Activities "I Petition, You Petition, We All Petition for Ice Cream" by Curt Brown Reprinted from It’s Your Law, a publication of the Massachusetts Bar Association, with the permission of the author. SUDBURY - Believing it was unfair that ice cream trucks weren’t allowed in her hometown, Sara Gentile convinced her town meeting to permit them - proving that one person can change the system. Even though that one person was only 12 at the time. She remembers clearly the day she got the inspiration to change the bylaw. Her family was visiting a popular beach in Hudson, a town next to Sudbury, when she and her brother heard the sounds of an ice cream truck making its rounds. She asked her father, Carmen, a member of the Sudbury Planning Board and a Framingham attorney, why ice cream trucks were allowed in Hudson, but not in Sudbury. Carmen explained to Sara that Sudbury had a bylaw prohibiting ice cream trucks from doing business there. Townspeople had been concerned that there was a potential for car accidents and that such a job might attract drug pushers and pedophiles preying on young children. “I told her that someone had changed the law,” Carmen said. “She said, ‘that’s not right,’ and I told her to go to a town meeting with [a proposed statute] and change the law. I simply pointed out that she could do something about it,” he said. Sara did not just get upset about the injustice of the situation and let it go at that. She decided to follow her father’s advice and do something. So Sara set into motion a series of events that made her a local celebrity and even earned her an appearance on the late-night television talk show starring David Letterman. “It sounded like a project I could do and it just didn’t seem fair,” she said. “The law should have been changed.” Sara admits she didn’t know what she was undertaking or how she was going to accomplish it. She just set a goal and thought she would figure out how to do it along the way. “I didn’t exactly know what I was doing when I started,” she said. “I didn’t know anything about changing a law.” With the help of her family, classmates and teachers, she persevered where many would have quit. Sara did her homework when preparing to make her argument to the town meeting. For example, she contacted chiefs of police from seven neighboring towns, asking for crime statistics related to accidents or trouble with drug pushers or pedophiles related specifically to ice cream trucks. There were no incidents reported from those towns. She worked on a computer and prepared slides and bar graphs to strengthen and illustrate her proposal, including using statistics she gathered from the Internet about accidents involving ice cream trucks. Carmen helped his daughter by going to the selectmen’s office and obtaining the forms for Sara to submit her proposed change to the law. He also got documents explaining the discussion that took place at a previous town meeting about possibly lifting the ban on ice cream trucks. By knowing the arguments that arose previously, Sara could be better prepared when and if the same issues arose in connection with her petition. She also gathered more than the required 10 signatures on a petition in order to bring the amendment in front of town meeting. Her proposed amendment called for ice cream trucks to be allowed within the town limits between the hours of 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. to dark. She said her involvement in a school program, called “Odyssey of the Mind,” where students are broken into teams and must solve problems with creativity and imagination, was helpful in preparing for the town meeting. During her preparation, Carmen said Sara received a certified letter from the parks department, stating it was opposing her proposal and was planning to offer an amendment to it. The amendment would have required that those selling ice cream had to be at least 1,000 feet away from any town recreational facility or playground before they could sell their products. Such a proposal would have effectively killed Sara’s proposal. Sara went to work. She saw some holes in the parks department’s amendment and used them in her speech, which she practiced in front of her teachers. Before she could address the town, though, she had to get special permission of the voters because she wasn’t eligible to vote. Once she got that obstacle out of the way, she made her speech, arguing, in part that, it would be unsafe for children to walk such a long distance to buy ice cream products. She won over the townspeople with her intelligence and preparation, overwhelmingly defeating the parks department’s amendment and winning approval for her change to the law. “[The opposition was] already dead before they got up,” Carmen said. “The only objection was from the parks department. It was pretty one-sided.” The town was amazed that someone so young could tackle such a complex topic and prevail. But Carmen feels his daughter was just being herself and it was very much in character for Sara to tackle such a difficult project. “She’s very focused and she has a lot of poise,” he said. “People were very impressed with her presentation. It was better than most of the adults. She’s a very good public speaker. She spent a lot of time on it on a regular basis,” he continued. “She never let go of it until it was done. I was very impressed. I’ve never done something like this.” Sara proved that if the spirit is willing and the heart is strong, there is nothing one person cannot do. “It wasn’t too complicated. If you take your time and you are determined to accomplish your goal, whatever you want to do, you can do,” she said. Sara said she would not hesitate to do something like this again. “I would love to do it again, but I can’t think of anything that’s wrong,” she said. And would she have given up if she had been unsuccessful? No way! “I probably would have tried again next year,” she said. She said she would urge others to follow her lead. “I would encourage them to change a [law they disagree with]. It’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s difficult, but it’s worth it,” she said. Sara said she wasn’t even nervous about speaking before the town meeting. Well, maybe just a little when they announced her name and said she was going to speak. She said her family and friends were all there and she drew support from them. But what caught Sara and the rest of the Gentile family by surprise was all the publicity she received once her story hit the wire services. She quickly became very popular with the media and everyone wanted to know the how’s and why’s of what she did. “It just never ends,” she said of the publicity, then several months after Sudbury’s town meeting in April. “Magazines, newspapers, TV. . . . I didn’t think any of this would happen. It’s exciting. I don’t know what to say,” she said. Carmen said he and the rest of the family thought it was a joke when one day they came home and there was a message on their answering machine from The Dave Letterman Show, wanting to know if Sara could be their guest. The show’s producers paid the expenses for Sara and an adult, but the Gentiles decided to make it into a family affair, so they all went to New York. Carmen said it was a proud moment for him to watch his daughter being interviewed on national television. “It was just a lot of fun,” he said. >>Brush Up on Your Voting Smarts >>Voting & Youth Citizenship >>Voter Registration >>Campaign Reform Conversation | Voting | *Activities* | Resources Online Conversations | Law, Diversity, and the Vote