Nothing to Lose

Columbine is still fresh enough on all of our minds to remember how much of a media circus that was and so it continues today - the ante was raised last week at Virginia Tech. It's become an even bigger media circus. Possibly because this tragedy broke an eight year record - almost to the exact day - by doubling the body count (and then some) that horrified us in Littleton, Colorado. Another possibility is the way the media bullies us into fearing that which doesn't exist.

Immediately after Columbine there was a literal witch hunt against any kid who dared to be different. Even more frightening than mutants who fight back is the mentality that anyone who dares to step outside the accepted social boundary is an enemy. I think that certainly contributes to the way in which these school shootings seem to be getting worse with each incident.

According to Jello Biafra, the ex-lead singer of Dead Kennedys and social critic, students were kicked out of school right after Columbine for a variety of harmless behavior. One student was kicked out for promoting gang activity when he wore a t-shirt that said "vegan" on it. Another student in Florida got the same treatment for bringing a set of nail clippers to class.

"The counterattack on kids who think has gone from funny to fierce to downright dangerous and sick," Biafra said.

The sad part about this reaction is that it does nothing to promote change. It's alienating the kids who need the most help by taking away their right to an education. And, not only that, but what's going to happen when you take a student who's already alienated from his classmates and make him or her an even bigger outsider?

I'll tell you what - the next breed of teenage mass murderers will make Seung-Hui Cho look like a model citizen.

So, why is there this massive witch hunt in the media to dissect Cho's mental, academic, and criminal history as if there is some obvious answer that can help prevent future massacres of its kind? There is an obscene lack of understanding that goes on when something like this occurs. It's not only a lack of understanding, but a lack of desire to understand. Nobody really wants to understand why this happened. They want to walk around the real issues that lie within the evils of humanity and try to blame anyone and anything they can - video games, controversial musicians, the Internet, and the list goes on.

Everyone is so busy blaming this industry or that industry that the real issues become blind spots. It's not by accident, either. Over the years the media has gone to great length to distract us by creating problems that aren't really there and we're making it worse because we pay attention to it!

The real answer to the problem is attempting to understand and accept the wild differences in people. There's nothing wrong with looking or thinking different than those around you and whether they want you to know it or not, the mainstream media is exploiting this weakness in society.

I was an outcast in school, too. Nobody noticed or cared about what happened to me. I was made fun of and called names on occasion, even by my own siblings. I have a history of mostly undocumented mental issues that had been prevalent since junior high and high school up through college.

Being rejected daily by your peers is not something that can be just ignored. In the video that Cho sent to NBC, he said that he could have just left school, but he didn't want to run away from his problems. So, in his eyes, he had nothing to lose and everything to gain. All that time of being tormented and teased up until the shooting was erased, in his eyes. He was probably going to kill himself anyway, but chose a way to send an effective message - in his own way.

If I experienced the same things, why didn't I go on a shooting spree? Perhaps it was because I learned certain values from my experience, parents and various teachers, most likely the same values that these so-called "nutcases" never had the benefit of learning.

I finally found solace in suffering and used that as a way to prove to the world that I was a capable human being, one who was worthy of being noticed. Perhaps nobody told Eric or Dylan that it was okay to be different. It's a sad day on Earth when an outcast actually starts believing what a bully pounds into his head day after day.

I will leave you with a quote by one of the football players in Littleton, Colorado -

"Columbine is a good clean place except for those rejects. Most kids didn't want them there. They were into witchcraft. They were into voodoo dolls. Sure, we teased them, but what do you expect when kids come to school with weird hairdos? They're a bunch of homos. The whole school's disgusted with them. If you want to get rid of someone, usually you tease them, so the whole school would call them homos, and when they did something sick, we'd tell them."