By Leah Shoberg
When a tragedy such as this hits America, in a nice western state, in a quiet little town, we always ask ourselves the same question: “Could it happen to us?” That’s a good question. I’m sure that the people of Littleton asked themselves the same when the last school shooting occurred, in March of 1998, in Jonesboro, Ark.
The newspapers and the media have torn this story apart, and made it to be the most talked about crime of the decade. Attempting to get into the heads of the killers and their families, (and failing terribly), the media have resorted to making the lives of the two killers out to be one big conspiracy against the world. Video tapes of the gunmen from six months ago, photographs of them at the prom, anything that will catch the public eye, have been released. Rather then being a time for grieving, the media has made it into a time of prying and questioning of the survivors. I mean, do any of you see a pattern emerging here? This is the fifth, the FIFTH school shooting since October of 1997. What is it that we’re missing?
Could it be the parents? The media claims that it should all be blamed on the parents, for not properly raising their children, for not communicating enough with their children. Because, as you all know, children that aren’t over the age of twenty-five, are incapable of making decisions on their own….(note: sarcasm.)
Or could it be the school? I mean, since those teachers and other employees of the school are in the company of those children for seven to eight hours a day, five days a week, should they be responsible for the choices of the students? It is, of course, their job to teach the students what they need to know to get along in the real world, they do get paid for it.
Maybe it was their peers. Pressure to be the coolest, the best, to push yourself to be better, not for the sake of success, but for the sake of being accepted. To be, not who you truly are, but the person everyone expects you to be. After sixteen or seventeen years of that…….. Well, everyone has their breaking point.
Or was it the media? Making every tragic thing out to be some type of an elaborate, terror-invoking conspiracy that, for some reason, is justified through the media with its powerful words and influences? How is it that in the last two years, every time something like this occurs, we all look for someone to blame, someone to point the big pointer-finger of justice at, and condemn them for the crime? Can’t the country see that it’s not just one person or one group that is to blame? That it is everyone who has ever come in contact with anyone else that is to blame.
We are ALL to blame. One small thoughtless word or action from one person, could set off a huge chain reaction of influence. For some reason, parents, schools, even society, out there, have failed to teach their children tolerance and acceptance of people who are different. We, as individuals, need to listen to what we say, and think about what we do. That’s how careless, thoughtless things like this happen.
Because no one is paying attention.