered into kindergarten with articles proclaiming, "The Class of 2000 goes to school!" When we entered middle school, experts on TV warned our parents: "The Class of 2000 is about to get feisty!" And let's not even get into the attention we got when we started high school.

But, hey, don't get us wrong: We feel kind of honored - a bit like celebrities, really, thrown into the spotlight without having done anything special to merit it. All those magazine covers and "20/20" specials are actually kind of cool. But in the words of at least a dozen high-school seniors we interviewed recently: Enough already!

"How is my class graduating from high school any different from the Class of '99 graduating?" wondered Newport High senior Colin Griffiths. "Just because it has three zeroes seems to make people think our class is more important."

Mercer Island High senior Cheryl Crow agreed. "It's total hype. In the big spectrum, 2,000 years is nothing."

On the other hand, some students agree that in the small spectrum at least, maybe it is something. "It's a big deal," said Jacalen Schufreider, a senior at Evergreen High, in the Highline School District. "Suddenly, instead of a `1,' there's a `2' in front of the other digits. It's pretty neat."

And pretty convenient, too. Instead of having to elbow our way into the spotlight, like all the classes before us, all we have to do is comb our hair and smile for the camera.

Still, in some ways, the scrutiny forces us to challenge ourselves even more than we otherwise would. "At this point, I don't think we already deserve the recognition," said Mercer Island High senior Jessica Conte, "but all the media attention has shown us that we need to earn it - which we're starting to do."

Based on our interviews, and our own experience, there are several things that members of this class seem to have in common.

-- Ambition: Of course, as with any class, we have our slackers and our overachievers. But the majority of this year's graduates will be going on to college, and many of us have set very high goals for ourselves.

Lots of double-0-ers play sports, have jobs, participate in student government, perform community service, take difficult courses at school, and do much more to reach their goals. O'Dea's Clements reported: "There's a guy (at school) who has his own company. He went to South America on a family vacation and hooked up with his dad's business contacts. Now he imports coffee and sells it to shops."

-- Tech-savvy: If hard work is something that the Class of 2000 prides itself on, technology is one thing making all that work a little bit easier on us. What better than a computer to type up that chem lab, the Internet to get quick facts for a history essay, or that fax machine to send our trig notes to our best friends late at night?

Students now sign up for the SAT over the Internet, check out the colleges of their dreams without flying across the country to see them, and download college-application forms without licking a stamp. The Class of 2000 has grown up with technology. "I don't know what we'd do without computers, pagers, cars, cell phones," said Newport's Griffiths.

Neither does Mercer Island High senior Sofy Parker, who borrowed a pager for the summer from a friend who was going to be out of town.

"At first, I didn't think it would be that big of a deal - just a way for my parents to get ahold of me," she said. But by the end of the summer, she was getting a dozen pages a day, not only from her parents, but from friends, baby-sitting clients and her manager at work.

"You tend to become dependent on technology as it enters your life," Parker said.

A little too dependent, perhaps. While technology has made daily chores much easier, it also has replaced the feelings of self-sufficiency and responsibility teenagers of past generations had. Sure, we know how to get ahead in life - but would we be able to do it without that cable modem or alphanumeric pager?

-- Activity: Despite the tight schedules we keep, the Class of 2000 understands there is more to life than college applications and the SAT. Our class is especially devoted to the environment. It might not be as exciting as burning your bra and campaigning for free love, but it is important to us. We have come to the realization that we have to start acting now on the way we treat our earth, and we can't pass it off on the generations to come.

-- Diversity: We are an individualistic class, made up of people of different ideas, shapes, sizes, colors and backgrounds, but it seems that we're pretty accepting. "We are a very diverse America in one class," explained Emily Kusak, a 17-year-old student at Garfield High.

That's becoming increasingly true. Schufreider, for example, attends Evergreen High, where minority students make up 50 percent of the population. "We definitely have more tolerance of other races from being around them so much," she said.

But while our class, on the whole, is accepting of people of different races, genders and backgrounds, we don't necessarily make an effort to be best friends with them.

"People hang out with certain groups because they feel comfortable around those who share common interests," Schufreider said.

It's true - being part of a close-knit social group is an important part of high-school life. But at the same time, it does have negative aspects.

For one, members of our class often find themselves pigeonholed into certain social groups based on who they hang out with, what they do for fun and where they do it. And the inevitable result is the type of social hierarchy every high-school student, past and present, has been a part of.

"In high school, there are three different types of people: those on top, those who get walked on and everybody else," said Mercer Island's Parker.

It's a somewhat Darwinian balance - and there's a fine line between accepting others and knowing where you belong. The unwritten rule is that you can be friends with someone in a different social group - but you'd better not try to enter into their circle.

Confused? You shouldn't be. Chances are, your high school worked the same way. Still, there's one phenomenon the Class of 2000 - like other recent classes - has had to deal with that past generations never dreamed of: mass high-school violence. And we're asking the same question as everyone else: Why?

Unfortunately, although we're right in the middle of it, the Class of 2000 doesn't know the answer. But we can offer suggestions.

Many of us look at the recent violence as a shift in the way some kids channel their anger.

"In the past, it was all about drugs," Parker said. "Now, it's still about drugs, but it's more about violence. People used to rebel by hurting themselves; now they do it by hurting others."

Still, most of us see incidents like the April 20 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., as freak events. Twelve students and a teacher were slain by two teenage gunmen who then killed themselves.

"It definitely makes people look at us under more of a microscope, but I don't think it reflects on us as a whole," Clements said. "This has happened in such a minority of high schools, but unfortunately, the thousands of peaceful schools don't make the news."

But the media attention on incidents like Columbine also may have had a positive impact on us.

"Teenagers are finally realizing that what they do has a direct effect on other people," Parker said. "Some of my friends used to get made fun of a lot. After Columbine, I definitely noticed a lot less people making rude comments and a lot more people making an effort to get to know others."

-- Looking ahead: The Class of 2000 represents the teenagers of the '90s; we're the end of this millennium and the beginning of the next, all at once. We're ambitious. We're smart. We're tech-savvy. We're diverse. We're responsible.

And we read Shakespeare, who once observed, "Some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them."

It's a bit too early to tell, but it looks like the Class of 2000 may have it both ways.

Braiden Eilers is a senior at Inglemoor High in Bothell; Vauhini Vara is a senior at Mercer Island High.