May 20, 2001
Let’s Listen to Teen-Agers’ Views on Youth Violence

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

For the past several years, the problem of youthful violence has seldom been far from the surface of public concern. There have been isolated but repeated instances of multiple victim mayhem in and around schools all across the country for the past 10 years or so.

Whenever one of these events occurs, the media focuses on the seemingly inexplicable problem for a few days, weeks or even months—trotting out all kinds of “experts” who blame guns, the entertainment industry, the education system, parents and an endless list of possible other causes. Politicians—ever eager to gain headlines—leap forward to propose legislation that will solve the problem, as though they were Harry Potters who had the magical power to vanquish evil adversaries.

Such politicians will be unhappy to learn that they are unlikely to ever gain the popularity of Harry Potter, but that won’t discourage them.

One of the more popular magic legislative solutions is to urge passage of additional restrictive gun laws. But proposals to restrict or censor music, video games, movies and television are not that distant a second choice.

Experts Disagree
The experts disagree and so do adults—many of them deeply concerned parents of children in school. There is endless private and public discussion among adults about the problem, and every adult seems to have an idea of what the problem is and what the solution should be.

Little by little, there has been a growing feeling that the problem may not be guns, video games, music, or movies, but our contemporary society itself. Gun control, which became an extremely hot topic following the 1999 mass murder in Colorado, didn’t get as much attention this year following shootings at two suburban San Diego schools.

By this spring, a lot of focus had shifted to “bullying” as a major cause for senseless mass murders committed by teen-agers. Sure, the usual suspects on Capitol Hill and in some state capitals continued to flog the dead horse of gun control. But there was a discernible shift elsewhere, particularly after a girl in a Catholic school shot another girl, and there was a general suggestion that the shooting was a violent reaction to bullying.

Even the National Education Association (NEA)—a teacher’s union that had long been an advocate of gun control—also shifted gears a little. In March, the NEA saw fit to devote one of their weekly public issue advertisements to the bullying question.

NEA President Bob Chase, while acknowledging that the practice of bullying has always infected our schools and youthful life in general, suggested that there are now resources that would make it possible to “bullyproof” our schools. His column was laced with a heavy undertone of politically correct thinking, but it did recommend that educators, parents and other adults intervene when they see examples of bullying and work to eliminate or control the practice.

It was ironic to read that someone who had been an educator for many years of his adult life—as well as a leaders among the education community—had seemed to suddenly discover that bullying could be a problem. His column appeared to me to be just another example of adults discussing a problem affecting youth, but largely leaving young people out of the discussion.

While adults, especially an endless parade of so-called experts—keep discussing the problem of youthful violence, few of them are listening to the young people who are most directly affected, or likely to be affected by it.

Young people—particularly those in middle and senior high school level—have also been discussing the problem among themselves, and occasionally with parents and adult acquaintances, but seldom in truly public forums, like the media.

Perhaps one of the reasons different generations appear to be alienated from each other is that they don’t always communicate. Most adults don’t really listen to young people any more than most teen-agers don’t really listen to their parents or other adults.

Censoring Teens
But I suspect that teen-agers have a lot to tell us about this problem, if we really give them to chance to speak, coupled with a promise to really listen. That’s really not as easy as it sounds, especially when political correctness and bureaucratic concern for professional survival are involved.

In late April, a report in the Chicago Tribune, focused on this problem.

“Hinsdale, IL, Central High School Principal Jim Ferguson isn’t always happy about what ends up in his school’s newspaper, but he had never tried to stop his student journalists from writing about sensitive subjects. Until last week,” The Tribune began.


Ferguson spotted a splash of graphic images on the front page of The Devil’s Advocate, a student newspaper, that depicted armed students, bullet-ridden school crossing signs and a story headlined “Getting a gun.” It was a package on school violence, which was published April 20 on the second anniversary of the Columbine High School killings in Colorado, and Ferguson could not live with it.

The principal halted distribution of the paper and gave the staff of The Advocate a choice. They either could reprint the newspaper after eliminating the objectionable elements or bury the entire issue.

The paper’s student editorial board decided that it would not make any changes.

“To change it for the (school) administration would be a dishonor and would set a precedent,” said junior Annie Gilsdorf, a member of the editorial board and the lead writer on the violence stories.

Editor-in-Chief Patrick Ashby said as much as the staff hates to see all the work it put into the issue wasted, he believes a larger issue is at stake.

“This is a story the administration shouldn’t be afraid for us to tell,” said Ashby, who has been on the newspaper for four years. “This is a story students should read. This is about their safety. This story does not pose a threat. It wasn’t meant to scare students.”

Ferguson said he didn’t have a problem with the way the stories were written, including one in which he is quoted as a source on school security precautions. He questioned the wisdom of one shorter story, which used demographic information and other school facts to show the similarities between Hinsdale Central and the Littleton, CO, school.

Where he drew the line was the “tabloid style” of the photo illustrations. One was a montage showing a student holding a gun in front of a school within a television screen, as though it were a scene pulled from CNN. Inside graphics included a large bullet with the word “revenge” written on it.

New Door Opens
Newspaper adviser Linda Kennedy approved the content and supported the students’ decision not to change the series. She told students on the paper that she will be contacting the American Civil Liberties Union and the Student Press Law center about the censorship issue.

The story of censorship at the suburban Chicago school highlights the complexity of communications between generations. The principal’s decision closed the door on an opportunity to hear what some smart students had to say about a significant social problem.

Such doors should be opened, not closed, if we ever want to find solutions.

Gun Week is a specialized newspaper, and most of our readers are adults. Yet we hope our readers will tell middle and senior high school students they know that we have opened a new door. Teen-agers are welcome to submit comments on the root causes of youth-on-youth violence in schools. The focus doesn’t need to be on guns, gun ownership or firearms civil rights. But it should convey a young person’s individual opinion on youth violence.

We may not publish longer essays in their entirety in these pages, but will publish key points in Gun Week, and the Second Amendment Foundation will undertake to compile, reproduce and publicize all the views that young people share with us.