Teen Violence

This week was a sad one when a boy from the local high school up the road was shot and killed by his fellow students. He was only 15 years old. The shooting was gang related. The teens that came to our library were affected in different ways. Some were subdued and in shock, putting pictures of the dead teen with "You're in our hearts" on their notebooks. Other teens from the high school thought the whole situation and the media coverage was cool and one girl told me she wished she was disappointed she didn't get to see anything because the school was in lockdown.

The reaction from some teens that "violence is cool" was the exact same kind I saw when I was in high school during the Columbine massacre. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students while wearing dark trench coats. Some students at my high school thought this was cool and started wearing dark trench coats to school to show that they were "dangerous." The trend spread and more students wore the trench coats leading the principal to institute a school-wide trench coat ban.

I guess we can't really completely blame teens for thinking "violence is cool." They are raised with their gangsta heroes glorifying shootings and movies and TV with death all the time. Let's just not hope, as in this unfortunate case, that other students realize in real life, there is nothing cool about young students dying before their time.