Well, it originally began with Menlo School administration's unilateral declaration of a new schedule. Our student representatives on the committee, although very active in promoting various aspects, did not have the opportunity to vote on the new schedule. So thus the Student Council was throughly disgusted by the procedings and refused to even take a vote to acknoledge the administration's report.
This lead to the development of an online drafting group who drafted the Declaration of Students' Rights. Our school newspaper, The Coat of Arms, throughly blasted our declaration. Well, I was surprised when the San Jose Mercury News published an article on the modern Youth Movement (page 1A and 18A Thursday, June 19, 1997). (It should be noted that that article seemed a bit biased from my perspective.)
I found that some of the youth advocates were a little extreme in there demands. (a principle to a moderate platform had been one of my key points in the drafting of the Declaration of Students' Rights) The relaxation of age limits should not be a first priority, instead, an active youth participation in the government would allow us to better understand the workings of the world, influence decisions affecting us, and if we wanted, repeal the legislation that we find repressive.
Along these lines, I would direct you to the UN documents on the Convention on the Rights of the Child (sorry, I'm too lazy to find the hotlink, it might not even be on the web so please go to your local government documents library, normally a college will have one that is open to the public), Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which the US has not signed), World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children, Plan of Action for Implementing the World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children in the 1990s. If you lasted through that mouthful, and somehow have the persistence to track down these documents on-line, I would appreciate it if you would mail me the URL so I can link the titles to the documents themselves.