Home : United States : Editorials and Commentary
March 2001
The past month has seen more school shootings in predominantly wealthy white areas and more speculation about this seemingly "unexplainable" issue. Yet contrary to what the media purports and to what Bush and others would have us believe, these recent acts of violence do not go without cause and solutions. Indeed it is precisely the potential solutions that frighten those who are the most ardent in calling for action to address school shootings. The responsibility for these acts lays not merely with the misguided and alienated youths who pull the triggers but with the social system of which they are a product.
Three weeks after Charles "Andy" Williams walked into Santana High School in Santee, California and killed two students, injuring thirteen, there was another school shooting just minutes away in the same affluent school district. This time no one was killed but more of the same incidents and the fear surrounding them are sure to increase as the potential causes of the shootings go ignored.
14-year-old Andy Williams was "a small, skinny kid, who had been picked on and teased" at both a school he attended in South Carolina and Santana High which he had moved to less than a year ago. Coming from a broken home he was often taunted because of his size and appearance causing him to have a hard time fitting in at school. According to his friends, Andy had mentioned his plans prior to the shooting but none of them took him seriously.
Bullying and school violence are nothing new, rather it is the new social phenomenon of alienated and bullied youths taking their discontent out through homicidal violence which has caught the attention of the media and political opportunists. Besides the particular methods used by the youths, what causes even more outrage is that they are white and middle class- the segment of the population which was for a long time considered "safe" from the violence that pervades poorer communities.
As a result, schools in suburbs across the country have instituted what they call "precautionary measures" to help forestall future shootings. These measures often come in the form of banning book bags, arbitrary restrictions of movement, increased numbers of armed school cops, random searches, and the open solicitation of informers. All of these measures were in place following the Santana High incident but failed to stop a shooting from occurring at Granite Hill High School three weeks later. Following the Columbine shooting, one affluent suburban school south of Atlanta even called in a police sniper to set up across the street from the school to "keep watch". Although intended to prevent violence these efforts in turn breed a war-like atmosphere possibly provoking more violence while stamping out students’ democratic and privacy rights in the name of "security."
More so today than ever before, we as youth face relentless pressure to conform and "fit in" while being judged by our cars, our clothes, our athletic abilities, and our acceptance by the "in" clique. The structure of school itself, in which students have little power over the decisions that affect their daily lives and where teachers often promote a social hierarchy and selectiveness, contributes to the cut-throat, survival of the fittest environment which is the main source of many youths’ hopelessness and alienation. Along with material conformity we are pressured to accept commonly held ideas, behaviors, and beliefs causing "deviant" behavior and appearance to be viewed with utter contempt. Large groups of youths find themselves under the scrutiny of their peers and teachers and are unable to cope with the painful condition of not being able to compete in such a "Social Darwinist" atmosphere.
It is in high school, most especially around the age of 15 to 17, where these conditions, coupled with low self-confidence and a lack of personal identity drives many youths to acts of desperation. Therefore it is not surprising that the average age of all the school shooters in the last decade fell in this age bracket. Most of us who "don't fit in" typically find a counter-culture clique that we can identify with and in which we eventually come to find ourselves building our self-confidence. But some, fall to desperate forms of self-destruction - shooting up a school perhaps being only the most severe. The real victims of the school shootings may not be the innocent people who were randomly shot, killed, and wounded but those who pulled the trigger. For if they were included rather than being excluded from society, if they were taught that their life and that of others was sacred and valuable, if they discounted economic materialism and vanity as unworthy of their concern, they may have had a chance.
The answers to the problems of these alienated youths do not come by killing other students and teachers, rather they come with the realization that the problems we youths face have their root in the structure of capitalist society as a whole. It is that society which is the real enemy. Hope for the future and lasting progress will not and can never be obtained through individual acts of terrorism but only through collective action for revolutionary social change.