Dear NYAC Members, youth, and GLBT youth allies:
We are emailing you a letter that will be published in our April/May membership newsletter. Given the calls we have received from youth and adults in the last day, we felt it was important to send this out to you early. Please know that our thoughts are with each of you, as youth and adults from across the country struggle to understand the recent shootings in Littleton, Colorado. Please contact us if we can be of support to you.

-The Staff of the National Youth Advocacy Coalition (Washington, DC)
Improving the lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth.

* * * *

Letter from the Executive Director:

I had planned to write this letter about a youth organizer who has started an international movement of youth against child labor practices of multi-national companies. I had planned to write this letter about a straight youth who is fighting the Boy Scouts' anti-gay practices. But my heart is heavy this morning and those inspirational stories will have to wait for another letter.

I write to you on the morning after the school shooting in Littleton, Colorado -- a suburb of my hometown of Denver. As I'm sure many of you have heard, two white male students entered their school with guns and bombs, sought out "jocks" and began murdering at least 16 of their school mates and injuring a few dozen others.

Many of the students who survived the attack reported that the two students were part of the "trenchcoat mafia" which at their school seems to be made up of youth who ascribe to "Gothic" fashion of black clothes, make up, and have apocalyptic beliefs. Students interviewed after the attack consistently reported that the two students were taunted and harassed for being "freaks."

Because of the reality we live in at NYAC, I immediately wondered if the "freaks" were queer. Who knows if they were or not. There will probably be a number of ways in which the media -- and we -- try to pathologize these two young men, or try to search for answers in thier identities. But the scene reminded me so much of the Paduca, Kentucky school shootings from which we've learned that anti-gay harassment may have played a factor. And in Northampton, MA, we know that Matthew Santoni had been enduring months of sexual and homophobic harassment in school before he stabbed to death one of his taunters in May of 1998.

Certainly, I am not defending any of the violent actions of these, or the Littleton, students. I am concerned that schools and communities are not doing their job in supporting students to learn conflict resolution skills and teaching students to respect those who are different from them.

The often-used response on the part of school administrators of "boys will be boys" or "that's just how kids are" when asked about verbal harassment is not going to cut it anymore. Not with the easy availability of guns in our society and the media images of violence as a resolution to conflict. Verbal taunting leads to physical harassment and sometimes murder.

It was reported that in the midst of their rampage, the two students also took the opportunity to express their racism by locating an African American student, saying something like "there's that nigger," and shooting him dead. To me, this hate crime reveals how oftentimes those who feel oppressed, harassed or under attack actually turn their pain on others who they perceive to be lower on the U.S. social ladder than themselves. The targets of harassment have to make themselves feel more powerful by injuring someone else.

By the time you read this letter, we may know whether or not the fact that it was Hitler's birthday was a factor. By the time you read this letter, more information about the two students may have been revealed, the school community will have started its healing, many prayers will have been said, and we will continue to ask "Why". Some of us will continue to say, "that could never happen at my school or in my community." Well, it does and it will unless we, as a nation, make some decisions about how we will support youth in learning to treat each other with respect and to resolve conflict with words, not guns.

Be fierce, be fabulous, and be well.

Rea Carey
Executive Director
National Youth Advocacy Coalition

1711 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Suite 206
Washington, DC 20009
202-319-7596
202-319-7365 fax
nyac@nyacyouth.org
http://www.nyacyouth.org

The National Youth Advocacy Coalition (NYAC) is the only national organization focused solely on improving the lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) youth through advocacy, education, and information. NYAC advocates with and for GLBT youth through the collaboration of a broad spectrum of community-based and national organizations. Through this partnership, NYAC seeks to end discrimination against GLBT youth and to ensure their physical and emotional well-being.

From: KathyWUT@aol.com
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 13:09:17 EDT
Subject: school shootings

SCHOOL SHOOTINGS AND VIOLENCE
First, a quote from a story about the shooting in Littleton Colorado, from the April 22 Salt Lake Tribune:

"Mike Smith, 18, a senior, was the point guard of the school's state championship basketball team, and is on the track team. He also is one of about a half-dozen black students among Columbine's 1,800 students.
"They were ones you'd make fun of," he said of the Trench Coat Mafia.
"Sometimes it'd be me calling them names. It was like fun and games," said Smith.
He said that he and the other jocks would pick on the mafia members, egging them on with gibes of "gay," or "inbreed."
Harris and Klebold would respond in German, he said. "They'd talk back to us in another language and we'd just laugh," he said.
The tensions between the two groups came to a head at the end of the past school year. For several weeks, Smith said, the two groups fought almost daily after school.
"It was like, `OK, we'll meet you here and we'll meet you there and get it all over with,' " he said. He said school officials knew about the fights but did little to stop them.
"Boys will be boys, just cut it out, that's what we heard," he said. "Here, the teams are so good that if you're an athlete, you're not going to get suspended unless you do something really bad."
In the past, he had shrugged off the disputes. But Wednesday, he felt guilty.
"Sometimes," he added, gesturing at the school over his shoulder, "I think it's because of me."
(end of quote)

So the large, popular jocks would not only tease and torment these guys, they actually sought them out and fought them. Who do you think won those fights? What was school like day-after-day for these kids? Had it been like that all their lives? Probably.

News coverage about shootings like the one in Littleton, Colorado, seems to focus on how we help the survivors and friends and families of the victims and on how we can watch for signs that a student or students might be planning a violent act. Stories also talk about how we can try to prevent student from resorting to violence or how we can keep them from having access to guns.

In almost all of these cases fellow students have mentioned how the young men who took the guns to school had been "geeks", "weird", "outcasts". Other students hadn't liked them and had made fun of them and taunted them.

I can almost guarantee you that these kids had encountered taunting, teasing, rejection and harassment from the time they were small and that they had come to hate and dread school (but they were forced by law to continue to attend school anyway) long BEFORE they were old enough to get guns or make bombs and go to the school to hurt other kids. Chances are good that they encountered the same treatment after school, at church and at home.

Isn't it high time that we institute efforts to make our schools less hostile and hateful? Isn't it time we made it unacceptable for kids in our schools to torment and harass other students, no matter how "different" or "odd" other students are? Isn't it time we made it plain to students who are harassed, taunted, teased, assaulted that they have a recourse and that if they go to teachers or to school administrators about the hostility, that the situation will be taken care of and that hostile students will be disciplined?

Pretty, good-looking, 'popular' students like jocks, cheerleaders, and members of "in" groups are allowed to ostracize and be hostile, even physically abusive, to kids who are unathletic, 'geeks' or who don't have nice haircuts, clothes or cars. For some students this goes day after day, week after week, year after year after year. They are forced, by law to keep going back to that environment. Then we say we don't understand why someone would take a gun to school and start shooting.

It used to be these "weird" kids just dropped out and ran away, abused drugs or alcohol, or they killed themselves. Now they're realizing that they can get some "payback" before they kill themselves or ruin their own lives. It never got much attention when it was just "those geeks or weirdos" killing themselves or ruining their own lives.

Maybe the killings will finally convince America that it's HIGH TIME we did something to prevent the hostile environment that makes these kids feel that they have nothing to lose, that continuing to go to school with "cool" kids who torment them is no longer tolerable or an option.

News casts and stories need to address this issue and ask questions about what the schools and authorities are going to do about the hostile environment that makes school an intolerable place to be for the kids that don't quite fit in because they are "different". (overweight, skinny, gay, clutsy and unathletic, too short, too tall, wear thick glasses or whatever.)

I doubt Americans are going to stand for a total ban on guns. It's time we made school an accepting place where hostile acts and words are not tolerated. Education should include lessons and discussions about sensitivity about other people's feelings and about treating people who are different with acceptance and tolerance, allowing them dignity and a safe place to go to school. EVERY year of their lives students should be told that taunting, abusive behavior is unacceptable and will NOT be tolerated. It should be one of the first things students hear each year.

News stories keep saying that now kids won't feel safe in school. What about the kids who have NEVER in their lives felt safe in school? What are we doing to protect THEM? No wonder some of them get so angry. Can we really blame them?

From Kathy Worthington
Taylorsville Utah
KathyWUT@aol.com

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