Walking down the halls of just about any high school, amid the cheerleaders and jocks and headbangers and wanna-bes, you’d find those few individuals who were marching quietly to the beat of a different percussionist.
And though they didn’t make headlines like school sports heroes did, they made their own news nevertheless, shaping things in their own ways.
Take Barrington High School, where, according to conventional wisdom, nothing ever happens-except that some enterprising students there very definitely made things happen.
Ayleen Crotty, 18, of Barrington Hills bills herself as the editor of Jaundice, a publication of counterculture opinion and advocacy that she writes, produces and distributes on her own. What began three years ago as a two-page environmental fact sheet has grown into a 14-page “zine” (magazine). The circulation isn’t tremendous on a global scale; it’s 200, but this is a self-starting high school kid, and that circulation area does include six states.
“Every issue, I get to tell about 200 people what I think,” Crotty said. “I can say anything.” A pro-peace vegetarian environmentalist, Crotty regularly tackles topics such as overpopulation and censorship. She also conducts interviews with rock bands and friends and reviews other magazines she comes across.
A recent “Ayleen Thinks … But Only Sometimes” column advocating the use of Death Row inmates instead of animals for drug experimentation drew a bunch of negative responses. Said Crotty, “I find myself doing that too often. I write something, and I don’t totally agree with it by the time the issue has been out for a month.”
If experimenting with ideas is one purpose of magazines such as Jaundice, another must be shaking up the powers that be. In the latest issue, Crotty reprinted letters of concern she received from consumer-relations people at pet food companies. “I told them that I had started incorporating their food into my diet because, upon sampling it, I found it to be rather tasty and energizing,” she wrote. Then she urged her readers to see what would happen if “tons of people” sent similar letters.
“Ayleen pretty much goes gung-ho,” said Dave Anton of radio station WCBR in Arlington Heights, where Crotty works as an intern. He was impressed by both Jaundice and its editor, whom he called “very intelligent, bright, sincere and genuine.” And, he added, softspoken despite her strong opinions.
Crotty’s father, Jeff, owner of a distribution business, thinks it was buying his daughter a computer a few years ago that made it easier for her to bring out her opinions. “She’s very sincere in what she believes in,” he said, though he doesn’t see her publications very often.
In April, Crotty helped fellow classmate Evelyn Nwankwo, 18, of South Barrington and president of SEAL (Students for the Environment and Animal Life), organize a pre-Earth Day event they termed a “motivation celebration.” The Saturday afternoon of live music, vegetarian food and information on natural products and animal rights drew a crowd, but there were more people from other schools than there were from Barrington High School, where the event was held.
“There’s no school spirit unless it’s for sports,” lamented sophomore Lauren Bilanko, whose family owns Yvette’s, a Barrington coffeehouse that sponsors, among other cultural happenings, weekly poetry readings. One of the poets whose work has been read there is Ursi Crawford, 18, of Barrington, (voted by her senior class the person most likely to be found at Yvette’s).
A poem of hers, “Rain,” also appeared in a recent issue of Jaundice:
Rain pours down and smacks me in the face.
Rain’s a lot like life that way . . .
Crawford, who also writes short stories, admitted that her writing is only a pastime; her real talent lies in jewelry making, as evidenced by the fact that she has consistently received top honors at local shows. She also has a following in Baltimore, where she once exhibited at a crafts festival.
Of the success she’s had so far, Crawford said, “It’s really cool.”
“Ursi was one of my best students,” said Barrington High School jewelry instructor Jon Anderson. Crawford recalled the time when Anderson “threw a piece of wax at me and said, `Just do something.’ I started carving away and I made a pendant and threw it back at him.
“I usually will sit down and plan a project out when I’m not in a good mood,” she said.
Anderson said he talks to kids about commitment to their work and urges them to spend the time to research their designs. “We place importance on art here at BHS,” he said. “The community takes it seriously.” Yet Ayleen Crotty took her school newspaper to task over a meeting at which several dozen students were honored for their achievements in art.
“I saw no coverage by The Round Up,” she wrote in a letter to the editor, “yet there were three pages dedicated solely to sports.”
Another of Anderson’s students, sophomore Nicole Morales, 16, of Barrington, turned to sewing-making colorful, oversized berets-to express her talents. Though in the beginning she gave away the few hats she hand-stitched from leftover fabric, a casual compliment from her teacher gave her the encouragement to go into production and make a business of it.
“I look around and see what people are spending $25 or $30 on,” Morales said. She sells her creations for about half that price to a clientele that now numbers around 30. “She’s had so much fun with this,” said Morales’ mother, Margaret, who taught her daughter how to make her own patterns as well as how to use a sewing machine. “She just picked up my sewing machine one day and said, `How do you use it?’ “
Morales said she chooses a material-often upholstery-grade velvet, corduroy or tapestry-and a difficult pattern and sees how they work together.
“The hats portray me and my attitude about clothing,” she said, and she considers it “kind of neat” that she can use her ideas to make things that people wear on the street. Making a fashion statement and showing concern for the environment seem to be twin preoccupations of today’s young people, and Evelyn Nwankwo, has found a way to capitalize on both.
She scours thrift shops in Chicago for jeans, shirts, skirts, blazers, boots, belts and other accessories that she resells from the basement of her home. She calls her company Rummage thru Green. Her catalog, a pictorial of classmates in a funky array of recycled mix-and-match outfits, was put together with her friend Ayleen’s help. It urges kids to “just hang” and warns “Yo Mama can’t dress you now.”
The resulting style, known as “grunge,” coincidentally has been showing up on fashion runways in Milan. “We have been dressing this way forever and all of a sudden it’s mainstream, which really annoys me,” Nwankwo said.
Several weeks ago at Yvette’s, she staged a Rummage thru Green fashion show of her own. Intentionally iconoclastic (“Why conform?” she is fond of asking, “What’s the point?”), Nwankwo is nevertheless a former member of Young Entrepreneurs and a dedicated capitalist who believes that business can be a force for better international relations and stronger economies. “She’s got a global aspect of things. She looks at the big picture,” said BHS instructor Tom Moony, whose economics class Nwankwo took last year.
Apparently comfortable with nonconformity, Nwankwo claimed, “I’ve always been doing all sorts of strange, different things.”
Crotty, on the other hand, said she was a shy, insecure child, trying to appear “so normal” by controlling what she said. Now she’s planning to produce five issues of Jaundice a year. “There are so many people who aren’t mainstream that I haven’t even reached with this,” she said. “There are just millions out there.”
She and Nwankwo will be entering the University of Illinois this fall. Crotty wants to major in photography and radio broadcasting, Nwankwo in political science; eventually she plans to study law. Morales will be moving with her family to Washington state, where she expects to continue designing and manufacturing her hats. Crawford, meanwhile, has taken an apprenticeship position with IKDesigns in Barrington and hopes eventually to go to art school.
“I think she’s totally in the right field,” said her mother, Peggy, a music teacher.
None of the young women sees anything wrong with making money, but it’s a good bet they won’t be doing it in the conventional manner. “You get better returns in the end when you take the dangerous way,” Nwankwo said.
