I never thought it would happen to me. Or if it did happen, I thought that it would happen at the school where I teach. But it did happen to me, and at a school that was a big part of my life. I went to Taft High, I was bullied at Taft High, and I graduated from Taft High. I was stunned (still am) to hear that this happened, but I have to say that I'm not terribly surprised. I don't mean to say that I expected that it would happen there, but I did think that it would happen again somewhere. It seems that this sort of thing is happening more and more, and I can only say that I'm thankful that this situation wasn't worse.
As far as I can understand, the shooter walked to school, trying to conceal his shotgun. Neighbors saw this and called 911. He entered his 2nd-story classroom during 1st period and opened fire on a classmate. The boy was someone that the shooter claimed had bullied him. He then tried to shoot another student, but he missed. He had 20 rounds of ammunition in his pockets, but his teacher, Mr. Hebert, and a campus supervisor, Kim Fields, were able to talk him down. Rumors have spread that the student was suspended or expelled last year for having a "hit list" of students that he planned to kill, again because of the bullying. The school was able to successfully evacuate (I think, I also heard that they were released from their rooms…) and they came home to their parents.
There are many things that can be taken away from this shooting. First of all, if you see something strange, REPORT IT! Lives might very well have been saved because of the fast action of the boys' neighbors. Because the neighbors called 911 when they saw the boy walking with a poorly-concealed shotgun, the police response time to the shooting was only 60 seconds. Just last week, I participated in a police training activity at my high school. The police knew that they would at some point be called to come in to an emergency call at the school. Even knowing this, the response time was anywhere from a few minutes to nearly 10. One minute seems unbelievably fast.
Secondly, if you expel a student for threatened violence, don't let them back in. I know that this may seem unfair, but I have to say that there should be no second chances here. If a student threatens violence, you can be sure that the other students know it. It will not defuse any situation or make it in any way better to bring the student back. I honestly believe that if a student--FOR ANY REASON--threatens another's life, that's it. No second chances. No do-overs. If it means that the student has to be bused to another school in another district, then that's what will have to be done.
Also, we need to rethink our classroom policies. As a teacher, I keep my classroom unlocked as long as I'm inside it, with the exceptions of working late at night or during a lockdown drill. I'm pretty sure that Mr. Hebert did, too. If he didn't, the student would never have been able to enter. Making sure that teachers lock their doors after class has started seems a pretty easy way to avoid this problem.
That leads me to the biggest--and hardest--part of this problem: bullying. I've heard people say that the boy must have had mental problems. I've heard people wonder about the boy's parents and why they didn't teach him to stand up to bullies. That's really beside the point, in my opinion. The boy was bullied. The boy had to deal with this bullying every day at school. And I'm sure the boy is not alone. Bullying happened at my high school when I went there. It happened in my junior high, and also at my elementary school. Nobody ever seemed to care that I was being constantly put down, taunted and ridiculed. One of my starkest memories as a child is a girl coming up to me in elementary school and saying, "I wanted to tell you that I think you're nice and I wish I could be your friend, but it's not fashionable to like you." I actually felt sorry for her. Here I was causing her anguish. But every single day was anguish for me. I can't tell you how many nights I came home and thought about killing myself. What stopped me? Killing myself was a sin. That was it, pure and simple. I didn't want to go to hell, so I endured hell on earth. The worst part of it was that I believed that I somehow deserved it. I must have been too fat, too ugly, too stupid, too weird, too something, or else I would have been able to have friends. It was decades before I figured out that I was not to blame. I still have problems trusting those who reach out to me in friendship. Those years left me believing that anyone who befriended me either had an ulterior motive or were going to hurt me. I had many experiences of both.
Please don't think that I'm saying that I was alone or that this only happened in Taft High. I wasn't and it didn't. Others around me hurt just as much as I did; I just didn't see it at the time. Friends in college have told me of similar experiences in their own schools. It happened all over then. It happens still today, and I think that it's more common today than ever before. We have identified the problem, yes, but as long as the problem is glorified on Youtube, in movies, on television, and in real life, it will continue to exist.
To understand this better, you need to understand what I consider to be bullying. Any time you take unfair advantage of another, you are bullying. Any time that you use someone as the butt of your joke, you are bullying. Any time you spread rumors and gossip about a person, you are bullying that person. Bullying is endemic of our society today. We see and share posts that bully public figures. We see television shows that glory in badmouthing others and we passively laugh. We let our children (and I'm as guilty as anyone else here) play video games that devote themselves to bullying, hurting and even killing others, I'm not talking about "Modern Warfare" or the like. I'm talking about Grand Theft Auto and the video game "Bully"(!). It is clear that bullying is part of the fabric of our society.
How do we deal with bullying? I think that first and foremost we must define it and we must strictly forbid it in our schools. We must have a zero tolerance policy for bullying--nothing else will do. We can be the most defense-conscious schools in America, but if we continue to allow bullying, we continue to foster the very problems that lead to the violence. When we see bullying, whether it's boys "joking around" with much smaller boys by holding them up and refusing to put them down, whether it's calling someone names, whether it's "teasing" that's not seen as teasing by the other student, it needs to be dealt with immediately. If you let it go, you've just shown another student that it's perfectly all right to bully and denigrate his/her classmate. That is not right, and it has to stop. We need to create a culture of civility in our schools and an understanding that their emotional safety is just as secure at our school as is their physical safety.
Yes, there is mental illness. Yes, it is a big problem. Yes, there are other reasons. But bullying is the one that we can control. If a person is mentally disturbed, that is something else again. But even if this boy was mentally disturbed, I have to wonder--if he wasn't bullied day after day, would he have felt such anger that it seemed that nothing would solve the problem but revenge by fire?
I'm extremely grateful that TUHS was spared the horror of Sandy Hook or Columbine. But please, people, let's use this experience as a weapon. Don't allow bullies to rule at our schools. We can deal with it at school, but it's best dealt with at home. Show your children that it is not okay to treat people without respect, and your children will learn to treat others as they would like to be treated themselves.
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