My heart goes out to everyone affected by the Virginia Tech Tragedy. I have started this Blog in the shadows of this tragedy. First, let’s take a deep breath and express our deepest sorrow and condolences to those who grieve those who were murdered and hospitalized. Second, we need to make sure that those most affected -- include the wounded and the grieving -- receive the most effective, evidence-based assistance that is available as soon as possible. Third, those most affected deserve to be protected from any and all exposure to “help” that is iatrogenic: Help that may cause more harm; that does not pass the “first do no harm” test. Fourth, those affected because of their compassion, empathy, and concern for the “victims” must be considered and respected. These people are valuable resources. Often, however, these “secondary victims” suffer in silence and need the love an attention of others to enable them to continue their support. Otherwise, they are unable to continue their support at a time that it is vitally needed for those most affected.
I will share what I know about human reactions to traumatic events. This is a tragedy that provides opportunities to learn about human responses to traumatic events – both immediate and long term. Post your questions here and I will answer them. Post your own personal experiences and what you would like to know or what you have learned so far from them.
Charles R. Figley, Ph.D.
http://mailer.fsu.edu/~cfigley/
21 comments:
Great that you took this event to blog--I hope you and the community around you takes into consideration the content and impact of mass mediates violence in entertainment and news.
See my initial thoughts on this at
http://www.reflectivepundit.com/reflectivepundit/2007/04/virginia_tech_s.html
I hope that VA Tech has a multitude of people who are trained as Traumatologists and Compassion Fatigue Therapists. The ripple effect will be huge from the events today.
janh-fi--
yes--I am neither a traumatologist or fatigue therapist but rather a political scientist mostly interested in the interconnections between various forms of violence and mass media content. It seems to me that we have to work across various disciplines to find, hopefully, solutions to this problem
Hello Charles:
Would you let us know if trained, licensed mental health personnel are needed.
Thanks and regards,
Dr. Richard Levenson
Dr. Figley, As I had first hand experience today I can tell you that it was awful. But the police and administration have done a fabulous job at keeping as many people as they can safe. It only took 10-15 minutes to lock down the entire campus. Although I am no longer qualified as a traumatologist or Compassion Fatique Therapist I do offer whatever assistance that you all may need in regards to administration from here. I'm sure we will all need it. Please keep Blacksburg in your prayers! Our quiet, little town is grieving. Kim
The students and families of all affected are in my prayers constantly; although my Field Traumatology and Compassion Fatigue training are a bit rusty, I would be happy to go and help if there is a need! These are such vulnerable, yet I'm sure very strong people.
Thank you!
Sharon, Tampa
My prayers go out to the VA family. The impact of the events will have a lasting effect on our nation. I offer my skills as a social worker/chaplain/pastor to people in South Carolina who are need of spiritual support.
Hello all,
Go to www.greencross.org if you would like to help in some way.
Charles
Chuck...
Just when I thought things couldn't get sadder in this world...all those children...all of that pain being suffered by their families and friends! I'm angry that it happened, I'm angry that the perpetrator was able to kill himself to avoid our scorn and our retribution...the benefits of suicide by police!
I'm especially angry that our society has evolved to a point that this type of thing can continue to happen to our children: Gunman on the campuses, sexual predators preying on our children by the droves, our corporations involved in sweat-shop child-labor forces over-seas, the embellishment of violence in all mass media forms, to include music, movies, and video games. This all mixed in with a healthy dose of disrespect of and for women, and also all of those who don't approve of such horrendous and repugnant values.
Amazingly to me; all of this comes without serious objection from society in general. Something is badly broken and rotting, it seems to me. I personally believe that it is this obvious desensitization process that is taking place on our society that is a primary causal factor at the root of this tragedy of heretofore unequalled proportions.
It appears to be perpetrated in the name of political power and corporate profit...and media ratings. This desensitization of our American cultural conscience and civility is what I believe to be at the root of this; not the choice of weapons used. Weapons apply to method, psyche applies to motive, and most often; anger applies to direct action. Society needs to start keeping it's eye on the ball, if there is ever to be any hope of this kind of thing truly not ever happening again.
That is why I was so stoked to find this notice about your new blog in my e-mail, this a.m. In it, you draw-down on the most commonly evolved oversights that occur in these situations; lack of sensitivity to the secondary and tertiary victims about potentially tramatic subject matter and modes of intervention.
This kind of thinking, versus the crude, rude, and too often undocumented sensationalism of the mass media, is a sorely needed social imperative of geometric proportions. It is just the stuff that reality is made of. A reality, in my humble opinion, that says that American society needs to refocus its social perspective to one that is born of compassion, mutual respect, empathy, tangible mutual support vs verbal pandering, guided by unity of American societal purpose and direction.
Blogs seem to provide a premium opportunity to address this incredible social disparity of thought. They are also a great tool for venting our frustration and our pain, as well as our resolve. They are a powerful tool for bringing about quick awareness to the grassroots. So, Chuck, thanks for the opportunity and the medium to vent my feelings on this terrible American tragedy.
Meanwhile,the media blathers on and on 24/7, without regard for the psychic and socially debilitating effect they might be having on their audience, which is made up of all of electronically invested society these days. After all; ratings is the real priority for them, not the pain that brings our tears. Ratings sells ads.
Thanks again...
Bill Wilder
www.vetspeak.org
Do you have any thoughts on what a mother of a 14-year-old can do to help him process such tragedy?
Digression: I'm reminded (though times and context were different) of being that same age and learning via TV of the KSU shootings (my sister was a student there at the time).
As a college writing teacher and counseling student, I share the concern that--at large--there seems little understanding on how to transmute rage and a general naivety of how emotional abuse, hate, and violence run on a continuum. The Virginia Tech tragedy, recent shootings in Amish country, and Columbine paint a bleak picture.
We are 2nd and 3rd generation of Holocaust survivors on one side. My parents came here so hopeful. I worry for the young and for my own aging population.
I pass on my thoughts and prayers to all who have been affected by this tragedy, and my thanks to all who give of themselves to enhance the healing of others.
The horror that happened Monday at VT is overwhelming. For those of us who understand the longterm effects of a traumatic event, we know this is only the beginning. Today I saw a representative of VT stating that the students needed "hugs" and to be with family. I am all for "hugs", hugs are great. Family is a major part of many of our support systems, and I am all for family support. However, I have never found hugs or family support to mitigate the longterm affects of traumatic experience. We do know that processing a traumatic event with others who experienced the same traumatic event will help to normalize the very normal reactions to a very abnormal event. I am afraid that the 'bury your head in sand technique' and hopefully everything will go back to normal has not worked in the past and I would venture a guess that it will not be effective this time either. The students at VT will most likely just drop out as the grades slip, academics become impossible and substances are used to ease the symptoms. This could be avoided with the proper interventions, conducted by appropriately trained professionals. I am disturbed by the powers that be turning to people who know little about trauma, and not utilizing the many resources and professional groups who specifically deal with trauma. Dr Phil? when did he get his trauma certifications? I actually heard a psychologist on the radio discussing this event in terms of serial killers. Serial killers? There is so much confusion, and so many untrained trauma psychologists / mental health people making stupid statements that we trained professionals must take a stand. I will be contacting university, public school, media and polictical officals to start making this a point. If we have specially trained people to deal with unusually traumatic events and we do not use that resource - it seems neglegent at the least and unethical for those in the field to be professing to be something they are not. I am also concerned every time I see another mental health professional or psychologist say "look how resilient they are". - AAAHHHHHH! They are in shock! It is a tragic event, which will have a negative impact on so many for years to come.
Thanks everyone for writing. Keep it up!
Just Checking Up on You
My daughter, Laura, called me tonight. She is a senior at FSU where I have been a faculty member most of her life. Laura explained, after exchanging various small talk that she “…called to just check up on me.” I was touched by her concern and said so. After the conversation was over, it hit me: I AM affected by this tragedy.
Hours earlier my Ph.D. student noted that I sounded “stressed” in the message left on his voice mail. An hour before I was asked by a local reporter, “how are YOU doing?”
My answer to that question was my initial clue that I was far more affected by the VT shootings than nearly any traumatic event in my lifetime. It was confirmed by Laura’s call. I had fooled my wife and myself, but not everyone. After all, this was perhaps the 50th traumatic event in which I had or may have some role to play in the recovery. My books, chapters, and articles are filled with stories and research about the immediate and long-term psychosocial effects of trauma.
So, I say now that I am far less objective about this event than others. I now recognized that I am affected more because real professors and real college students died in their classroom. For the grace of God go I. I have known so many troubled college students. None were as troubled as the shooter.
As I listened this week to the interviews with student at VT with one realization: They and I both knew that they could have died rather than be a witness to horror. They are not unlike war veterans. They will live for the rest of their lives that they were THAT close to death. I looked into the eyes of these VT students and found that they were so similar to the eyes of my student: Bright, earnest, passionate, kind, caring young people who deserve to live and thrive.
Though not as objective, perhaps I will have far more useful insights into examining this terrible event. The two interviews today with journalists, one local and the other international (Ireland) provided some insight into my insights. Here are a few observations:
1. I am very optimistic about the VT community’s resilience. I predicted in both interviews that there would be few cases of PTSD and other mental health problems.
2. There are at least four reasons why I expect that these VT community members will bounce back fully and may lead the way in understanding trauma and its wake and how to promote full and inspiriting recoveries.
3. The first reason is that VT will spring back is that this tragedy happened within and to a large, intact community that has healing power though its mutual support and protection.
4. The second reason VT will spring back is the level of maturity, sophistication, intelligence, and sense of humor of those most affected, the survivors.
5. The third reasons VT will spring back is the extraordinary resources and show of support from the Blacksburg community, the Commonwealth of Virginia, the US, and the world made known through media attention, electronic communication, and pass along through and from family and friends.
6. The fourth reason VT will spring back is their sense of responsibility to the above supporters to demonstrate their resilience – sometimes far beyond what they are feeling at the time. Sometimes heroes don’t feel heroic. They all know we need them to come through this in tact with head held high because we will sleep better at night.
How do I know for sure? I don’t. It’s my best bet based on my 30+ years of working with trauma survivors and knowing the college community.
God Bless VT,
C
Dr. Figley,
Thank you for your efforts to help the VT students. If I am this shocked and anguished over the incident merely from being in Virginia at the time, imagine the students attending the university's reactions?
I've been contacted by the New York Times for an interview regarding my work at Wikipedia maintaining the article for the VT incident. I will be sure to mention you and the green cross when I do talk with him.
I also urge others on this blog not to jump to conclusions. Already, I see bn1, and windbender blaming the situation on violent media. At this point in time, there is no indication that the shooter was in any way affected by this, yet people are already jumping to conclusions. This hurts those of us, including myself, who work in the media entertainment industry (personally, I design video games, some of them violent). Let's not jump to conclusions before we have the strong data and conclusive evidence to support them, otherwise we become no better than pundits like Jack Thompson and Al Sharpton.
-Dan Rosenthal
Juris Doctor candidate,
American University, Washington College of Law.
I'm sorry, SWAT. I must have not articulated my point very well, when I wrote: "I'm especially angry that our society has evolved to a point that this type of thing can continue to happen to our children: Gunman on the campuses, sexual predators preying on our children by the droves, our corporations involved in sweat-shop child-labor forces over-seas, the embellishment of violence in all mass media forms, to include music, movies, and video games. This all mixed in with a healthy dose of disrespect of and for women, and also all of those who don't approve of such horrendous and repugnant values...". Here is some clarification, in the spirit of enlightenment.
In my mind, I certainly wasn't "blaming" the "situation" at Virginia Tech on a "violent media" with my blog comment. In fact, I didn't mention "blame" for anybody in particular in this "situation", in my post. In fact, I guess I spread it around over a very broad spectrum. My only mention of the pathetic perpetrator was that I was angry that he managed to escape facing legal retribution for his despicable crimes...and they were indeed despicable crimes; savage crimes against the victims and their families; debilitating crimes against the psyche of a society currently inundated in overwhelming stressors.
I was actually attempting to state my dissappointment that we are even having to have this debate in our society, again. As I stated in my post; "I personally believe that it is what I consider to be an obvious de-sensitization process that is taking place with-in our society that is a primary causal factor at the root of this tragedy of heretofore un-equalled proportions." No mention of blaming guns, gun owner-ship, or the perpetrator to be found in this statement. Those particular factors are all simply manifestations of what I perceive the bigger problem to be.
I was simply trying to point out what appears to me to be the media's (in all of it's manifestations...) seemingly irresponsible and un-caring contributions to the over-all social process, all for the sake of profit and ratings. It seems to be carrying forward without consideration of the potential for psychic damage not only in individuals, but in society as a whole. A de-sensitizing to what I consider to be the the primary causal factors of this type of behavior is the specific damage that I refer to in the paragraph above.
The types of behavior that I'm referring to? It is the common behavior of social and political incivility, disrespect for legitimate authority, disrespect for women of all races, racism, and culturalism...in fact; disrespect rather than civil and respectful discourse for anyone who doesn't agree with our particular point of view.
I see this type of behavior as societally harmful and unproductive...not to mention; unacceptable. Sadly, this de-sensitization process by the various medias is chillingly real, and it doesn't appear to me to be very conducive to developing workable solutions for preventing this kind of thing from happening again. As we all seek answers; it is my belief as a student of human behavioral sciences, that this de-sensitizing process should be a primary factor of consideration by the-powers-that-be into what fosters an enviornment that is conducive to these horrific incidents of aberrant behavior.
I have no agenda in my posting, other than to point out that it is my considered observation that events such as these are classic examples of how society has had their eyes taken off the ball of what is truly the path to a better way and quality of life for us all than what we presently enjoy. This is currently exemplified by the dynamics of the Virginia Tech massacre of innocent students and faculty.
Nor do I believe that anyone or any entity should be promoting their organizational or idealistic agendas, at the expense of our once again missing an opportunity to really begin healing our national psyche, and thereby eleminating these types of aberrations from ever occuring to our children, again. The children are, after-all, our greatest responsibility and our greatest treasure, and not just a profitible target market group.
I don't even begin to pretend to know what was in the mind of the shooter. To my way of thinking; he and his actions are manifestations of the problem, not the problem itself. Whatever was on his mind, I believe, was there as a result of the world as he saw it. A world that we seriously need to change if we are to prevent it from happening again, and again...
Bill Wilder
www.vetspeak.org
I cannot find information at www.greencross.org on how to help with this...I worked with college interns from Claremont CA today and this really hit home at last.
I am wondering if those of us who are trained and licensed could setup "pen pal" relationshps with Vt students who need counseling? Just a thought as to how we can be available...
Virginia Tech: Is the Scene of the Crime the Cause of the Crime?
By Mark Ames, AlterNet
Posted on April 20, 2007, Printed on April 21, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/50758/
Another rampage massacre, this time the worst ever. Which means another fake attempt at trying to understand this uniquely American crime -- these interminable rage killing sprees in our workplaces and our schoolyards.
What makes the Virginia Tech massacre more horrifying isn't just the body count but the reaction of the living: The official fake soul-searching is more idiotic than ever, revealing, if anything, a culture that is so insanely delusional and incapable of self-reflection that it almost makes these rampage massacres seem relatively natural.
The footage from Seung-Hui's "media manifesto" has played on cable news on an endless loop for days now, and no one has considered the merits of his grievances -- except to cast them as proof positive that Cho Seung-Hui was one sick guy.
Of all the idiotic reactions, so far none tops an article posted on MSNBC.com, written by an "investigative reporter" with the ill-begotten name of "Bill Dedman." His investigation allegedly revealed that Cho Seung-Hui, the shooter, displayed alleged classic warning signs of a rampage shooting. Citing a landmark Secret Service study of schoolyard rampage massacre, Dedman observed, "In more than three out of four school shootings, the attacker had made no threat against the schoolteachers or students. But most attackers engaged in some behavior prior to the incident that caused others concern or indicated a need for help. The attackers posed a threat even though they hadn't made a threat."
In other words, if you think someone's weird, but he hasn't threatened anyone, he's a threat.
There are two very serious flaws in Dedman's investigation. First, if the profile of a schoolyard rampager is someone who doesn't threaten anyone but who raises suspicions, then America will have to open up a new GULAG archipelago to hold all of the millions of kids who fit this description. But the second flaw is even more serious: the Secret Service study Dedman cites draws exactly the opposite conclusion: There is no way to profile a potential schoolyard killer. That was what was so shocking about the report. Everyone who has studied these rage massacres knows it. Everyone but journalists like Dedman, that is.
What Dedman's article reveals isn't just the sloppy work of a typical mainstream hack but, rather, of a culture desperate for an easy explanation for the massacre -- one that doesn't implicate it in the crime.
It is is far more difficult to deal with the possibility that other factors may have led to the massacre, factors that are still too painful and close to us to consider. For example, how was this nerdy South Korean immigrant treated at his suburban high school and at Virginia Tech? What is the campus life like? What was it about Virginia Tech that made it the setting for the first student-on-student college massacre? And why were there copycat threats at campuses across Middle America over the following days?
Consider the recent history of schoolyard massacres in America, and you'll see why I ask those questions.
Schoolyard shootings got their start in small-town America, making their appearance in 1996. The white, suburban middle-class massacres that Columbine popularized got their start in rural towns like Moses Lake, Wash., West Paducah, Ky., and Jonesboro, Ark.
True, there had already been schoolyard shootings. In Kentucky alone, there were two that occurred before the Paducah massacre, one in Carter County in 1993 and another in Union in 1994. What was new about these modern school rampage shootings was that they caught on and found sympathy with a broader audience.
Never before had people considered that a schoolyard massacre could happen at any white middle-class suburban high school in America. But through the Moses Lake-Paducah-Jonesboro rage massacres, this new phenomenon entered the collective adolescent conscious. They provided a new context for something already felt, already brewing, but not yet expressed.
In his book "No Easy Answer," Brooks Brown, a former Columbine student and childhood friend of one of the Columbine killers, explained how the rage rebellion context reached his school:
The end of my junior year (1998), school shootings were making their way into the news. The first one I heard about was in 1997, when Luke Woodham killed two students and wounded seven others in Pearl, Miss. Two months later, in West Paducah, Ky., Michael Carneal killed three students at a high school prayer service. ...
Violence had plagued inner-city schools for some time, but these shootings marked its first real appearance in primarily white, middle- to upper-middle-class suburbs. ...
When we talked in class about the shootings, kids would make jokes about how "it was going to happen at Columbine next." They would say that Columbine was absolutely primed for it because of the bullying and the hate that were so prevalent at our school.
There are good reasons why the rage craze started in small-town America and moved to the big cities. First of all, rural Americans are a little less conditioned and a little wilder than their highly socialized counterparts on the coasts.
In coastal or big-town white America, if you are a failure, you are more inclined to imagine that it is your fault, that it is some kind of cosmic judgment on your innate base nature. You might accept it more passively, suck it up more, or just quietly end it in your garage with a garden hose and the idle running. But well before you'd snap in suburban California, you'd be giving it your 110 percent over and over and over, constantly convincing yourself and those around you of your optimism and determination, always being positive and trying to make sure that everyone thinks you're just swell. There is no room for eccentric behavior in coastal suburban America -- unless it's the kind of eccentric behavior that's already considered cool in a recognizably safe way.
In rural America, expectations are different. However, the "shootin' the bastards up who done you wrong" solution has a long tradition, and doesn't seem as bizarre a response to injustice as coastal America's cheerful slavishness.
What was significant about these rage murders wasn't that they started in rural America but that they spread to mainstream America. Not that this hasn't ever happened. Other cultural trends, such as in arts and in language, often percolate "upward" from the rural lower-middle class to the wider middle class.
The schoolyard shootings in Pearl, Paducah and Jonesboro in 1997 might have seemed little more than isolated incidents if they didn't already have a context in the office massacres that had been leaving behind blood-spattered workplace corpses for over a decade. The three schoolyard shootings happened one after another, creating a snowball effect that helped propel the schoolyard massacre coastward and into cities, to Pennsylvania and Oregon, and later, of course, to Columbine High in Littleton, Colo.
One way of wrongly interpreting this pattern was to attribute the crime's spread to "copycat" behavior, rehashing the ol' kindergarten question "Would you jump off a bridge if Johnny did?" This fatuous explanation allows observers to write off a profound crime with a simple catchphrase. After reading a newspaper article about a schoolyard shooting in Mississippi, some upper-middle-class suburban goth-brat decides, "Hey, I wanna be just like that hick! I'm going to murder and destroy my life so that maybe one day a hick I don't know will think I'm cool!" You have to willfully forget how you thought or felt as a kid -- what your references consisted of, where you drew your borders -- to accept an explanation as intellectually lazy and convenient as the copycat-made-him-do-it account.
In fact, many schoolyard shooters very consciously saw their massacres as rebellions, however poorly expressed or thought through. Michael Carneal, who slaughtered three students in a high school prayer class in West Paducah, was found to have downloaded the Unabomber's manifesto as well as something called "The School Stopper's Textbook: A Guide to Disruptive Revolutionary Tactics; Revised Edition for Junior High/High School Dissidents," which calls on students to resist schools' attempts to mold students and enforce conformity. The preface starts off, "Liberate your life -- smash your school! The public schools are slowly killing every kid in them, stifling their creativity and individuality, making them into nonpersons. If you are a victim of this, one of the things you can do is fight back." Many of Carneal's school essays resembled the Unabomber manifesto. He had been bullied and brutalized, called "gay" and a "faggot." He hated the cruelty and moral hypocrisy of so-called normal society and the popular crowd. Rather than just complain about it all the time like the Goths he befriended, he decided to act.
And now that the media has started digging up the early life of Cho Seung-Hui, the same pattern emerges. Former classmates of Seung-Hui say he "was pushed around and laughed at as a schoolboy" because of his "shyness and the strange, mumbly way he talked":
Chris Davids, a Virginia Tech senior who graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va. [with Seung-Hui] ... recalled that the South Korean immigrant almost never opened his mouth and would ignore attempts to strike up a conversation. Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho's turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled. Finally, after the teacher threatened him with an F for participation, Cho started to read in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth," Davids said. "As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, 'Go back to China.'"
Luke Woodham, the high school killer in Pearl, Miss., whose murder spree preceded Carneal's by two months, was even more explicit in his rebellion. Minutes before starting his schoolyard rampage, Woodham handed his manifesto to a friend, along with a will. "I am not insane," he wrote. "I am angry. I killed because people like me are mistreated every day. I did this to show society, push us and we will push back. ... All throughout my life, I was ridiculed, always beaten, always hated. Can you, society, truly blame me for what I do? Yes, you will. ... It was not a cry for attention, it was not a cry for help. It was a scream in sheer agony saying that if you can't pry your eyes open, if I can't do it through pacifism, if I can't show you through the displaying of intelligence, then I will do it with a bullet."
The Columbine killers openly declared that their planned massacre was intended to ignite a nationwide uprising. "We're going to kick-start a revolution, a revolution of the dispossessed!" Eric Harris said in a video diary he made before the killings. "I want to leave a lasting impression on the world," he added in another entry. And they certainly did leave an impression, including on Cho Seung-Hui, who referred to "martyrs like Eric and Dylan" in his "multimedia manifesto."
If the immediate goal of an armed uprising is to spark wider sympathy and a wider rebellion, then many of these rage uprisings have succeeded.
One of the most troubling and censored aspects of schoolyard massacres is how popular they are with a huge number of kids -- witness the threats issued the day after Cho Seung-Hui's Virginia Tech massacre to the campuses of University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, St. Edward's in Austin, Texas, and two high schools in southeastern Louisiana.
The popularity of the Columbine massacre helped spawn several more schoolyard shootings and untold numbers of school-massacre plots, many of which were uncovered, and many of which were the inventions of paranoid adults.
"They said specifically it would be bigger than Columbine," New Bedford Police Chief Arthur Kelly said." -- Associated Press, "New Bedford police say they foiled Columbine-like plot," Nov. 24, 2001
Across America, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris became anti-heroes in the aftermath of their school shooting. In a Rocky Mountain News article titled "Surfers Worship Heroes of Hate," dated Feb. 6, 2000, the journalist details the mass popularity of the Columbine killers: "They made hate-filled videotapes about the day the deed they were planning would make them cult heroes. Now, they appear to have gotten what they wanted -- at least online." The article goes on to quote some of the message boards devoted to Klebold and Harris:
In a Yahoo! club devoted to the killers, a 15-year-old Elizabeth, N.J., girl writes: "They are really my heroes. They are in a way gods ... since I don't believe in 'GOD' or any of that other crap that goes along with it. They are the closest thing we can get to it, and I think they are good at it. They stood up for what they believe in, and they actually did something about it."
A 14-year-old Toronto girl is also cited as belonging to 20 (!) online fan clubs devoted to Klebold and Harris. The point of the article is that the Internet shows just how sick our kids are. It does not consider the possibility that maybe the kids aren't simply evil but have valid reasons for making Klebold and Harris into heroes. Perhaps they are considered heroes for valid reasons, and the Net allows us easier access into the unofficial truth.
The reason Klebold and Harris's hero status is expressed online is obvious: It's the one place where you can exchange ideas with a reasonable hope of maintaining anonymity.
Initially it was thought that Columbine's Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were drug-addled dropouts, Nazi-enthused homosexuals, children of broken homes, Goth-geeks, Trench Coat Mafiosi, Internet/video game freaks or Marilyn Manson goons. But the truth was far more commonplace, and that's what was so disturbing about their massacre. Both came from two-parent homes, both loved their parents and both were highly intelligent but erratic students. They weren't Nazis or drug addicts. They weren't Goths, Trench Coat Mafiosi, or Marilyn Manson fiends; they weren't even gay, as some had theorized.
The Secret Service report MSNBC reporter Bill Dedman incorrectly cited was an exhaustive -- and failed -- attempt to profile school rage murderers. Some schoolyard shooters were honors students, some were bad students; some were geeks, some were fairly popular; and some were anti-social, others seemed to be easy-going and "not at all the type." Some have been girls, a fact strangely overlooked by most. Like their rage counterparts in the adult world, school shooters could be literally any kid except perhaps those who belonged to the popular crowd, the school's version of the executive/shareholding class. That is to say, about 90 percent of each suburban school's student body is a possible suspect.
And once again, I believe this at the very least suggests that the source of these rampages must be the environment that creates them, not the killers themselves. And by environment I don't mean something as vague as society but rather the schools and the people they shoot and bomb.
It isn't the schoolyard shooters who need to be profiled -- they can't be. It is the schools that need to be profiled.
A list should be drawn up of the characteristics and warning signs of a school ripe for massacre:
• complaints about bullying go unpunished by an administration that supports the cruel social structure;
• antiseptic corridors and overhead fluorescent lights reminiscent of mid-sized city airport;
• rampant moral hypocrisy that promotes the most two-faced, mean, and shallow students to the top of the pecking order; and
• maximally stressed parents who push their kids to achieve higher and higher scores.
Schoolyard shootings are too shocking and subversive to forget. They remind us that we were just as miserable as kids as we are as adult workers. In fact, the similarities between the two, the continuity of misery and entrapment from school to office, become depressingly clear when you study the two settings in the context of these murders. Even physically, they look alike and warp the mind in similar ways: the overhead fluorescent lights, the economies-of-scale industrial carpeting and linoleum floors, the stench of cleaning chemicals in the restrooms, the same stalls with the same latches and the same metal toilet paper holders ... Then, after work or school, you go home to your suburb, where no one talks to each other and no one looks at each other, and where everyone, even the whitest-bread cul-de-sac neighbor is a suspected pedophile, making child leashes a requirement and high-tech security systems a given.
If you consider it this way, it means our entire lives, except perhaps college -- and Cho Seung-Hui reminds us that college can be hell for some people as well -- and that one summer backpacking around Europe are unbearably awful. As if our entire wretched script was designed for someone else's benefit. This is too much to handle. So the inescapable suspicion that suburban schools cause murder rampages is rejected with unrestrained hysteria -- and so it will be with college campuses in the public discussion about how to prevent more "Virginia Techs."
Blame is hurriedly focused on the murderer, rather than on the environment. A typical example is an op-ed piece written by Joanne Jacobs for the San Jose Mercury News, published exactly eight months after the Columbine massacre, in which she tried to reassure herself and her readers that, "Evil, not rage, drove these killers." I emphasize her quote because it's one of the most revealing yet widely held explanations among contemporary Americans.
When you use a word as inherently meaningless as "evil" to describe something as complex and resonant as Columbine or Virginia Tech, you are desperately trying to recover the amnesia that once protected you and told you how blissful and innocent your own school years were. The fact is that the schoolyard shooters were clear about their intentions: They wanted to "pry your eyes open." But sometimes we don't like what our eyes see; in fact, we refuse to believe what they see. You'd need to use "Clockwork Orange" eye-tweezers on someone like Joanne Jacobs to make her face this unpleasant fact. Blaming "evil" has worked wonders for President Bush in Iraq, and it's working wonders for Americans in understanding and stopping these massacres.
If you pull back and rethink how you view these rampage massacres -- if you can accept that the schools and offices are what provoke these massacres, just as poverty and racism create their own violent crimes, or slavery created slave violence and rebellions, then you have to accept that on some level the school and office shootings are logical outcomes and perhaps even justified responses to an intolerable condition that we can't yet put our fingers on.
Justified, that is, if you look at these crimes from a future historian's point of view. Imagine a historian 100 years from now, with no emotional investment in our contemporary culture, looking back on how we live today, and thinking to himself, "My god, how could those poor wretches cope with such hell?" It doesn't take a time machine to think this way. Unofficially, today a lot of people look at these murders as justified, as some kind of vindication. Sympathy is all over the Web. It's revealed in black humor, in "wage slave" T-shirts and in the success of movies like "Office Space" and "Fight Club." It's revealed anywhere it can safely be expressed.
Mark Ames is editor of the eXile, a Moscow English alt weekly. He is the author of "Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond," from which a portion of this text is adapted.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/50758
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Er, that ALERT not ACTIVE. Upper right hand corner.
maria . . . maybe this site will offer some assistance, good links -
http://www.vahealth.org/
civp/educator/schoolviolence.asp
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