A G O N Y

Doesn't exist any more.

CNN Story

Six girls at a rural high school were charged with homicide conspiracy after their principal found a list of 300 names and officials discovered online postings suggesting they kill people, authorities said Thursday.

School officials said the list, discovered in a classroom trash can, mostly named students and faculty members but also included Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey and the Energizer Bunny.
...
The girls, ages 14 and 15, were charged with conspiracy to commit criminal homicide late Wednesday and taken to a juvenile facility.

Our society has become so dysfunctional and rooted in fear that the smallest incident results in wildly disproportionate response. Yes, Columbine, etc etc. Using the circumstances of a couple of maladjusted individuals to judge everyone else is like saying all book repositories should have been leveled after the Kennedy assassination (or if you prefer, all grassy knolls).

Back in the ancient days of gas lamps and vellum scrolls, I also went to high school. When I did, there were kids who would joke around about people they would like to "kill" and make lists of them. They would even come up with elaborate scenarios of macabre detail describing how it would happen. Often the victim was some form of establishment authority, particularly those that represented values teens want to distance themselves from (Oprah) or simply something that was so overwhelmingly annoying the humor of wanting to kill it was obvious (the energizer bunny). No one went to prison for this. No one was killed, either.

Sophomore Lakyn Ledford stayed home Thursday after learning that student-athletes were on the list.

"I was very scared. My friends were scared. That's a scary thing. It can really happen," she told WTVC-TV.

Yeah, I bet you were honey. Such a tragedy that you were so gripped in icy fear that you had to miss a day of school.

Common sense surrenders.

-Remagi

While most energizer officials refused comment, one commented off the record: "Nobody kills the energizer bunny. Nobody."

Mostly I agree with you Remagi. The response to these incidents seems way overblown. Instead of immediately charging them with conspiracy the Police should conduct an investigation to make sure these girls weren't actually preparing to carry out their "plan" and if they weren't, give them counseling and some form of punishment but "conspiracy to commit murder?"

On the other hand, I understand the fearful response. Way too often and way too easily of late, kids have been taking out normal adolescent anger and frustration with automatic weapons. I think it has happened enough that the impression it could happen anywhere has become more than just a aphorism, it's infected the consciousness of students parents and most prominently teachers and school administrators. I suspect that fear at being completely powerless in a shooting situation has them anxious and jumpy to just about any possible threat, real or perceived, and very quick to jump to conclusions based on nothing more than normal angsty teen antics.

I don't know what the answer is but sending children to prison so casually doesn't seem like any kind of useful solution.

My wife is a high school teacher. They actually have regular drills, much like fire drills, where they practice the correct response if something like that goes down (called "lockdown").

When I went to HS, it wasn't uncommon for kids to have deer rifles racked in their truck during season. Small town, different time.

brain

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. -Ripley

Kneejerk responses are far from the solution. At the same time, however, you have every bit of media and most of the U.S. screaming bloody hell if this led to another Columbine. "For God sakes there were names of the people on a list!" is what you'd hear and you'd have resignations and permanent career changes of the folks at the top of the academic ladder.

If I were in the school administration's shoes, I'd have done the exact same thing honestly. Psychologists and psychiatrists are sworn to confidentiality except for three things (if I remember correctly): talk of suicide, talk of physical abuse given or taken, and killing another. I can see society eventually treating every case as though it were the president. It's a felony just to say you'd kill the president.

BTW: If George W. was on the list... there's your answer.

Gooch, are you really ok with immediately charging these teens with conspiracy to commit murder?

I miss the days where if you had a problem with someone, you met up in the bathroom after school and kicked the shit out of each other. Then you went to detention for about a week or got suspended for a few days. I even became friends a guy once after fighting him.

I miss the days where if you had a problem with someone, you met up in the bathroom after school and kicked the shit out of each other.

Damn straight. The problem isn't that kids are destructive and capable of bad things (they are, and always have been). The problem is nobody talks face to face any more and resolves shit. The fisticuffs after school is a tried and true way to resolve shit, no prison, no escalation into violence involving metal objects.

-Remagi

Think about the kind of uproar the movie "Heathers" would make if it were released today (and hadn't already been made years before).

PTA groups and politicians would be stumbling all over themselves condemning it as dangerous to society, giving schoolkids the blueprints to commit mass murder, etc...

Amazing what difference a few years can make in public conciousness...

I still remember sitting in class and watching the columbine story on the news. It happened only a few weeks before I graduated from high school. That event, along with the media circus, started this mess. Damn, its almost been 8 years ago.

Yes something like that can be taken the wrong way, obviously with what has happened in the past. but what happened to Due Process? Are these teenagers still inoccent until proven guilty, or are they looked at differently because of what they wrote on a piece of paper?

I think that more than just the fact the they wrote this on a piece or paper and thrown in the trash should be put into perspective. there are alot of sociological and psycological perspectives out there that could help understand and better mediate these types of situations.

Just my two cents.

-Cody (Burlatin)

Prybutok wrote:Gooch, are you really ok with immediately charging these teens with conspiracy to commit murder?

I'm not sure it was an immediate thing. I suppose I would've consulted the lawyer every school district has, and most likely they would've said to do something to this effect. Let me rephrase. I would do what it took to keep a job I've worked hard for. The kids will be released from jail probably before they set foot in it. I wouldn't be.

If my child was on a list found in a trashcan with the heading, "people I am going to kill" or even "people we'd like to kill", I'd want to know what the hell was up. Who is the child writing this? What precautions can the school take to insure the safety of my child? Can children at my child's school write what they want and not be accountable?

Listen, children are stupid and do things that are stupid and don't realize what repercussions certain actions have. There are kids that will take it too far also. I want the school administration to have the authority to show students that this kind of thing is not ok. So yeah, scare the hell out of the kids and the whole school. An ounce of prevention or a pound of cure.