Some two dozen students attended, and a number of them spoke up, asking the commissioners to fund the planned arts wing at Carrboro High School. The young people were impressive in making their points, in showing respect for the commissioners and other citizens on hand and in modeling good civic participation. Many of the students stayed for the duration of the meeting and spoke individually with board members afterward.

Public policy decisions are best made with input from the public. These young folks set an example a lot of their elders could learn from.

Raspberries to the organizers of Chapel Hill's visioning process, which last week got off to a bit of a nearsighted start.

The Town Council formed a group called the Sustainable Community Visioning Task Force to help establish, well, a vision for the future of Chapel Hill.

Fair enough.

But the council also set up a series of public forums to do the same thing -- without, apparently, informing the Visioning Task Force about them until they were already scheduled.

So the task force members, who reasonably enough assumed they would establish their own agenda and visioning process, were put in the position of having to play catch-up with a process that had already been set in motion without their input -- and set in motion quickly. The task force's first meeting was last Wednesday, and the public input meetings began this Monday and continue all this week.

The task force, which supposed it would be driving this process, instead finds itself chasing it.

Another issue became clear when the task force members looked around the room at each other last Wednesday and saw no black, Asian or Latino faces looking back.

Member Etta Pisano said she was troubled by the lack of diversity among the membership.

It turns out that no minorities applied for positions on the task force.

Building diversity -- not only ethnic diversity but economic, political and other diversity as well -- in all-volunteer groups is often a challenge.

We hope the process gains focus and produces some valuable results, but it started out with a touch of myopia.

Roses to the honors geometry students at Chapel Hill High School who have turned their mathematical skills into a fun, creative and challenging activity that also happens to raise money for a worthwhile cause.

The 85 students, continuing and expanding a tradition established by previous classes, recently built an elaborate 18-hole miniature golf course in the CHHS gym. And they didn't just go with your standard windmill/moat/hole-through-the-mountain obstacles. Using principles of geometry and trigonometry to plan the course, they created golf holes in forms including a circus big top, the Las Vegas Strip, the Smith Center and Franklin Street amid a post-NCAA championship frenzy.

Other students played the course. Donations were accepted, with proceeds going to the Ronald McDonald House, which provides room and board for the families of children being treated at the N.C. Children's Hospital.

Fore!

If you have suggestions for Roses & Raspberries, please call Dave Hart, associate editor, at 932-8744 or e-mail dhart@nando.com.