High school and middle school students are taking the lead in organizing and planning a forum for Milwaukee mayoral candidates, with the help of some Marquette students.

The forum is scheduled for today at 6:30 p.m. in the Weasler Auditorium and will be addressing issues of social justice in the community. According to Terry Burant, an assistant professor in the School of Education and the faculty adviser to Teachers for Social Justice, a Marquette student group helping to organize the event, each of the nine candidates for mayor has agreed to appear at the event.

"We're doing this to create a partnership between the Marquette campus and the Milwaukee community," said senior Stephanie Noll, a member of TSJ, which is geared toward education majors. She said that middle and high school students from the surrounding schools had given a lot of assistance for the event. For example, the students created the questions for the debate.

"Our interest in involving youth is educational," Burant said.

According to Noll, the students had chosen three issues as most important to them: first, youth and recreation, which includes looking into whether enough after-school activities were available to Milwaukee students: second, perceived bias in the Milwaukee community in terms of housing, interaction with police and educational opportunities; and third, economic issues, including jobs, grants and health care.

Students from the middle and high schools will be joining Marquette students in asking the questions of the candidates. Janine Geske, a distinguished professor of law, will moderate the discussion.

Burant said that she was not surprised to see that all of the mayoral candidates were planning to attend, despite the fact that the groups asking questions were comprised mostly of students who are not old enough to vote yet. Noll agreed, saying that although many of the students could not vote, they could still have a say in the voting of others, for example, their parents, and "the candidates are aware of it."

"The decisions that politicians make affect you and your parents," Noll said.

Jeremy Cole, the campaign manager for candidate David Clarke, agreed.

"It's exciting for the candidates to speak to young students," Cole said. He said that the intended audience of the forum, students, are concerned about different issues than older members of the community.

"I do think that the Milwaukee community is concerned with" the issues the students raise, Cole said. For example, on the issues of education, he said that the community was concerned since Milwaukee was "falling behind drastically in increasing college graduates and educating Milwaukee Public School students."

Another reason for the debate, according to Cole, is that as of today there are only 12 days left until the primary, and the candidates have a high attendance rate for debates and forums.

But to Burant, the usefulness of this event was teaching the "students at Marquette to think how to be active and also have them be active in the community."

Besides Clarke, the Milwaukee County sheriff, the other candidates appearing at the event are former U.S. congressman Tom Barrett, former municipal court judge, Vince Bobot, lobbyist Frank Cumberbatch, businesswoman Sandy Folaron, former police chief Arthur Jones, Milwaukee alderman Tom Nardelli, MPS teacher John Pitta, acting mayor Marvin Pratt and former school board member Leon Todd.

The event is sponsored by a grant from the Upper Midwest Campus Compact Consortium, along with Rethinking Schools, TSJ, Urban Underground, 9 to 5 Poverty Network Initiative, MICAH Youth Council and Esperanza Unida.