Ok, sorry everyone, but I just have to say this. It has been over a year and three months since Columbine- it’s time to get over the paranoid shit. I’m really tired of seeing these kids in middle and high school being suspended for the stupidest shit imaginable. One school suspended a kid for dying his hair blue, another kid suspended for refusing to take off his trench coat that he had been wearing even before Columbine? And now, adults are accusing kids of conspiracy for staying to themselves and being quiet? I was like that in school ever since seventh grade and even back then, I was accused of some rather trivial crap. Just because my opinion of everyone there leaves a little bit more to be desired, that doesn’t mean that I was going to go in and shoot them all up. Is everything so far gone now that there is no hope left for the school systems? There is a time to be worried but I think that now, we’re just taking it too far. When will enough be enough? Are we ever going to be able to trust the kids ever again? Any thoughts anyone?
Well, the shootings all happened in suburban, mostly white schools by white males. Me being a white male, smart, and not ultra-popular, have to deal with that all the time. It wears me down. Sometimes I actually feel like going postal just to shut these people up.
Paranoia in schools is one of the top 1000 things I hate about being a teen, right up there with preppy rich girls who shoplift.
I am a member of a newsgroup that discusses bullying, and a few months ago an email was directed my way regarding some new system that rewards kids for turning in students who are shy or introverted or sad. There’s a hotline they can call and from what I’ve heard kids who call in are rewarded with gifts. I will try to find the URL for this place.
I have to say I got out of high school just in time, as senior year was Columbine and people thought I might go shooting or bombing the place.
all the school paranoia stuff is really irritating- sometimes it’s worth it (there was a middle school around here where some seventh graders were threatening to shoot people or sumthin… supposedly they were really going to do it) and sometimes it’s not. There was a bomb threat at my high school the year after columbine (? maybe it was that year) and we had to waste like two or three hours out on the field while people searched all the classrooms and the lockers, and there was a bomb threat at another high school around here exactly one year after Columbine. Of course nothing happened in either one- i hate how a couple bad kids give everyone else our age a bad reputation.
My former high school–the public school with the most sense of community and acceptance in the county–recently got voted by the local TV station “the most likely Baltimore Co school for a school-shooting Columbine style”. Why? Because we have lots of freaks. You know why we have lots of freaks? Because they’re accepted at the school, and not harassed. Those SOBs at the TV station got more than one truly pissed off letter.
Sheesh! Iam, I have it at my school! It’s in affiliation with crimestoppers. Supposedly anonymous phoneline. If the student (who was reported) is disciplined then the “case” goes to a board of students. They decide, based on the crime or whatever, how much MONEY to give the person who called it in. The person is given a number to keep it anonymous, supposedly. I was opposed to it from the very beginning. They give people MONEY for turning in other people. I have my predictions that it will be pranked. Many, many times. Not by me. No.
Seriously, the above comments COULD probably get me suspended (threatening to prank the phoneline). It’s sad, really.
Yup, that’s what I’m talking about. If this isn’t an attempt to mainstream everyone, I truly don’t know what is . . . people are allowed to be different, folks! It’s even . . . gasp healthy! We thrive on it if we’re not close-minded bastards!
Gosh . . . think about it. Someone who wants to be left alone. Yup. There must be something wrong with that. :wally
I am so glad I went to private school. A small private school where all us freaks could join together in our communal freakiness. Hell… even our teachers were freaks and rejects when they were in high school. I don’t know what I’m going to do at college.
When there are police and metal detectors in schools I suspect there is a problem.
We send our kids to a private Christian school although Lola and I are Agnostics. They get the highest level of instruction and get to learn in a safe environment. The school only teaches to the ninth grade so after that they will go to a boarding school a little ways from here. We won’t be putting them into a big city high school with 1500 students that’s for sure.
See, that’s the thing–public schools don’t have to be like this. I know–I went to a public school that was the exception. I received a first-rate education in a safe, accepting community, completely for free and without religious affiliation or whatnot. There were a few other good high schools around too…arrghhh! It makes me want to smack these people around some and say, “fix your damn school system, and you won’t have these sorts of problems”…
People in high school that are popular don’t embrace individuality, and most of them are sheep herded by the pop culture out there. I’m considered odd by most of the people I go to school with, but for some reason I end up getting more “followers” than people who will ridicule me for anything I do. I guess it’s the personality I have. [Some describe me as charismatic in personality.] Watching closely those who don’t fit in will make them more likely to do something stupid. It’s silly that they think the ones who aren’t sheep will do something and that sheep won’t. Wake up, anyone can do something like Columbine, but most of us won’t. Don’t police people who aren’t making problems or threats.
A guy who goes to my school came here because he got expelled from his home school. Here’s how it went down:
PreColombine, Darryl was one of 4 students in his school to wear a black trench coat. He was the ONLY black student, and the ONLY underclassman, to do so.
PostColombine, he wisely left the coat at home. Unfortunately, the principal remembered he had one.
He was expelled the first day back to school after the shootings. Apparently, they decided that out of their school’s “trenchcoat mafia” of 4, the black siphomore was the most dangerous.
I go to a school where I don’t have to worry about metal detectors or locker searches or guards or dogs. I get my education in safe classrooms, often with about 15 kids per classroom. I can come to my teachers and administrators with problems, and they not only know who the hell I am, they are able to help me. I am not a face in a sea of students - there are less than 200 students in my entire high school, grades 9-12. I am not traumatized, I am not reviled. I don’t have many friends, but I have some, and the rest either ignore me or are relatively polite. It does have its problems. We have two gymnasiums, and few art classes. Not nearly enough attention is paid to the arts, but that is changing. I have not always been accepted, but my worst year was 8th grade, the first year, and middle school’s always worse.
What’s the price for such an education?
$10,000 a year. For a private education. Luckily, my parents can afford it. Most can’t, and send their children to the public schools. To the trenches.
We must change our schools. I just wish change came quickly and easily.