By Mike Van Meter
for The Broadside
Current events quiz: How many victims were there in Littleton?
The stock answer is 13 -- the number of students slain by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Greg Zanis believes the answer is 15 -- those killed, plus the troubled youths of the "Trenchcoat Mafia."
So it was that the Illinois carpenter created 15 wooden crosses late last month and placed them in a park near Columbine High School. As a result of his act of compassion Zanis was beseiged by objections to memorials for the killers.
The father of one of the 13 slain students removed two of the crosses -- and asserted that "the only ones who can forgive (Harris and Klebold) are my son and God."
"I'm just a carpenter. I thought it would be a fitting tribute," Zanis told the Rocky Mountain News last week. "I'm willing to make crosses for anybody, anytime. It's just nice to be asked to do something like this.''
Theological differences and my soft spot for carpenters aside, I cannot help but sympathize with a grieving parent. Even so, I find it troubling -- even frightening -- that after a local tragedy of national proportions society as a whole would so readily choose to return Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to the invisibility that contributed to the Colorado massacre.
As in the wake of Jonesboro and Springfield, society seeks answers. School boards consider installing metal detectors. Legislators call for policies where troubled youths can be held without due process for 72 hours after making threats -- real or perceived. Gun-control activists battle with the National Rifle Association over tighter restrictions on weapons sales.
Meanwhile, the Eric Harrises and Dylan Klebolds of America are viewed with suspicion, fear and contempt. Patricia Hersch has written a book calling today's teens "A Tribe Apart," as if young people were EVER like their parents. Teens who play violent video games suddenly are potential murderers and the Internet is even more sinister than it was the last time we realized there is BAD STUFF out there.
Here at Central Oregon Community College, the campus Safety Committee last week considered the matter of placing "a suggestion box somewhere where students can leave information on people who might be dangerous. They could remain anonymous but still report suspicious behavior."
Hmm. And what are we to do with those who exhibit "suspicious behavior"?
The model of the Bend-LaPine School District is to suspend them from class. If these suspicious characters aren't diabolical enough to toss into programs for young criminals, they're probably sent to an "alternative school." For most 9th through 12th graders in Bend, that means Marshall High School, the 120-student facility where kids who don't fit in at factory schools go to become invisible.
David Bieber, a black-clothes-and-heavy-chains-wearing former student at the school, once summed up his feelings this way: "We're just a bunch of rejects."
Bieber lives to shock adults with anarchist words and actions, so you can take the words he threw at me with a grain of salt. Bieber also is a highly intelligent young writer gifted in the art of hyperbole. Yet his blunt words carry the ring of truth: Marshall is located in the most dilapidated school building owned by the Bend-LaPine School District, with little more than token support from administrators. About a year ago, principal-with-a-heart-of-gold Peter Miller glowed at the prospect of moving in to a remodeled Bend High School where there would be room for 600 to 800 alternative school students -- a place where Bieber's "rejects" would feel wanted. When folks in the downtown administration building killed those plans, they didn't call Miller; he was left to read about it on the front page of The Bulletin. As far as school bureaucracy was concerned, Miller, his staff and his students were invisible.
Now, who do you think is more likely to go out and do bad things: A valued human being or a reject?
Even as larger society moves to "stop the killing" with a police-state mentality, perhaps it would be wise for thoughtful persons to stop and treat the rejects who are our future with a little love and respect.
Editor's note: Van Meter is staff advisor to The Broadside. He reported on education issues for The Bulletin from 1995 to 1998.