School Violence: History sadly repeating itself

My heart aches to hear these words. Shots fired at a high school. Students dead. A gunman who was troubled. Chardon, Ohio is now the latest city to be shaken by violence at a school and the 17-year-old shooter picked kids at random. It's all too familiar to me and yet it's still so numbing.

In Long Beach, not too far from me, a fight between two girls this week resulted in one girl's death. The girls fought over a boy and surrounded by classmates, they lashed out and now one is dead and the other will most likely be charged. The girls were 10 years old.

Last month, a student at El Camino Real High School helped his team win a soccer game. A few hours later, he was killed outside his house. And I'm still reeling from an incident at South East High School where a student stabbed his girlfriend to death.

All of this things happen and I don't know why. Why are kids still resorting to extreme violence to resolve issues? Are they less able to cope with issues or is it the same level of despair people had when I was in school? Are all the anti-bullying measures enough or do we need to drive home the message that extreme violence creates more sadness than a solution? But what about kids who aren't bullied and just want to hurt peers out of anger like Columbine or the 4 cases I just mentioned.

It takes me back to my 8th-12th grade years. 1997-1998, I was in 8th grade during the year of school shootings.  I still remember the cities (Peducah, Kentucky and Jonesboro, Arkansas and Springfield, Oregon) and the senseless tragedies of seeing kids or older my age gunned down. It took me back to my fears of going to high school and getting shot. Why I had those thoughts as an elementary school kid speaks to how gang violence was a serious issue growing up in L.A. Granted my school was safe but I was worried about this.

9th grade was Columbine. 11th grade was Santana High School in my future college home of San Diego. So I grew up hearing about schools putting in metal detectors and the news wondering what was going on in schools and kids' minds back them. It was vivid and it was sad. Sadder because I was just getting out of my phase of being bullied.

When I was bullied, I never thought about killing someone. I thought about revenge but I was afraid that 1) I had brought this on myself, 2) I'd screw up my chance at college by fighting back. If I had a problem with someone, I'd try to handle it. People did that by fighting too and yet it feels like thanks to more reporting, more cameras, it happens more often.

Like this article, I wonder why kids - kids!! - feel the need to resolve things in a bloodier way (c) Eminem. It's not the music, it's something inside kids where they feel the need to lash out, take action and it comes out in tragic ways. It's a cycle that's not restricted to these times but since history is repeating, I just wonder how society is teaching kids to handle frustration.

There's violence due to bullying. Then there's violence due to internal conflict and lashing out. Either way, this has got to stop because both are leaving more problems than solutions.

I'm just tired of seeing kids murdered or shot or stabbed or resorting to extreme violence. I'm tired of seeing people blame music and other exterior forces - they didn't cause the school shootings in 10-13 years now and they didn't now. I'm tired of gun rights advocates saying the wrong things and this turning into a 2nd Amendment battle while switching focus from broken hearts, dead bodies and shaken spirits.

We've done PSA's on catchy, cute slogans that don't go deep enough. It's time to get real and dirty because we're losing our children in ways we shouldn't.

Maybe it's time we do more listening to kids about how they see violence. Maybe it's time we start talking straight about the impact of violence. Maybe we teach them in their younger years that violence is not the answer and nip that in the bud. 10 years ago, I saw the fear of HS violence around the country. Now I see it again in junior highs and high schools. This needs to change and not just treated like isolated incidents because clearly it's not.

I'll let Phonte of Little Brother/Foreign Exchange have the final word.

I just had a brilliant idea for a televised PSA on bullying: A big athletic kid harasses a small, nerdy looking kid.. (1/4)
— Phonte (@phontigallo) February 28, 2012

The next day, the nerdy kid brings a .45 to school and shoots the athletic kid square in the face.Twice. (2/4)
— Phonte (@phontigallo) February 28, 2012

The screen goes black with white text that reads: "Stop bullying.Because everybody doesn't believe it gets better." (3/4)
— Phonte (@phontigallo) February 28, 2012

It may be harsh but it's real talk. Maybe we need PSA's showing what happens when and after violence strikes - invite victims and survivors similar to what Bowling for Columbine did at the end or this special I once saw in HS where troubled kids went to Columbine HS and saw firsthand what the students experienced. We need practical solutions that go directly to the source to change attitudes, perceptions, minds and teach how to handle anger - something that sadly many people never learn until it's too late.

Remembering Columbine 10 Years Later

April 20, 1999.
I was a freshman at West LA Baptist High School. A year removed from a wave of school shootings all over the country, I was happy that nothing major had happened. Knowing how bad bullies can be, I was grateful that I had a strong foundation and never thought twice about violence outside of maybe fighting back. Everything seemed like it was going to be calm and then it happened.

I can’t remember what exactly happened when I heard about it. I think I was in homeroom when a teacher mentioned it. But I didn’t have to react live to have complete shock when I heard the details. Shots fired at Columbine High School, campus being evacuated and all of a sudden, Littleton, Colorado was a town I’d never forget like Peducah, Kentucky – the site of one of the 1998 school shootings.

This hit close to home. Not knowing where it was, we called my family in Denver to find out how far the school was. Thankfully they were nowhere near it but I was a bit disturbed for a minute. One of the victims was a football player and at the time, my cousin played HS football. Soon we’d all hear about another victim, Cassie Bernall, who reportedly said she believed in God before being killed (a story that has since been attributed to another victim who survived her gunshot wound).

We heard hero stories like the teacher/wrestling coach who shielded his students with his body as gunshots claimed his life. And because I read and remembered everything, the irony of the shooting date was not lost on me. It came one day after the anniversary of the Waco Siege and the Oklahoma City bombing so I wondered if the two gunmen knew that in advance (stories indicate they not only did, they planned for a major catastrophe)

For so long, the only images I saw were that of students being marched out of the school with their arms over their heads, the shirtless kid who was being pulled out the window by the police and the many, many tears that followed. It wasn’t until I saw Bowling For Columbine that I was really haunted as I saw school cameras of kids falling over themselves trying to escape, kids desperately hiding and running for their lives and finally, the two gunmen.

The eerie silence of watching that four years later was something I’ll never forget.

I remember our school holding prayer sessions for the victims and their families. I remember talking about how if those kids were bullied, then as someone who was bullied I understood how they felt. They felt lonely and ostracized because they were picked on. We talked about school safety and noticed how metal detectors were being added to certain schools around the country.

And of course, we looked for scapegoats (hello Marilyn Manson and rock music! – sidenote, Manson gave an eloquent statement in “Bowling for Columbine” regarding the incident. Just one more reason that movie ranks in my Top 15.)

But in light of this USA Today story (later copied by CNN), 10 years has cleared up some of the stories we had from that day. According to this investigator, it turns out the gunmen were not loners, not part of this Trenchcoat Mafia and did not target particular victims.

Perhaps this was one of the first major stories of the 24/7 media cycle. Information was coming in so fast and media coverage was so swift and dominating that anything worth noting was reported. Even though there were five school shootings in 1998 that held our attention, this story was different. So many different layers, so many factors and they were all exposed before our eyes as they were revealed.

What have we learned 10 years later? Not just if schools are safer but have we improved recognizing kids being bullied and stopping bullies before they get worse? The story may be a part of our history but what does it say to us now? I think that Columbine helped shatter the innocence of the 90’s, something that 9/11 took away once and for all. It reminded us that just like 1998, schools were losing their sense of safety – something painfully aware as just last week someone was shot at Locke High School here in Los Angeles.

April 20 soon took on another meaning for me as I discovered it’s a holiday for marijuana smokers. But since I don’t smoke, I prefer to remember it as a day when a nation turned its eyes to Littleton, Colorado. When a senseless tragedy made us stop and pause and when freshmen like me battled fears of going to school.

Still feels like yesterday.