Klarinet Archive - Posting 000217.txt from 2001/02

From: "Jim Hobby" <jhobby@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] chaos being sold for freedom...
Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2001 11:47:23 -0500

I remember saying, after the Columbine shootings, that I wondered what "the
system" expects, when they won't deal with the bullying & harassing that the
killers underwent. (No, I don't condone or forgive what they did.) I
simply understand it. Because like you, I was the one who was bullied in
school. For me, it didn't make me turn to violence. By high school, I had
learned enough that I could call the bullies several four letter-ords, and
as long as I did it in four-sylable words, I had the chance to make my safe
escape while they tried to figure out if I had insulted them. <g>

A somewhat less-well-known school shooting (although broadcast completely on
Court TV) is Tennessee versus Rouse & Abbot. The shooting was at Richland
High School, in Giles County, Tennessee. I'm terribly familiar with that
case, since I was called the morning of the shooting to go to the school and
start taking statements from the (hysterical) student and teacher witnesses
(a most unpleasant experience) and then served as the court reporter for all
of the hearings through the trials of the defendants.

I have maintained that had Richland had a band that at least one of the two
likely wouldn't have been involved in the shooting. He had recently (a
couple of years) transfered from a school in Michigan and was, I understand,
a pretty good flutist. Richland had no music program. He became close
friends with the Rouse boy, who was the textbook "disturbed" youth. It's
even possible that had Abbot been in band, Rouse would have had no one with
whom to "conspire." (These comments are based on the evidence; not
necessarily my opinion of the State's case.) BTW, Richland has since
started a band!

Unfortunately, the problem is having personal ramifications for my family.
My daughter, her husband, and three children moved in with me some six
months ago. The boys, in high school, are fine. My granddaughter, age 11,
is having a terrible problem with a bully-boy in her class. Little physical
interaction but some verbal attacks that would have a film of the situation
rated "R". He happens to be the progeny of a socially-prominent and
politally active family. Neither the teacher nor the guidance counselor
seem to be able (willing?) to deal with it. Her brothers want to go "take
care of the problem," which of course we have absolutely forbidden. If the
system doesn't do something positive about the problem, I guess I'll have to
do what I don't want to: Sue the school for allowing a hostile school
environment to continue. I suppose as distasteful as it is, it's better
that the alternative.

Jim Hobby

>From: "Kenneth Wolman" <kwolman@-----.com>

>I submit it goes a bit beyond parents being afraid to discipline their own
>children. This will sound horrible, but the worst legacy of the Columbine
>massacre almost two years ago was that it shifted the protection of the
>school and justice system away from the victim and over to the
>victimizer...because those two kids who went on that horrific rampage that
>morning in that high school in Littleton were, let us remember, bullied and
>harrassed long before they prepared that terrible revenge. As a former
>victim of school bullies in the so-called Kindler and Gentler 1950s, the
>age of "Happy Days" and other such TV crap, I will admit that when the news
>broke, I understood all too well what might have gone through those kids'
>heads because something like it also had gone through mine. I consider
>myself blessed that I did not have the means, the companion in misery, or
>the final snap into insanity that would have allowed me to act out on that
>desire to avenge myself. The misfits I had for company were into music,
>not guns; and those little squiggles on the page probably contributed to
>saving my life.
[snip]

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