|
|
Today is the 3 year anniversary of the Colubmine
massacare. And so for the second year in a row, I'm going to call attention
to something that most of the media and general public aren't aware of,
or don't want to be aware of.
To begin with, here's an Onion article
on how Columbine jocks are now able to resume bullying with a tighter security
force at the school. While it may be written by the best satire newspaper in the
world, there's an awful lot of truth in it.
And then secondly is Jon
Katz's excellent series of articles on the aftermath of Columbine on the
"different" people in school; the dorks, the nerds, the goths, the
non-conformists, etc, etc, etc. He talks about, and quotes email that he
recieved, from people persecuted as being possible killers just because they
were different or didn't go with the flow. The witchhunt that followed Columbine
is the most tragic part of all in my opinion, maybe because I can relate to it
somewhat. The original article (which I HIGHLY suggest
reading), Voices
from the Hellmouth gives the best overview of what kind of treatment that
non-conformists at schools across the country recieved after Colubmine. However
if you have the time, Katz wrote a series of 10 articles revisiting the stories
that he recieved. Part
1, Part
2, Part
3, Part
4, Part
5, Part
6, Part
7, Part
8, Part
9, and Part
10. Again, they are very very good, and show a part of the effect of
Columbine that most people do not think of, nor really care to think of. To
quote the original article:
The big story out of Littleton
isn't about violence on the Internet, or whether or not video games are turning
out kids into killers. It's about the fact that for some of the best, brightest
and most interesting kids, high school is a nightmare of exclusion, cruelty,
warped values and anger.
Of course, middle school was much worse for me than high school, which I found
to be common for most of the people who I've talked to. And so to quote Rodney
King, "Why can't we all just get along?"
|
