Category 2 - Shorter Reading: Read an Article of Your Choice

Spoiler alert for our year together: I read a lot of articles. If you see me on my phone while I'm eating lunch, chances are I'm reading something, not just mindlessly scrolling through updates.

This is a good habit for a Student of the World to get into because you will unwittingly encounter ideas and perspectives and situations which are completely outside your realm of experience. A good outlet to follow for this is a website called Longreads which posts longform journalism on so many different topics that you never would have thought about otherwise.

I read this article the other night called Targeted: A Family and the Quest to Stop the Next School Shooter. It was published on Oregon Live on June 24, 2018, and it follows the story of a family whose son was the subject of his school's "threat assessment investigation" due to his attire and his fascination with weapons, rather than any specific threat.

Photo from the above-linked article

There's obviously a lot more to this story than I could possibly capture in a short reflection, but a few things stood out to me.

First, they brought up the idea of this boy's clothing:

"It was easy to figure out why the teen’s attire worried people. Sanders’ signature piece of clothing was a big black trench coat.... 

Years ago, Mark gave Sanders the riding coat he picked up on a youthful adventure in Australia. Sanders loved the weight of the coat. As a person on the autism spectrum, he welcomed the heaviness. It provided comfort in a world that often overwhelmed him. He wore it no matter the weather....

Instead, they saw a symbol, another kid in a trench coat, whose hair could be a little greasy some days, who was blunt and impatient when he felt others weren’t following the rules. 

A kid who maybe fit a 'profile' that evoked the moment in American history that everyone remembers each time a school shooting makes the news: Columbine. The two angry young men who killed 13 people at their Colorado high school had worn long black dusters, and rumors flew that they were part of a 'Trench Coat Mafia.' While the lore around the trench coats was later debunked, it became a key part of the myth that surrounds the tragedy. Ever since, there has been inevitable unease about any male student viewed as a loner who wears a long dark coat." 

This reminded me of a book that I've admittedly never entirely read due to personal anxiety, but that I always put on suggested reading lists. Columbine by Dave Cullen is considered the authoritative investigation on the subject of that event. Many Lang teachers include this in their curriculum, including a good friend of mine. As I understand it, much of Cullen's investigation explored the aftermath of the incident, including the erroneous assumptions made by the media which became pervasive in the public lore. It's interesting to realize that decades later, even after they've been debunked, such assumptions are still very much in the public consciousness.

Another thing that struck me about this article was the fact that this student was on the autism spectrum. That adds a whole other level to the conversation. Was this student targeted because of behavior associated with his disorder (social difficulties, bluntness, obsessive interest in a subject, in this case weapons and video games)? I don't think anyone would admit to deliberately targeting him for his diagnosis. But it makes you wonder if our hysteria and fear sometimes cause us to unthinkingly jump to conclusions without seeing the big picture. Research has shown that there isn't a direct link between autism and violence, but sometimes it's the easy connections, even wrong ones, that take hold and become societal beliefs.

The family, and the author of the article who framed it this way, believe that the school's actions have harmed their son; they assert that the school's actions have "created a dropout."

While it is heartbreaking that this student may have been unfairly "accused" on unfounded fears rather than rational evidence, I also have to admit to understanding why students, parents, and schools feel the need to "be safe rather than sorry." When I was in school, pre-Columbine, school shootings were never even a possibility in our minds.

In 2018 we live in a different reality and I, as much as anybody, want to ensure that the people in charge are doing everything they can to keep us safe. But I think we always have to ask ourselves, at what cost? Where is the line between "rational measures of precaution and prevention" and "allowing security to run amok"? When does our precautionary fear lead to more harm than good? There was a great AP Lang Exam argument prompt about this a few years ago; maybe we'll try writing it this year.

I haven't really come to a conclusion, and I understand that school safety is rightfully a very sensitive issue, about which everyone has very strong opinions and anxieties. That's what I liked about this article. It addressed the subject from a different perspective and let you see a side you might not have considered before. The best way to become a more critical thinker is to surround yourself with ideas that you wouldn't otherwise have encountered.