To: “Breitkreuz, Garry – Assistant 1″ <[email protected]>
Subject: Column: Simple explanation for school killings
Date: Oct 4, 2006 9:38 AM
PUBLICATION: The Province
DATE: 2006.10.04
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Editorial
PAGE: A18
COLUMN: John Martin
BYLINE: John Martin
SOURCE: Special to The Province
WORD COUNT: 401

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There is a simple explanation for the latest round of school killings

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First it was the shooting at Montreal’s Dawson College. Within a
heartbeat, that was followed by a hostage-taking incident at Platte
Canyon High School in Bailey, Col., where six young girls were sexually
assaulted and one shot to death.

The carnage continued 48 hours later in rural Wisconsin, where a
principal was killed after giving 15-year old Eric Hainstock a
disciplinary warning.

Three days after that, a lone gunman took a group of girls hostage in a
one-room Amish schoolhouse, killing five of them.

Among the tears, anger and confusion, considerable commentary and
analysis have been quick to follow.

Of course, the usual suspects — firearm ownership and a culture that
trivializes and makes a game of mass murder — have come under immense
fire.

David Grossman, a retired military psychologist, maintains TV and video
games condition children for killing, in much the same way as the the
military does its recruits.

But a more popular explanation appears to be the argument that the media
incites and encourages copycat acts of violence by over-reporting such
stories.

Elizabeth Carll, a clinical psychologist and author of the book Violence
in Our Lives, points out that when school shootings occur they “take up
50 per cent of the news in a newspaper [but] it’s hardly 50 per cent of
what’s occurring in the world.

Yet people, especially youngsters, tend to think of things they see in
the media as common.”

According to the narrative, excessive media coverage of tragic events
encourages impressionable people to act in a similar manner. This is
certainly not the first time such a case has been made.

A decade ago, there were allegations that extensive media coverage
prompted a rash of copycat, teen-couple suicide pacts. Using that
reasoning, you could blame Shakespeare for writing Romeo and Juliet.

In times of turmoil, it’s human nature to seek out a scapegoat.

Many are pointing fingers at the voluminous media coverage of the 1999
massacre at Colorado’s Columbine High School for encouraging and
motivating the recent shootings.

The problem is, schoolyard killings didn’t start with Columbine. A year
prior to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s rampage, 15-year-old Kip Kinkle
brought two guns to school in Oregon, killing two students and injuring
25 others others. This was after he had shot his parents to death the
day before.

A couple of months earlier, two teens, aged 11 and 13, killed four
students, one teacher and wounded 10 others at an Arkansas school in
what now is known as the Jonesboro Massacre. In fact, these types of
incidents have been a growing phenomenon for over a decade.

Rather than blame media for the latest rash of school shootings, there’s
a much more straightforward, albeit frightening, explanation. Classes
just started up again.

Contact criminologist John Martin of the University College of the
Fraser Valley. [email protected]