Another note related to Blame

[C. Harald Koch]

I particularly like Phil's editorial diatribe at the top. The actual meat of
the article ties in directly with Matt's eassay on the horrors of public
institutions... :-)

Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 11:40:18 -0700 (PDT)
From: Phil Agre <pagre@alpha.oac.ucla.edu>
To: "Red Rock Eater News Service" <rre@lists.gseis.ucla.edu>
Subject: [RRE]crackdown on nonconformists

[The Internet is bursting with news of a nationwide crackdown on high
school students who wear black, disrespect authority, use the Internet,
or have a problem with being taunted by jocks.  For example, check out
the discussion at <http://slashdot.org/articles/99/04/25/1438249.shtml>
-- that is, if the slashdot Web server isn't completely overwhelmed.
Media discussion of the matter is of course disappointing.  By printing
the word "Why" with a question mark after it, one can affect concern
without actually trying to answer the question.  My major problem is the
procedure of considering potential factors one at a time, when clearly
no single factor will suffice.  For example, nobody but nobody gets that
angry without a formative experience of serious abuse or at least some
kind of major trauma.  But lots of people have such experiences without
shooting up the school.  So we can look at the return of a really harsh
conformist culture -- it's not the schools in San Francisco and Austin
that are getting shot up, but the ones in parts of the country where
it has become fashionable again to embrace intolerance as a good thing.
But that's not an adequate explanation either.  So we can look at the
kid who's carrying major anger, who is viciously ostracized by jocks,
discovering that he can alleviate the taunting by projecting a hostile
and threatening image.  Quite a discovery, and one that many oppressed
groups have made.  That strategy can become a whole elaborated identity
through the resources of popular culture and the Internet.  So now the
anger goes underground and becomes organized.  Along come the realistic
video games that can be used to develop marksmanship while desensitizing
oneself to killing.  Those games are not innately bad -- they don't do
anything to a player who is basically healthy.  But, just like some of
the movies of Sylvester Stallone that feature the cold-blooded killing
of dozens of caricatured evil bad guys, they're useful to a person
who is looking to organize anger in a certain way.  And then you have
the easy access to guns -- not just regular guns, like the ones that
were commonplace a couple decades ago, but big military guns.  In each
case, a factor taken on its own doesn't nearly explain the phenonema.
And in each case, an interest group can say "hey, it's not our factor"
because other factors are required.  Civil libertarians such as myself,
for example, will keep you from censoring music that is plainly evil.
Others will do the same with the Internet, with guns, with intolerance
(quoth a media alert from the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, "Two
filthy fags slaughtered 13 people at Columbine High"), and even with
violence against children (vigorously promoted on religious radio).
What's the answer?  Well, the first half of the answer is not to stop
with "hey, it's not me".  And the second half of the answer starts with
listening to the kids, who will happily explain all of this to you.]

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE).
Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below.
You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use
the "redirect" command.  For information on RRE, including instructions
for (un)subscribing, see http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/rre.html
or send a message to requests@lists.gseis.ucla.edu with Subject: info rre
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 23:28:58 -0700
From: Devlin/Berk <armadill@ix.netcom.com>
To: Phil Agre <pagre@alpha.oac.ucla.edu>
Subject: Banning Black Trenchcoats is No Answer

Please consider publishing this...

==========================================================
The reactions (that I know about) at the public schools in my district to
the events at Columbine have been:

* At the high school, the student council declared Wednesday
blue-and-silver day -- every child was to wear either a blue or a silver
shirt.  One student wore his black trenchcoat instead.  His name was called
out over the loud speaker; he was summoned down to the Principal's Office,
where his trenchcoat was confiscated.  Then, the announcement was made that
there are to be no black trenchcoats worn at the high school and that
students should follow the student council's instructions.  The student I
spoke with said she thought the student who wore the black trenchcoat got
detention.  The order came down from some teachers -- mostly the Language
Arts teachers and some Geography teachers (that's where our students study
current events, in geography class), apparently -- that students should try
to not exclude anybody.

* A police car was stationed outside the middle school office.  Here, too,
students were to wear blue or silver shirts in solidarity with Columbine.
Ironic because our middle school kids don't HAVE blue shirts.  Solid blue
shirts and solid red shirts are banned at our middle school, because blue
is a gang color.  (I'm told a student was expelled from summer school
because she wore a blue sweatshirt.)  The middle school events board has
been left blank for several days now.  Parents of middle school students
I've spoken with theorize that Columbine provided the principal an excuse
to make sure that students and parents NOT know when/where meetings are
being held.  This week, the middle school is scheduled to hold an assembly
to reward the "well-behaved" kids.  If the school follows its standard
procedure, the list of the good kids will be posted on the office door for
all to see, the good kids will be marched out of their classes in front of
the "bad" kids and the school will pay $450 per showing for two shifts of
"good" kids to watch either lame nature specials or insipid films about
gang violence.  Parents won't have the opportunity to have their children
opt out.  The administrator has invited a reporter to attend this quarter's
reward assembly because a parent filed a complaint, hushed up by the
district office, that these assemblies unfairly discriminate against boys
and minorities.  

*  A letter from the district office dated April 21 was sent home with
students.  It listed the "Programs for Students" the district offers.
These include conflict resolution (we are not even given a phone number to
call; when I asked for the number at Site Council several months ago,
neither school administrator gave it to me), the counselors at the middle
school and high school (they are totally overworked; any time we call to
speak with them, we are told they deal exclusively with academic issues),
and of course a police liaison.  Same old, same old.  Satisfaction survey
says: more than 92.3% of middle school teachers say they have no time to
help individual students and 71.4% of middle school support staff there say
there are problems with racial and ethnic discord.  

* House lights and car lights were left on all weekend all over the
community, apparently in response to an Internet-based initiative forwarded
around by PTA-types.

Get real:

Requiring students to wear blue or silver or not to wear black trenchcoats
or leave lights on or turn lights off accomplishes nothing except to
alienate anyone intelligent enough to reject arbitrary rules.   

Clothes do not kill people, unless they unduly stop circulation.  Banning
black trenchcoats is not the solution.  Humiliating students who WEAR black
trenchcoats has already been tried, and, I believe, has been proven
ineffective.  

Books and philosophies and video games and rock music don't kill people.
They enunciate thoughts that disillusioned students are otherwise forbidden
to express.   

People and guns and explosives and other weapons and germs kill people.
Stupidity kills people.  Bullying kills people psychologically and then
they turn around and kill others physically and psychologically.  

Overemphasizing what people look like, what they wear, how they differ from
us externally, whether or not they can afford a car or a fancy bicycle, is
a tool of bullies.  And yet, these are the tools the public schools in our
district choose every time.

Here's a hint as to how to begin to address issues of student violence
without spending bunches of time or money:  At the (private) school my
daughter currently attends, the reaction to the events at Columbine was to
have a meeting with the students at which everyone said what they wanted to
say about the situation at Columbine and in the world.  Their reaction to
the situation in Kosovo was to begin an in-depth study of the geopolitical
causes of the conflict, starting before WWI.  

The solution is not to claim that "Our programs are perfect; it can't
happen here."  The solution is not to call in the Army, Navy, National
Guard, police or armed security guards.   The solution is not to ban
certain books, certain colors, certain symbols, certain words.  The
solution is not to detain, suspend or expel students who are different.
The solution is not to arm the teachers with weapons, but to arm them with
strategies.  The solution is to listen.

Wishing you reasoned discourse that leads to peaceful solutions to our
dilemmas,

Emily Berk