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William Pollack on if our sons are natural-born killers
Tipper Gore and USA WEEKEND's Teen Panel tackle tough topics
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In this article:
Blaming the media
Finding answers

USA WEEKEND's 13th annual Teen Survey finds:

Our kids are afraid.

A year after Columbine, students in alarming numbers say they fear the toxic combination of violence at school and easy access to guns.

hough the nation's schools actually are safer than ever, the legacy of the killings at Colorado's Columbine High School one year ago this week looms large in the minds of America's teens, according to a nationwide survey of students conducted by USA WEEKEND.

The majority -- 6 in 10 -- of those who responded to the magazine's survey believe it is possible a violent event on the scale of Columbine could occur at their school. All told, 129,593 students in grades 6-12 from urban, suburban and rural schools, public and private, responded to USA WEEKEND's 13th Annual Teen Survey. It's the largest survey of its kind, though non-scientific because the respondents were not polled at random but rather chose to respond.

Perhaps most surprising -- and potentially significant -- is the portrait students paint of school today as a place where insult too often turns to injury. Students report that it is small things -- a slight, a look, a shove, a dispute between couples -- that can erupt into arguments, fistfights or worse, rather than bigger problems, such as gangs or racial conflict. The fear voiced by many students interviewed, and reflected in the survey results, is that "stupid things" easily can trigger something worse.

"We've got to start with the small things: How do we treat one another? How do we demonstrate simple courtesy?" says Ronald Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center in Westlake Village, Calif. "It was interesting in the [USA Weekend] survey what the triggers are for violence. If we can make headway reducing those trigger mechanisms, we will go a good ways toward making all of America's schools safer."

More than a quarter of the students who responded to the survey report that they do not feel safe from violence on school grounds. A surprising 3 in 10 respondents say they have been threatened physically at school; 1 in 4 say they actually have been hit; 2 in 10 say they have been robbed at school.

"They collide over everything and anything -- music and how people act and dress," says Patricia Brentano, a 15-year-old 10th-grader at Delaware Valley High School in the scenic small town of Milford, Pa. "People have threatened to kill me, to punch me -- and they have punched me."

In interviews with survey respondents, student after student told of bullying, punches thrown, stolen belongings, ugly taunts and more that make violence at school an everyday reality for many.

Beyond physical threats or incidents, students cite an array of problems contributing to their fears and anxieties, so familiar in the wake of the rampage at Columbine: fellow teens who can't handle their anger, disputes among cliques, distracted parents, a culture that romanticizes violence and, ominously, easy access to weapons. Almost half of the respondents reported having a gun in their home, and of those, more than half say they can get their hands on it. (These findings mirror a 1998 survey by a gun-control organization that reported that 43% of American homes with children have guns.)

Among all students who took the survey, with or without guns at home, 4 in 10 say a teen in their community could get a gun within a day -- a stark reminder of Columbine shooters Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, who simply had older friends buy guns for them. "We don't have guns in our household, but I know lots of my friends' [parents] have guns, and it wouldn't be that hard" to get one, says Mary Wiebe, 15, a 10th-grader at Mountain View High School in Bend, Ore.

The findings of the survey confirm that students live daily with what experts observe: disrespect, bullying, alienation and intolerance of the sort that are said to have helped fuel the murderous rage of Harris and Klebold, which left 13 dead.

"When we talk about school violence, we're not just talking about school shootings," says Pamela Riley, executive director of the Center for the Prevention of School Violence in Raleigh, N.C. "Most schools are dealing with trash talk, 'he said/she said' and bullying."

Despite studies from a variety of sources indicating that violence by and against young people has declined and that fewer students are carrying weapons to school, America's teens seem to know otherwise.

Students' schoolyard tales read like a police blotter. In Modesto, Calif., John Cimadomo, a 15-year-old ninth-grader at Modesto High School who took the USA WEEKEND survey, slugged a bully when he caught him stealing a watch from his backpack. "I have my limits. I'm not a saint," says John, who steps in to stop friends who bully or disrespect other kids. "He'd been annoying me for a while. I shouldn't have hauled off and hit the kid, but he shouldn't have been in my backpack."

In Pembroke Pines, Fla., respondent April Kandel, 13, discovered her Tommy Girl perfume had been lifted from her locker at Silver Trail Middle School.

In Austin, Texas, a boy brought a stun gun to sixth-grader Katie Walz's elementary school last year.

Experts agree that a serious offense such as bringing a gun to school can start with something relatively commonplace.

"Why did kids bring weapons to school?" asks Irwin Hyman, president of the American Academy of School Psychology and co-author of Dangerous Schools. "To protect themselves from bullying and extortion. When they feel safe, they're not going to bring weapons."

But Hyman downplays the real risks in America's schools. Students, he says, "are more likely to be killed in their homes than in school. The chance of anything happening is infinitesimal."

Still, when students "alienate and scapegoat and make fun of other kids, they're helping to create the alienation. When a kid sees someone bullying another kid, they should step in. The solution is prevention, doing all the things that make students feel that school is home to them."

Blaming the media

Since Columbine, America's violent media culture has come under increasing attack as an underlying villain behind the violence. According to the results of USA WEEKEND's survey, teens can be added to the chorus of critics. About half of the respondents blame movies, video games, the Internet and TV for promoting violence among their peers.

"When they show the things that happened in Columbine, the kids think, 'If I do this, then I'll become famous,' " says MacKenzie Miller, 12, a seventh-grader at Memorial Middle School in Sioux Falls, S.D. The Columbine killers -- in videos found after their deaths -- basked in the attention they knew would come their way, even discussing which movie director should be entrusted to tell their story, Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino?

Adds survey respondent Patricia Brentano: "Marilyn Manson -- all of his songs are about hate. After a while, you become like Marilyn Manson. I know, because I used to listen to him."

About 1 in 10 teens who responded to the USA WEEKEND survey admitted they have visited a hate or bomb-making site on the Internet (among boys, it's 1 in 8). Columbine killer Harris had a Web site that detailed the size of his pipe bombs and the targets of his fury.

"Somebody sent a Web site to me: 'Click here to learn how to make bombs,' " says Jessica Hughes, 14, an eighth-grader at Southwest Middle School in Gastonia, N.C. "I went to the Web site. It showed you how to do it. I was scared."

Beyond media influences, many teenagers say the heart of today's problems faced by students -- as well as the solutions -- is at home.

"The biggest issue is the family," says Penney Berryman, a 17-year-old senior and peer mediator at Bentonville (Ark.) High School. "Everybody doesn't have two parents. Being involved in things is so important, and to be tolerant of others besides yourself, and having a group of peers that is positive support that you know you can turn to if you have problems."

Says Liz Sheely, 16, a 10th-grader at York (Pa.) Catholic High School: "You'd think the parents would know [their kids] are building bombs and having guns. It's problems that kids have at home that aren't solved at home, then kids come to school and there's conflict."

Finding answers

Perhaps it is not surprising that many teens simply want to expel the problem. Four in 10 respondents favor sending troubled students to alternative schools. By contrast, teaching students to handle and defuse anger and conflicts is favored by only about 1 in 5; 1 in 5 also say they want metal detectors in schools.

And the picture is not all bleak. In fact, in emotional essays that accompanied the survey responses, many students offered thoughtful and often specific solutions to the problems detailed in the survey.

"If we all put our minds to it," wrote Claire Chen, a seventh-grader from Newark, Calif., "we can make the world a better place and the next generation can and will definitely improve."

Not everyone, however, is as hopeful. More than half of the survey respondents say they expect the world to be less safe when they reach their parents' age. W

-- By Patty Rhule