That logic comes from how no one’s gone on a killing spree much less been arrested for carrying a gun to a private school that I know of.
All that’s changed now. The sad truth of the matter is a repeat of Columbine can happen at any school, and it doesn’t matter if it is public or private anymore.
A couple of days after 15-year-old Charles Andrew Williams shot 15 classmates and adults, killing two, at Santana High School in Santee, California on March 5th; an eighth grader walked into her school cafeteria armed with a 22.cal. pistol and shot a fellow classmate in the shoulder.
Her name was Elizabeth Catherine Bush. The school she attended was a private one, Bishop Neumann in Williamsport, Pa. Her intended target was Kimberly Marchese.
Bush’s reason for the shooting, according to the March 19, 2001 issue of Time, was she wanted to be accepted by Marchese who was the school’s cheerleading captain and known for hanging out with "the cool crowd."
The events that preceded the tragic events at Columbine and Santana High School are no more different than the one that occurred at Bishop Neumann.Students in private school are just as privy to being made fun of and bullied as those in public school.
It seems Bush is no more different than the Charles Williams', the Eric Harris’, and the Dylan Klebold’s of the world. According to Time, Bush studied martial arts and once practiced shooting a gun at a firing range with her father.
"She has a kind heart," said her mother, Catherine, in the Time article. "In school she made friends with a girl in a wheelchair and helped her out. She would always put herself between those who were being picked on."
Like Williams, however, Bush was reportedly the subject of ridicule at the public junior high school she attended before going to Bishop Neumann. On one occasion, the column said, students pelted her with stones.
And just like many school shootings of year’s past, parents and friends once again asked "Why?" "What made he or she do it?"
"She seemed really happy," said Jenn Oglesby, a friend who spent most of her weekends watching movies and going out shopping with Bush. "We talked about school, but she didn’t mention any problems."
It amazes me at how things have changed since the 1970s and 80s when I attended both junior high in Chicago and high school here in Dallas.
The only drills we prepared for back then were for a fire or tornado drill. Now schools across the country prepare for the unthinkable; practicing what to when an armed intruder is on campus.
Santana High School was prepared for such an incident. According to Time, when Williams told friends of his plans to "pull a Columbine", the students there took the boy’s threat so seriously that one frisked him shortly before the shootings occurred. They checked everything but the backpack Williams had on.
I doubt any of the people I went to school with, much less their parents, teachers, and administrators, ever considered the thought that someone amongst them was a ticking bomb waiting to explode. God forbid the day I send my kids off to school that I must give he or she a cell phone so they can call me at work letting me know they are ok in case one of their own decides to go on a killing spree.Every time a school shooting occurs, society plays the blame game. The list is endless. They blame violent movies, rock bands, the internet, the press, the National Rifleman’s Association (NRA), the politicians, the school, the teachers, administrators and the classmates when the real finger needs to not just be pointed at the ones who pulled the trigger, but the parents.
I am sick and tired of these endless debates that will no doubt come up again when the next depressed kid somewhere in the country decides to mete out her/her own brand of twisted justice.
Unbelievably, there is something people can do to stop the blood of the innocent from spilling in our nation’s schools.
"When America teaches our children right from wrong and teaches values that respect life in our country, we’ll be better off," said President Bush in response to the Santee shootings.
The only way as President Bush calls these "disgraceful acts of cowardice" will be avoided is when parents take an interest in what their kids do under the roofs of their own homes and outside.
How hard is it for a parent to tell their kid they love them or ask, "How’s it going?"
©3/28/2001
