Slashdot Mirror
More Stories From The Hellmouth
The messages started coming in a trickle Friday afternoon, then a torrent by Monday. They were wrenching, sometimes astonishing, an electronic outpouring of anger and compassion.
These jarring testimonials explained more - a lot more - about Littleton than all the vapid media stories about video violence, Goths, game-crazed geeks.
For a writer, there? s nothing more humbling than to be at a loss for words. I can't do more justice to these stories than to let them speak for themselves.
By last night, I had received thousands of e-mails about life in junior and high school. Few remembered it fondly - none, in fact. Some had unbearable memories. Some are still recovering. Many more are still there, suffering every day.
Many of you wrote asking if you could help these kids. Others wondered if there was any way to get the message about their lives out beyond Slashdot, if these stories might reach the mainstream media in some form.
Don't worry about that. The column and the responses to it richocheted all over the world, via e-mail, mailing lists, links, even faxes. There were scores of requests to reprint. For any others, and on behalf of Slashdot, be my guest.
On the Net, ideas don't need to be pushed. They find their own audience and stand or fall of their own weight. Eventually, I will answer each e-mail, and am grateful for them.
In the wake of the killings in Littleton, Colorado, here are more stories from The Hellmouth, from its current and former children:
From Eric near Littleton, Colorado:
"?I live just a few miles north of the school between the same streets. I'm a geek under the skin. I was a state champ in the high jump, and the leading scorer on the track team, so I was not quite the outcast that some of the geeks are, but I understand what they are going through. I wasn't very popular despite being the big athlete on campus, but I at least had respect.
I am very happy to see you and Slashdot carrying coverage of "the other side" of the story; the side nobody else wants to look at. These outcast kids are now being swept under the rug at best, and prosecuted at worst."
From Josh, a Slashdot reader:
"I was much like those kids when I was in school - weird, cast out, not much liked, alienated, all that sort of thing'I used to imagine bringing weaponry to school and making the fuckers who made my life miserable beg for mercy. (I was never sure what to do then, though. Do I let them go? They won't have learned, and after that, I could never turn my back. Do I kill them? I really just wanted to be left alone'Remember the scene in "Ender's Game.") I think my parents and their support made a lot of difference to me."
From John of Austin:
"?you can probably imagine the emotional scars that I still tote around with me at age 26. I still have yet to go to college, I have shelves upon shelves of books that I have bought, read and committed to memory. From literature to computer programming, there is no one that I can't have a meaningful and informed conversation with.
But to this day, the thought of entering another educational institution to prove that I have the facilities to be a ?meaningful? member of society makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end and turns my stomach inside out.
"I am the father now, and as such I worry about the kind of life my son will lead, too much at times, I'm sure'A few weeks ago I was watching the TLC (The Learning Channel) or the Discovery channel, and there was a special on the social structure within the United States prison system on. While I was watching it, I was thinking to myself just how similar it was to the social structure we find in schools.."
From John, who's 37 years old:
"What this really means to all my fellow young geeks out there? Endure. It may take a year, or two or five, but we will win'All those preps, jocks, etc., etc., will have their Ms. degrees, 2.5 kids, a job at Circuit City as an assistant manager, will be wondering where their life went, when we are coming into full bloom and taking over the world."
From Dan:
"How dare you glorify these scum? They were Nazi thugs, nothing more, nothing less. They are brutal murderers. They planned this on Hitler's Birthday, for God's sake. What kind of creep are you? How dare you compare them to geeks? They deserved everything they had coming to them, and so do you. May they rot in Hell."
From Kevin, a parent:
"I am married, have two wonderful little kids, and am, by conventional measures, considered "successful." I'm also a computer geek, a nerd, and still have painful memories of the emotional and physical trauma I sustained in high school. I still attend counseling regularly. I still take anti-depressants every day and will probably continue to do so for the rest of my life.
"Did I feel hate and rage for my attackers? Oh, yes. But I could never do anything about it and couldn't get anyone to help me. The only advice I got from my parents was to just ignore the bullys and eventually they'd leave me alone. Fortunately, I don't seem to be pre-disposed to violence or was too much of a coward to consider it. I can, however, see how the wrong kid in the wrong situation could go over the edge."
From Peter in Boston:
"I am a geek, and very proud of it. I have been beaten, spit on, pushed, jeered at. Food is sometimes thrown at and on me while teachers pretend not to see, people trip me. Jocks knock me down in the hallway. They steal my notes, call me a geek and a fag and a freak, tear up my books, have pissed in my locker twice. They cut my shirt and rip it. They wait for me in the boy's room and beat me up. I have to wait an hour to leave school to make sure they're gone.
Mostly, I honestly think, this is because I'm smarter than they are, and they hate that.
The really amazing thing is, they are the most popular people in the school, while everybody thinks I'm a freak. The teachers slobber all over them. Mostly, the other kids laugh, or walk away and pretend not to see it. The whole school cheers when they play sports. Sometimes, I want very much to kill them. Sometimes, I picture how I'd do it. Wouldn't you? But unlike those guys in Littleton, I never will. I value my own life much more. When I read these messages, I would ask other geeks to try and remember that, no matter what. And get online and make contact."
From Rory in Chicago:
"Would you bring a kid abused by his family to counseling and call him the problem? If that kid expressed rage and anger toward the world, we would call it a product of his abuse, and try to help him with this rage, treating him as the victim. However when it is other kids abusing each other, we treat the abusees as the problem and ignore the abusers altogether. Hunting down and persecuting the abusees is only going to alienate them further - not only with their peers be persecuting them but so will their parents and teachers."
From Jason, a Slashdot reader:
"Jon, please take these e-mails'and take them to CNN, ABC, NBC, whoever, what ever. Make them heard, and stand up for all of us! Geeks = different, different = okay, if not better! Make my mother understand, sweeping problems under the rug, or simply not dealing with them, doesn't do jack shit! And there's a bigger problem, it's them!
The people who think being different is bad, being geek is bad, TV, Games, the Internet, all bad! It will be hard, a minority against a majority! But please do it!"
From Evan: "I am 24 years old, and a successful professional now, but the, fifteen years ago, I was in the Hellmouth. Just wanted to shout some small form of encouragement out to the kids fighting today. Take your fight for the right to be different to the people with power, and enlist your parents? help. Remember that if you can get your parents to understand your need to be creative, and non-conformist, because your brain is just plain bigger than the small world of middle and high school, your parents can make a fuss to school boards. But if they won't listen, go to the school boards yourself. Peacefully, but forcefully, assert your right to be different by speaking out against fear and oppression. Because that's what it is. It's all about the fear.
People fear what they don't understand, and let's face it, the world of a geek isn't something most people can understand, if only because it's a complicated world filled with smart folks. And most people aren't complicated smart folks. You have GOT to break them of the fear. You gotta explain that it's an outlet, like racquetball or bridge. You have to explain it's not violent, it's colorful. You want violent? Look at football, look at sports.
That's REAL ACTUAL violence, not the simulated, stylized, far from even looking-real violence of video games or D&D (Dungeons and Dragons). And for a real kicker, ask them how many geeks are arrested for violent crimes and misdemeanors when compared to popular athletes."
From Cory, a high school student:
"I go to a private high school and on Wednesday in religion class I told the class, because we were on the subject that I could understand what would drive them (the killers in Littleton, Colorado) to do it. They said that it couldn't happen at our school and I responded by saying that it could because back in my freshman year it was so bad (the jokes, abuse, etc.) that I wished I had had a gun at home. I am a Senior now and 9 days from graduation. News got to the administration and I was suspended until I received an evaluation by a psychologist and was deemed safe to return to school. I have not been back to school since."
From MishtaE: "I've been out of school for awhile (not very long) but I still physically shake, I feel adrenaline go through my system when I think about my own junior high experiences'The feeling of hopelessness, of knowing that you have no one to go to who can or will make it STOP is a very horrid feeling. It makes you consider irrational things, because the rational ones obviously don't apply.
"But make no mistake, the cruelty inflicted on kids doesn't magically go away when you graduate (or drop out and get your GED at 16 as I did). You live with it, you learn to deal with it, but it's still there, and it does change you."
From LHRunkle, a self-described geek Mom:
"?my six-year old wonders why he isn't popular on the block, but does not enjoy racing his bike, or playing soccer. (Soccer is becoming fun.) He also wonders why noone else is reading the books he is. The online community did not exist when I was in high school, but geek culture did. Dungeons & Dragons (the original three-booklet set) and science fiction saved me.
"How many scared parents have taken the time to introduce their child to the items that kept them sane in high school? How many high school libraries are even allowed to stock Theodore Sturgeon, or all of Robert Heinlein? Before we go to Net culture, we need to face local culture. How many schools enforce a respect-for-all policy, and enforce it fairly? I know that I have a budding geek, and if I can get him sane through the next thirteen years, there will be another decent adult on this planet."
From Simon:
"The mainstream is missing the point. All over the world, "geeks" are standing up and saying "This is horrible and I know what cause it" and all over the world people are saying "Oh, my God! Another killer!" I'll spell it out: "The killers are a symptom of the alienation of an unrecognized minority - the geeks." No, that doesn't make it right. No, that doesn't mean a thousand more killers are lurking in the computer rooms of your schools.
"Failure to understand this severely limits your ability to correct it. I read with dismay that geeks are being cut off from the Internet and violent online games so that they "won't become killers."
Follow my logic here:
"Given: The killers were motivated in no small part by alienation. Reducing a persons contact with like-minded people increases their alienation. Reducing a person's sense of identify increases their sense of alienation. Geeks tend to communicate with each other via the Internet and online games.
"Conclusion: Cutting geeks off from each other (Internet access) and their identity (choice of clothing) will increase rather than decrease the likelihood of violence."
"I've been wracking my brain to figure out what stopped me (from hurting someone). I've been asking myself "what can I hand to people to fix this?" The answer is very simple. The faces are very clear in my memory of the few "popular people" who took the time to talk to me and find out about me. There are maybe a half a dozen. They showed me that they were people too.
I heard a report, it may not be true [it is] that one of the killers went and told one of his classmates before the killing, "I like you. Go home." If that happened if you are that person, you know that your attitude saved your life. If there were a few more like you, maybe it would have saved everyone."
From Armadillo:
" I thought I had put this behind me but I obviously haven't. This whole past week has really torn me up inside because 15 years ago, I was one of those kids. Because HS for me was sheer and utter Hell. I have no single memory that I can recall as being good.
I have no single person who I can recall as a friend. Hell, even the OTHER rejects kicked me around. I feel like I'm seeing this all through the eyes of a refugee from a war, who by some circumstance is rescued, taken off to a land far from the conflict, far from the danger and death and constant fear and destruction.
Years later, after having made some personal peace with the past, if not the people, they hear or see a report that their former home town or village has been bombed and the people they knew killed and it all comes flooding back.
"Why is it that we as geeks, freaks, nerds, dorks, dweebs'have to suffer while the clueless, bow-headed, tostosterone poisoned "normal" people are allowed to get away with murder'I wonder just how many outcasts have been driven to suicide because of just one too many tauntings or practical jokes on a particular afternoon?
"Why do we murder the spirits of our most gifted and talented young people? THEY are the ones that are our future. THEY are the ones that are best equipped to build the world to their hopes and dreams. The prom queens and cheerleaders will have their 15 minutes and then take their places among the teeming masses of consumers. They have already shown they want to be lead around and are more than happy to let society tell them where to go and what to do."
From Nick:
" I'm a junior in high school in a suburb of.... I felt that in light of what happened last Tuesday and your recent article on Slashdot, I should respond. Recently, one of my friends, Chris, was suspended for three days. He's an athlete (football and shotput), but is no means considered a "jock" as he plays computer games, reads fantasy novels, plays Warhammer 40K, etc. One person, Ryan, considered a "nerd" by his peers, mislabeled him [Chris} as a jock and decided to taunt him verbally. Chris is normally a nice guy who's never been in a fight before, as he gets along with most students. This verbal abuse continued for almost the entire school year so far.
Last Thursday, Chris slapped Ryan upside the head due to a particularly nasty thing that was said and Ryan picked up a chair, shouting death threats and swears. They were quickly broken up by the teacher and hall monitors, and were escorted to the dean's office.
Normally, each would only get a 1 day in-school suspension for what they did, but due to the incident in Colorado, each got three days and counseling by the school psychiatrist for the remainder of the year. The deans obviously overreacted, given the circumstances. What the main problem is here is that years of torment in people like Ryan's lives have led to such "classes" -- Goths, nerds, freaks, preps, etc. People form together in cliques where people are distinctly filed into the social pecking order. The high school situation could (and is) leading to a French Revolution-esque "class war" where social outcasts decide to say enough with the years of torment. Unfortunately, this is happening sooner than we think.
From Sally:
"The irony in the current coverage, at least to me, is that I remember my leather-jacketed, spiky-haired, combat-boot wearing friends as being for the most part peaceful, gentle, sensitive types - lots of vegetarians and anti-nuke people. Sure, there were a few who probably could have benefited from some therapy, but most of them were - and are - the nicest, kindest people I knew, despite their rather alarming appearance. After all, we had to be like that - we all knew what it felt like to be shoved in a locker, spit on, have stuff thrown at us, etc. I seem to remember the football players and other jocks as being a lot more violent and given to fits of rage and other displays of aggression.
... I certainly agree that the two shooters in Littleton were deranged boys filled with hate, But it's a fine line between a supposedly "well-adjusted" teenager [who bashes freaks] and a disturbed one."
From Matthew C in Wisconsin:
"I, like many of the Slashdot audience, was one of those those kids in high school, and junior high, and elementary school. I have suffered what those kids suffered, and continue to suffer. I made it through, but apparently not everyone does. The response to your article seems to suggest that there are many of us out there who want to help do something to curb the backlash to focus on the correct issue. I was wondering, in your surely large catalogue of responses to this column, have you found any hints of where we might send letters? Or who we might contact, to start telling people what the real problems are?
I want to help. I want to write, to talk, to help ensure that geeks of today and tomorrow aren't further persecuted for pursuing differences from the norm. We have to spread the word far and wide, teachers, parents and people who should know better than to ban trenchcoats, take away computers, and further drive their kids into depression and isolation. How can we organize something meaningful?"
It is shocking to see the way the principal'a and teachers treated students, especially in the aftermath of the Colorado killings. It reminds me almost exactly of the treatment Balint Vazsonyi received when he was a student in Hungary under both the Nazis and the communists. Think the wrong thoughts and you get "counseling" or kicked out or worse. (He describes this experience in his book "America's Thirty Year's War").
But while it offends, it is not surprising. Years of Supreme Court rulings have basically stripped students of anything resembling rights. It is legal for the school to force them to go through metal detectors to enter the building. Or to randomly search their lockers without cause. Or to censor their articles in the school newspaper. Or to install camers to monitor their every move. Or to force them to submit to drug tests if they want to participate in any extracirricular activity. For someone who spends 12 years in a school with armed police guards, cameras everywhere, random searches of their possession, metal detectors, and administrators with dictatorial powers, how will they every grow up into adults who behave as though they have freedom and rights? If you spend years with school guards who can search your locker at will, why would not think the police can search your car or home at will when you get older? It is very scary what is going on. (My description is accurate for many urban schools. Soon to be more suburban schools if I read things right).
And of course that one letter sent home by the principal encouraging students to rat on friends they think are acting "suspicious". That's also a tactic straight out of the Soviet Union, where children were invited to inform on their peers and their parents. Witness the DARE program as well (a program that is proven not to reduce drug abuse at all, BTW) where in some schools the students are told to inform the cops on their parents if they see drugs. (Included are lies about how the parent will simply get help - no mention of arrest) What kind of a message is that? The government is putting itself up as the ultimate authority figure in children's lives, supplanting the primary role of the parents in shaping their children's values.
There there are the "zero tolerance" policies. This is shorthand for zero intelligence in my opinion. Teachers can simply say bring a steak knife to school to cut the chicken breast your Mom packed for lunch, you're expelled (this happened in Indianapolis). It's so much easier than using judgement. You see, judgement requires intelligence, which is something far too few teachers and adminstrators have. With rare exceptions I was both smarter and more knowledgable than the teachers in my high school. Look at the average SAT scores of education students. I rest my case.
Of course teachers also value conformity to their way of thinking. It's makes their life so much simpler when they don't have to deal with the unexpected.
I am genuinely afraid for the future. I cannot even imagine sending my children to public schools.
I've made it through the hell we call Middle and High School. I had some unique experiences because my father was in the Army and I got to go to another new school every other year.
.22 rifle for my 13th birthday, I had hunter safety training and I joined the High School Rifle team (Varsity Letter no less). There's no way I could point an unloaded weapon at another human being much less a loaded one.
:). And last and certainly not least I would go down several times a week and shoot a firearm downrange and receive training on how to become a better marksman.
I learned early on that you had to respond with violence in order to gain any respect. Not only was I the "new kid", but I was also a geek and I was in fist fights constantly starting in elementary school. I'm really quite a non-violent person, but if someone pushes me too far then I will fight back, and I suspect thats what happened with these latest school shootings.
I can well remember sitting in Middle School science class quite peacefully while a little bully gave me a "red neck" which is a term describing how the giver slaps the back of the givee's neck multiple times causing it to become quite red. He did this once and I sat there and did nothing. The sound of the skin being slapped went through the whole class room and the teacher sat there and didn't say a word. The bully did it again. My friend next to me says that I mumbled one more time and I'm gonna kill him or something to that effect, but I don't remember saying anything. The next time he did it I stood up threw him against the wall and proceeded to beat the tar out of him. Of course, THEN the teacher noticed and we were broken up and sent to the office. Now due to the zero tolerence rules we were both suspended even though I had never been in the office for any kind of trouble and my attacker was well known there. So, for standing up for myself in self defense, I received the same punishment as my attacker. In fact, we sat near each other during our 3 days in In School Suspension.
However, I could never think of doing anything like the TCM did because I had been raised with firearms. I was given a
I think what saved me more than anything in my High Schools (I went to 4 different ones) was that I was a member of the JROTC (Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps). It seems weird for me to say so, because it seems like such a non geek thing to be a part of. But I was a part of a large group of people that were jocks, geeks, freaks, and every other subgroup, and for the most part we all got along and had a bit of esprit d'corps to boot.
I suspect that if I were in High School right now I would be dragged into counseling. I've always had a fascination with Military History, Military tactics, equipment and everything else. When I was in the 5th grade I had a bizzare fascination with the European theatre of WW2 (well I WAS in Germany at the time). I read every book on WW2 in the library including LOTS on Nazis and Hitler. I spent much of my free time in front of a computer often connected to BBS' (where I first downloaded Wolf-3D long distance from Apogee BBS several minutes after it came out
I'm sure it would be quite obvious to all these supposed "experts" that I was some raving psycho ready to let loose another school shooting. The worst part is, that every one of the activities I listed are what kept me sane through High School. Something about competitive shooting focused and calmed me more than almost anything could.
Well I guess this turned into a personal story which I didn't intend when I started.. What I really meant to say was that I suspect that many Geeks if given the chance to be in the Majority would discriminate against the Jocks and everyone else. Many of the posts I've read have stereotyped negatively ALL jocks. This is no better than stereotyping geeks and we need to realize this!
Who here would deny the fact that if Geeks ran the schools that everyone else would be taunted for running Windows and not Linux or *BSD? Or programming in Visual Basic and not C or Perl? There may not be as much physical abuse, but the mental abuse would be there...
I don't know what the answer is.. Humans have been forming into little groups and fighting with the other groups from the very beginning... The only good thing to come from this shooting is that at least we are finally talking about this.
The more you know, the less you understand.
I think it's pretty clear that violent hazing of students lower on the totem pole of school society is both permitted, supported, and abused by school administrators and faculty in an attempt to maintain order. This simply must stop.
While I'm offended at the flagrantly violent abuses I endured from other students while in high school, I'm outraged that the administrators actually preserved this system of order. As an individual student I simply didn't know it was this pervasive throughout the American school system, nor did I realize to the extend at which public school faculty and administrators regularly use students to impose order upon other students in a caste system; this is reminiscent of the Brown Shirts of Germany -- imposing order through violence against the minority German Jewish population during the 1930's.
And lest you think that I'm taking this too far by drawing parallels with Nazi Germany, allow me to point out that I was assaulted several times by groups as large as six with metal chains on school grounds, and the faculty wouldn't do anything to preserve my safety because they claimed I didn't have any witnesses to back my story up. This is after they called me in to the administrative office and nursing station to find out why I had bruises all over my body, ostensibly in order to determine if my parents had been abusing me. Once they realized that in fact it was other popular students committing these crimes they lost all interest in the matter. So the school system would have called state protective services in an instant if they thought my parents had committed a violent crime against me, but once they realized it was popular students to blame they shut up and told me to go away (they didn't even suggest I should call the police). What assholes.
Damn, I haven't thought about this in years and I find myself getting outright pissed off thinking about it as an adult. We do not accept this behavior in adult life, why should we impose this abuse on our children?
Now I'm 31 and far from school grounds these days, but allow me to suggest to the younger audiences here on Slashdot that if you're experiencing this kind of violent abuse in school: drop out! Just go get your GED and immediately sign up for University or local Community College courses. Once you make it out of high school and start going to college (especially if you avoid those stupid fraternities), you will find that the adults behave civilized or they go to jail. Don't put up with violence, that high school diploma is meaningless compared to a decent degree and post graduate degree; never mind the emotional scaring you will likely avoid. And you don't need that high school diploma to get into college, you simply need to get good marks in a community college, or local state University, to transfer to just about any good private or public undergraduate institution.
I will never allow my children (when I do have children) into a public school because of these experiences.
FastFood for thought:
On the previous Hellmouth article, someone posted about Nerd Revenge, suggesting that getting a better job, a better spouse, and a better car means that you "won" and the jock working at McDonalds "lost". I like to tell myself this, but I'm not so sure it is true.
What does it mean that you won on these criterion? You sacrificed everything you cared about when you were oppressed in high school-- freedom, deep intellectual concerns, a love of good books and good stories, general geeki-ness, and tried to beat the popular croud at their own game. So now that you are rich, well dressed, have lots of friends, and are tied 24/7 to your cell phone doing internet consulting... have you won? You bought into their ideals and sacrificed what you cared about. Sleeping with that popular person's boyfriend (or girlfriend), driving a porsche, and having them get your fries isn't what winning at life is all about.
To the people still stuck in school: Middle school was hell. High school was hell. If you are lucky, you manage to slide by on the sidelines, keep your D&D friends, keep your computer, and keep learning. If you aren't, someone "cracks down" on you and takes away the things that are expanding your universe. Life is infinitely better in college; you'll find more people like yourself, be able to control what you buy, what you watch, what you do. You will [mostly] be rewarded for being intelligent and dedicated.
-m
Every device ever engineered has a set of design specifications. The red line on your tachometer shows one. When you exceed the redline, your engine is going too fast for its own good and you can no longer guarantee that it won't tear itself to shreds and take you with it.
In short, when something exceeds design specs, it can fail. By "fail", I mean to stop doing the job it was designed to do. Engines explode; bridges collapse; processors release blue smoke; software crashes.
People have design specs as well. They're more flexible specs, because a person is a wonderfully complex system. Some design specs are physical, some are mental, some are emotional.
People can only handle so much stress before they exceed their design specs and fail. When a person emotionally fails, they become irrational. In common parlance, they "lose it".
Who here has not exceeded design specs and lost it? I've certainly lost it, and done some incredibly stupid things as a result. But for most of us, it is but a momentary lapse of reason. We lose it, we get out of (or distanced from) the source of acute stress, and we start operating like somewhat rational human beings again.
And then there are people who have exceeded design specs so far, or so constantly, that they lose it and never get it back. In engineering terms, they have "failed" and not recovered. In common parlance, we call these people "sickos" or "psychos".
If this were not bad enough, the fact that we're so complex (compared to machines, anyhow) means that we fail unpredictably. It's like a girder buckling under the pressure; you don't know when it will fail, nor in which direction. Psychology texts are full of ways that people fail to deal with stress. The psych texts are incomplete, and people come up with new failure modes. One of these failure modes is suicidal and homicidal mania.
With all the profiling, the talk about games and bands and coats, people are trying to predict the failure mode. We worry about this kid because he's likely to crack by going postal; we don't worry about that kid because she's likely to crack by popping barbituates and dropping out.
Trying to predict which people will fail by gunning people down is a fool's errand, because we can't tell which way a person will fail. If we can, psychology is incredibly advanced, and I'd love to see some of these psychologists working in engineering firms.
We can tell if a person is likely to fail in any sense. We can't tell when somebody will fail, because we can't accurately gauge their tolerance for stress. We can look at a person, see what causes stress for them, see what relieves stress for them, and look for a mismatch. If the stress is far above the relief, then the stress will eventually surpass any person's capacity. That person is going to break, period.
I can't tell you whether it is possible for a school to do this for students. If it is, it is very hard. It is possible for parents to do so, if they know how and if they care. As a nation (not necessarily as a government), we must give the parents that care the knowledge to look for this. As a nation and a government, we also must require that parents do care about the well-being of their kids, including their emotional well-being. Failure to do so is criminal neglect.
The schools are trying to make themselves safe, due to the media-hyped school shootings. First and foremost, this is a laudable goal. I believe that our schools are acting in good faith, but with bad information and the wrong tools. I'd rather have this than have intentionally malicious people attacking this problem with good information and the right tools. People with good intentions can be trained; people with poor intentions can often only be restrained.
To all the parents and school faculty reading this and actively dealing with the issues of this tragedy, thank you. You have the right intentions. Read this thread, not just this post. Arm yourself with the knowledge and tools you need to do the job effectively.
--The basis of all love is respect
Computer games, Goth, black trenchcoats, loud music...
None of these things cause tragedies like the Littleton shootings.
All of these things are merely attempts by isolated kids to create a means of expressing their pain in a way that DOESN'T involve getting a shotgun and blowing off the face of their tormentors. They are not not unhealthy influences that corrupt otherwise innocent minds. They are mechanisms we create in order to avoid giving into our unhealthy desires to haul off and wail away on our enemies.
Suppressing these activities won't make the problem go away. If anything, this will simply limit the recourses these kids have and increase the possibility that they will resort to more violent modes of expression.
I watched the news coverage of the Littleton Massacre with dawning horror.
There was a feeling deep in the pit of my stomach that what was going on was more
than just wrong for the kids of Littleton. I dread that this is going to make life so
much harder for kids like them.
When I was in high school I was an outcast by choice. I hung with the popular
crowed for my entire freshman year. But I felt so fake around them. I wasn't
myself. I did not enjoy the same things they did. I was not concerned with clothes
or parties or dances. I wanted to play with my computer and read my fiction
books. By that point I had read my entire grade school library and was well on my
way to devouring the paltry sci-fi/fantasy section of my High School library.
I met my real friend my sophomore year. We got to gather through a club on
campus called the Fiction Federation. Most of us are still friends (I graduated in
89). We were not popular then. Though we were a registered club, we had to fight
to get into the year book. We had to fight for a room to have meetings in and for a
teacher willing to be a mentor. But we were lucky we found each other. And
because we found each other we became a type of gang. We looked after each
others emotional needs. We understood each other even if our parents and peers
did not.
I am terrified that since the Littleton mess that there will be no more Fiction
Federations. That no one will be willing to help the geeks. And more than that, I am
afraid that the geeks themselves will be too afraid to reach out. It is hard enough in
high school to reach out to another person. Harder still if you are shy and different
and your interests are nothing like those of the people around you. But now these
people are going to be alienated even further, if not by their peers but by their own
feelings.
Where as before they might have brought a fiction book in a shy attempt to attract
the attention of someone like them (my best friend and I got together like this), now
they will be too terrified to even do that. It breaks my heart to think of how many of
these people will succumb to feelings of worthlessness. How many of them will
suffer silently in the darkness of their lonely lives. I fear that while before, loneliness
will drive them to make contact, now it will drive them to an more permanent
solution to their torment.
And it will not be just the geeks who suffer. The artists, the poets... any one who
does not fit in. High school was a prison for so many of us. Now it will be a
concentration camp. Saddest of all is that the same people who could be helping the
outcasts will be adding to the hysteria. Administrators, teachers, counselors...
instead of instilling a sense of trust in these kids will now be watching them with
suspicion. Alienating them further.
And how many of us had parents we could turn to? I certainly didn't. Neither did
any of my friends. If we had net met each other, it might have been one of us with
the guns and the bombs. Certainly I have seen that much rage in some of my peers.
And back then I was the only one with a computer and a modem (BBS days).
I pray for their sakes that these kids can find an outlet. That they find a support
group on line if they cannot find one locally. Find people like them. People who will
support them and their creative efforts... or programing efforts. We need to provide
access to the internet in every school library. In ever library period. Not everybody
has a computer. But everyone needs an outlet. I think that a lot of doors have been
closed for kids like these. Time we opened some up.
That's my two cents.
-Kit
But this is still America, where the Constitution promises us freedom of speech, the right to peaceably assemble, and security against unreasonable search and seizures without probable cause.
Take a look at the 1969 Supreme Court case called Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Disctrict. This argument could be very helpful for people trying to challenge these prejuicial policies.
In summary:
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the students, noting that:
To read the full text of the decision, go to http://caselaw.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?nav
There are some really good arguments here, and it doesn't get too bogged down in legalese. Much of it is still relevant to the recent cases wardrobe harassment. The following extracts all come from the full decision:
So, if you are still wearing Goth clothing to make a statement you may have a case here. If you do get harassed by officials, see what they make out of this. And otherwise contact your local ACLU, who may be in a position to help.