Social rejection an important factor in shootings

Fortunately, he was apprehended before disaster struck. But students at Heritage High in Conyers, Ga. were not so lucky Thursday morning when T.J. Solomon shot six classmates.

My 14-year-old sister recently told me that she is scared to go to school every day. And she's not afraid of anything.

The country has become completely engulfed in discussions of children and violence - what should be done to make the schools safer, who should be blamed and how shocking school shootings are.

But when I sat down to think about it, I realized I wasn't actually all that shocked by the shootings.

The gunmen in Littleton were two outsiders who had been teased and rejected to the point where they lost control. They certainly harbored deeper psychological problems along with sick, racist views, but their status as outcasts undeniably contributed to the tragedy - and classmates described Solomon as an outcast who regularly sat alone on the school bus.

In an effort to make sense of these events, I thought back to when I was in high school. I remember the cliques. I remember the kids who never fit into any of the cliques.

I remembered how horrible it felt to be rejected or even made fun of. I remembered the hurt and hate in the eyes of the kids I made fun of so people would like me more.

I remembered the time my friends paid me to kiss the ugliest guy in school while everyone stood around laughing and taking pictures.

We used to joke about students who reminded us of the "weird guy" from Billy Madison who made a list of people from high school to kill.

I can name a dozen kids who it seemed like every single person in my high school picked on. No one ever stopped to consider the damage we were really doing to those kids - kids who probably had a thing or two in common with Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold and T.J. Solomon.

While the victims of the shootings certainly are not to blame for the violence, I wonder if circumstances would have been different had the gunmen been more accepted and respected by their peers.

I wonder if the outcasts at my high school would be happier today if only my friends and I treated them with an ounce of courtesy.

While watching a Jenny Jones rerun at three in the morning about kids bullying their peers at school, I was enlightened by a guest's comment ... no, really I was. It came from the dad of a bully, who defended his son because "they're just kids."

Clearly the "they're just kids" defense doesn't carry much weight anymore. Children remember things. We are all affected by things that happened to us while we were growing up.

While I can't relive high school - and wouldn't do so for all the money in the world - I realized that maybe I should be a little less cruel and a little less arrogant when dealing with people I don't think are as good as I am.

Maybe then no one will think I deserve to die.

- Amy Barber can be reached over e-mail at abarber@umich.edu.

Amy Barber Barber's Cut

05-24-99