I had a nice column. It was brilliant, witty, and informative regarding my college experience. Then there was another school shooting, and I couldn't stop thinking about fear.
By this point in time, just a few hours after the shooting, the experts are lining up to answer that most base of questions: Why? What possesses a reasonably smart, somewhat picked-on boy to pick up a gun and kill fellow classmates with a song in his heart? Is it the schools, the parents, the system itself?
On discussion with some of my friends in college, I found myself admitting that Klebold, Harris, and all who came after, sounded a lot like the kind of people I was friends with in high school. Never quite fitting in, picked on by "the popular kids," not much for mainstream activity. I'll never forget the days that my lunch table, theater people all, were called "Satan worshipers" by ignorant people who didn't seem to understand that everyone on a stage crew wears all black.
I mention this only because of what I see to be the cyclical aftermath of school shootingsthe stigmatized kids are those who are nonconformist. They are treated badly. Therefore, the nonconformist kids are stigmatized and, because of this, are sometimes the ones to act out in violence. Too many people are making the jump between "nonconformist" and "psychotic," and this is causing a great backlash.
I don't know how many schools banned trench coats after Columbine, or started keeping an eye out for "the odd ones," or took other security measures. Some high schools have taken to such measures as ID badges, metal detectors, and clear bookbags. I suppose this is running on the base assumption that anyone psychopathic enough to go on a shooting spree would be deterred by a name tag.
If I'm harsh, it's because I don't think that extremist "safety" measures that are designed as a comfort do any good. They don't serve to change the initial problemwhy some kids decide that shooting is a viable option.
Inasmuch as this has been analyzed to death, the only solution that I can propose is to not stop those who wear trench coats. Better to stop those who call them faggots and Satan worshipers. It's absurd to say that anyone other than the killers themselves are ultimately responsible for their actions, but one wonders if any of these boys would have just graduated with bitter memories had they not been constantly belittled, or if someone had the sense to intervene. Such exercises in futility are only good if they have larger contextthat is, if a kid is stopped from going ballistic on the football team.
My scariest day in high school was the anniversary of Columbine. Attendance in schools nationwide was extremely lowat some schools 1/3 of the students skipped. I went that day, and the atmosphere was choking. Police were everywhere; people jumped at the sounds of lockers slamming. School simply shouldn't be that way.
As much as I thought I understood what kids at those schools were going through by virtue of a halo effect, my perspective on widely publicized tragedy changed when my school became the center of one.
Recently two professors at Dartmouth were murdered. It was one of the strangest events I have ever witnessed in my life. I didn't know Half and Susanne Zantop. I'm told that they were gentle and kind. I've read their eulogies time and time again since their deaths, but it seems that who they were has been constantly overshadowed by how they died.
Dartmouth has about 5000 people. It's big enough so that you don't know the name of everyone that you see but small enough that you get a sense of people. Like the boy who introduced himself to me the other day. "I see you every day. I know who you are, I just don't know your name." Little things like that.
For awhile, the green was a daily gathering of news trucks. Some reporters were just doing their job. Some were arrested for harassment. Everyone at Dartmouth was floored by the national attentionone of my hall mates said that it was even in her native Bulgarian newspapers. We've all been asked for sound bytes and witnessed the Boston Globe making absurd, sensationalist headlines day after day only to retract them.
Nothing's really different. We're being buried under obscene amounts of snow. The paths are endless, muddy slush. Finals are soon. Life simply goes on, and it's the same life.
Nothing really changed at all, except for the point in time before they'd found suspects when we were all running scared.
I once met a student from the University of Wyoming. I asked him about Matt Shepard. I remember the glazed over look he gave me. It's mostly gone from Dartmouth students now, but I see it in the faces of those in every school tragedy. As bad as it gets, you never think it's going to hit home.
There have been points in time since the murders when I have felt foolish for nearly running home to my far-away dorm. The escort service requests quintupled. I realize that the Dartmouth murders and school shootings aren't entirely comparable, but I think the effects are the samefear, the shattering of the idea that "these things don't happen here."
The alleged Dartmouth killers? Quiet high school boys who were picked on.
It seems to me that harassment is the root of violence. It goes on at all levels in some form, and this intolerance of others is what leads to grave consequences.
Kristen Minor is a member of the class of '04 at Dartmouth College. She has been accused of taking herself far too seriously and can be reached atkristen@youth-guard.org.
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 11, No. 2, Mar. 9, 2001