"Their Protocol Doesn’t Help Things It Makes Things Worse"
June 25, 2018 2:58 AM   Subscribe

As the body count from school shootings has risen, school officials across the nation have been forced to consider versions of this question. Administrators use detailed protocols and checklists to examine the circumstances of students who may pose risks. The pressure to prevent the worst has grown as students have begged adults to make sure they aren't next to die. In a nation divided over gun control, school threat assessments offer another option: Find a way to control the student. From Targeted: A Family and the Quest to Stop the Next School Shooter by Bethany Barnes in The Oregonian
posted by chavenet (49 comments total) 34 users marked this as a favorite
 
I have nothing but the utmost respect for teachers and even some administrators over those teachers.

That being said, most of the people running our nation's public school systems shouldn't be trusted to run a goddamn lemonade stand.
posted by kuanes at 4:03 AM on June 25, 2018 [20 favorites]


If you want to create a school shooter, just follow this handy How To and persecute an innocent child until they snap. Poor kid, I just want to give him a hug.
posted by Jubey at 4:30 AM on June 25, 2018 [20 favorites]


My nephew, who is 16 and on the spectrum (seriously, has an IEP and an official diagnosis and everything) had the police come to his house at 11:30 PM on a school night, no warrant, beating on the front door and demanding to speak to him. His father, an attorney said "Er, nope. You may not speak to my minor son who has done nothing wrong nor may you enter my house without a warrant. Now, can I help you?" Meanwhile nephew was so scared he was hiding under his bed in his room. Turns out there had been rumors of school shooting threats that, no lie, shut down the school district. School apparently sent out the police to "round up the usual suspects" or whatever. Nephew made the list of "suspects" due to a months-previous exchange on instagram or snapchat or whatever, picture of nephew in his black trenchcoat, in which his his nerdy friends were "Dude, you're, like, Adam Lanza." (Sandy Hook) and he was "As if. He was lame. I'm Dylan Klebold -- the ORIGINAL trench coat mafia." (Columbine). Now, okay, that's got really bad optics but (a) it's funny and (b) it's completely teenaged male posturing for nerds and (c) it's the kind of black humor I would have said in high school.

Is it miserable for the children targetted? Indeed it is. I have nothing but sympathy for the family in the article, plus the great big handful of misery that is trying to prove a negative. Prove you're not a shooter. Prove you're not a threat. Prove that you are nonviolent. PROVE how you're not like those other school shooters who were loners and autistic and liked knives and guns, prove this while we have evidence of you being bullied (and did nothing to stop it despite our school's EXCELLENT ANTI BULLYING PROGRAM), prove this in the face of your ill-considered and unfiltered things that are, yes, funny but also deeply inappropriate.

When you are different, child, you must be very, very careful to seem normal and safe. Even though this is nearly impossible for you, you must be very, very careful to seem normal and safe or the police will come harass you over the slightest misstep because you are dangerous. Have Friends. Be Social. Fit In. Good luck with that, autistic boys.
posted by which_chick at 5:30 AM on June 25, 2018 [50 favorites]


I know that this is not an entirely novel observation at this point, but it's amazing how US institutions of various sorts grasp at everything and anything other than actual firearms restrictions. Like, students are leading a nationwide movement that specifically calls for better gun control, and the response is to profile the students like they're all little mass-murders waiting to happen. It's this insidious transformation of potential victims into potential villains that is especially enraging here.
posted by LMGM at 5:56 AM on June 25, 2018 [42 favorites]


Okay, we can be pretty sure that trench coats, not washing your hair every day and being interested in weapons are actually pretty common, and a lot of people on the autism spectrum can be a little more direct than is typical. And yet those people tend not to be school shooters!

What does predict school shooting? Huh, I wonder....could it be domestic violence, stalking women, misogyny? It's almost like the vast majority of mass shooters have some kind of history of violent misogyny, and that a kid who likes guns but has no history of misogyny is not, in fact, likely to be a school shooter.

But he looks sort of geeky, so why not profile him?
posted by Frowner at 6:15 AM on June 25, 2018 [38 favorites]


The week Sanders’ parents finally met with Parkrose Superintendent Karen Gray was the 19th anniversary of Columbine, a fact Gray made sure to emphasize in their meeting.

“The trench coat,” Gray stressed to them, “has become synonymous with terrorists in America.”

“If you drew a picture of a terrorist kid, that’s what they are wearing,” said Gray, according to records the family kept of the meeting. “The Columbine kids all wore trench coats.”


Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.

My god, this story makes me so angry, even in an anger-causing year.
posted by Frowner at 6:20 AM on June 25, 2018 [22 favorites]


What does predict school shooting? Huh, I wonder....could it be domestic violence, stalking women, misogyny? It's almost like the vast majority of mass shooters have some kind of history of violent misogyny, and that a kid who likes guns but has no history of misogyny is not, in fact, likely to be a school shooter.

I wonder if they have lists similar to the one Sanders was put on of all the students rumored to have committed sexual assault, or intimate partner violence, or who have vocally espoused bigotry...nah, who am I kidding. They probably angrily denounce those students and parents as wanting to besmirch the good names of upstanding youths with a bright future ahead of them. Those non-neurotypical kids, though? Probably give a big old shruggo and are all "eh, they're never going to be productive members of society, so fuck 'em."
posted by zombieflanders at 6:24 AM on June 25, 2018 [15 favorites]


This why the "mental health" solution to this problem is such a failed scapegoat. Usually when good intentioned people think of increasing mental health care to fix these issues they are thinking of their experience with a nice therapist or finding a medication that seemed to really help things.

Unfortunately when those of us who have been up front with how the "mental health care system" actually treats forced care or those it targets for "interventionist" treatments the utter lack of science or human decency involved is staggering. The people given the power to force "support" on people they identify as needed it are not providing any thing of the sort and are serving the interests mostly of people who are afraid of the mentally ill and want them "taken care of" as in disappeared from sight or forced to behave.

When I think "behavioral therapy" this is what I think... essentially measures to force conformance rather than measures to provide all the ACTUAL supports we know support and sustain mental wellness in populations which would be: Financial supports, housing security, free counseling, trauma informed care, food security, long term housing and finances to escape domestic violence, free education, living wages... etc etc etc etc etc.... we KNOW the top factors that increase violent behaviors in populations (even down to things like having slaughterhouses in the neighborhood) but somehow instead of actually enacting human focused policies informed by an understanding of human developmental needs across families and populations, intead we get pathologizing and criminalization of any deviation from the current biases about normality, and more oppression and removal of freedom, safety and respect for the already vulnerable or those targeted as different. These are forces already in place in what we call our "mental health system" which essentially is a tool to label the disenfranchised, the different, and the underserved as biologically different instead of identifying the ways the system fails to understand and serve human needs that range across spectrums. Ultimately psychology wielded by capitalists, classists, and patriarchal biases is little more than weapon to use against the vulnerable, a labelling system to call those harmed "them" vs us and to remove power and self determination from "them" and place it in the hands of those considered "normal" (as defined by those in power).
posted by xarnop at 6:58 AM on June 25, 2018 [16 favorites]


Great article, and I can't add much to the articulate discussion above (except, maybe, to add that "techies," which is the term we arts school people used for Stagecraft and Design majors, had to be extra careful about keeping under wraps any tools they took out of the shop).

An extra element of tragedy was not reported by the author until the very end of the article, for narrative purposes. (I don't have to announce a spoiler alert for a news article, do I?) The whole investigation was sparked by an innocent misunderstanding.
posted by kozad at 7:43 AM on June 25, 2018


Now, okay, that's got really bad optics but (a) it's funny and (b) it's completely teenaged male posturing for nerds and (c) it's the kind of black humor I would have said in high school.

Years ago, a friend's house was burned down by an arsonist, and the police suspected she had actually done it herself. One day she said to me on the phone, "It's obvious I didn't do it. I'd have done a much better job. If I'd burned it down, there'd be nothing but a smoking pit in the ground." I was like, "Sweetheart, you totally need to stop saying things like that, OK?"
posted by Orlop at 7:45 AM on June 25, 2018 [14 favorites]


Great article, and I can't add much to the articulate discussion above (except, maybe, to add that "techies," which is the term we arts school people used for Stagecraft and Design majors, had to be extra careful about keeping under wraps any tools they took out of the shop).

I played baritone saxophone in pep bands, and would occasionally haul it to university football games when they wanted a bari sax in the band. This was Autzen Stadium, which seats 50K. So there was always a police presence.

I'm 18, hauling my hunk of metal in a very large case, have some 'boner (trombonist) friends doing their typical 'boner humor nearby (thus the moniker), and I shout, "I could have a shotgun in here for all anyone knows!!!!"

Cop right behind me starts chortling. I hadn't seen him until he started chortling. I turned sheet white. "Uh, sorry, uh, it's not actually a gun... it's a saxophone... uh, um, if you want I can open it and show you..."
Cop: "Looooool no problem honey, have fun playing, go Ducks eh."

I doubt that would be reproduced today, 24 years later.
posted by fraula at 8:05 AM on June 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


Good God.

When I look back at at my circle of friends from high school I cannot imagine how badly things would have gone for us in this world. We were not a great collection of model students, but we were smart, non-violent and largely drug-free. Balance that against the sketchy wardrobes, odd hobbies, disinterest in mainstream activities, non-nuclear home lives and the odd bout of actual mental health issues and we'd have spent a lot of time in this process. And honestly by the "standards" outlined in this story (the best in Oregon?!?) we probably should have. We talked about a lot of violent stuff (role-playing games were the context, but context isn't always apparent) and we hung out away from most kids from school and we didn't bother explaining ourselves much and two guys had fathers that hunted a lot so there was reloading gear at their house and there was that time or two when one guy had to be locked up to address his schizophrenia and on and on.

But no one who knew any of us would have thought of us as dangerous, and I think that's because we were pretty happy. We had things to do, enough money to do much of what we wanted, and (most importantly) people to do it with. We weren't angry, we were just outside the system.

For this sort of thing to have a chance of working they need to separate the kids that are desperate from the ones that are simply different. As weird as some are, if they aren't alone and there's a real support system in place then that's all a school can hope for. This kid had an active, involved and loving family, it sounded like he was in regular contact with mental health people already for his autism issues, he had hobbies that his parents were aware of, there was nothing hidden in his life, and all this puts him about a mile ahead of most of his classmates.

I won't even comment on the fact that their protocol had no notion of its potential affect on the kid in the crosshairs. I still believe that education is a calling and most folks in it are there because they love and believe in kids, but stories like this just make me want to start profiling some of these "specialists".
posted by Cris E at 8:49 AM on June 25, 2018 [8 favorites]


While being prejudiced against trenchcoats or nerds who like video games is bad, this is what really stuck out for me in the article:
The report went on to say that Sanders had an “obvious” fascination with weapons and appeared to lack the healthy friendships expected of a boy his age. This, Mark and Elaine felt, was further evidence their son was being punished for who he is, a child on the autism spectrum.
Sanders' social isolation and fixated attention are both linked directly to his disability.

(Feeling too inarticulate this morning to expand clearly, but bouncing around in my head: ADA?! do people not understand disability? how is he supposed to just change?)
posted by jb at 9:00 AM on June 25, 2018 [5 favorites]


The whole "this kid is suspicious because he is isolated, let's isolate him even more" logic is horrible, but just a reminder that adults don't magically become wise and in fact carry their social prejudices with them their entire lives.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:04 AM on June 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


When I look back at at my circle of friends from high school I cannot imagine how badly things would have gone for us in this world.

No lie, my friends and I went from students to full-on suspects in ONE DAY after Columbine. A group of mostly straight-A kids but kind of gothy and nerdy, with very dark senses of humor. And yes, several of us wore trench coats/army surplus gear.

On Monday, we were trusted to basically run our own clubs and handle our own shit. On Wednesday, we were all in the principal's office facing suspension for ... general darkness and subversion, I guess.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:04 AM on June 25, 2018 [26 favorites]


This article brings up a lot for me. I was around 20 when Columbine happened, so the school shooting phenomena was not part of the script, but the fear/hatred of boys in trenchcoats predated that tragedy.

In middle school, I had exchanged threatening words with another boy, and a week later he showed up at school with his arm in a cast. Parents insisted that I be punished. When I was being lectured for this in the office, I asked if he had said I was responsible (I never laid a hand on him), and the principle said no, that he had broken his arm doing the long jump at a track meet. I asked why I was in trouble if there was no debate that I hadn't done anything, and they just kept repeating how upset parents were, and "but what if you had done something, what if you had."

I traded in the black trenchcoat when I was 15; it just seemed too juvenile and gloomy to me, so I started wearing a Harris Tweed long coat, affecting what would now probably be called a Wes Anderson look. My grandfather had recently passed away and I inherited it from him.

I got no end of shit for wearing that coat. I learned that the faculty at my school were convinced I was the school drug dealer, they kept saying "that coat is lined with dope!" I was bemused at this idea, like what volume of weed were they imagining I was carrying around with me? (The irony is that I was not bringing any weed into the school, just taking small quantities of weed out of the school, as I would regularly buy little bags from preppy kids in their jeeps at the end of the day, stuff it in my sock, and go home and smoke it. The coat never played a role).

I was regularly blamed for any act of theft or vandalism, in spite of a total lack of evidence (because I didn't do anything like that in school). When the real perpetrators were sometimes discovered later, no teacher ever said "sorry, our mistake." Instead it was always something like "well, you got lucky this time."

I was told I was dangerous and scary and threatening, odd because I was also told I was weak and too effeminate (this is all by faculty, not touching on anything said or done by other students.)

In one example, two kids I didn't know or talk to got into a fight while the teacher was out of the room. When the teacher got back and broke it up, I was sent down to the office along with them, and sent home early. My whole highschool experience was just surreal. The faculty received regular complaints about my appearance from other parents, and treated me like a disciplinary case as a result.

I tried really hard to be clean cut and not let my anxiety or resentment show. I even cleaned up my appearance, wesring stupid preppy clothes, and signed up for electives. It didn't matter to them, they did not let me complete my senior year and I never graduated.

Some friends of my parents suggested they file a lawsuit, but my parents just weren't that sophisticated. They always blamed me, assuming that I must have been provoking this response.

When Columbine happened and the "trenchcoat mafia" was all over the news, a friend said something like "wow, good thing you weren't in HS when that happened, they would have really come down on you." In hindsight, it just would have accelerated the process, and I would have escaped highschool earlier.

I feel terrible for the kid in this article, I obviously relate strongly to his situation. I hope his parents are able to recognize that this situation isn't a failing of his, but of the faculty and school system. I hope he is able to get a GED and start classes at a 2 year school, or any environment where he is supported.

I'm glad I have a therapy appointment today!
posted by ethical_caligula at 9:27 AM on June 25, 2018 [25 favorites]


So this is my school district. My son just finished up fourth grade and he has been on track to go to Parkrose High School.

Dr. Gray announced her resignation several months ago, presumably for reasons unrelated to this story, but who knows. I know next to nothing about her successor, but I've been mentally formulating a letter to him and the school board for a few weeks about some other matters related to their approach to kids with IEPs and behavioral challenges in our particular elementary school. Or maybe I'll just show up at a school board meeting later this summer and vent. On the one hand, I understand the need to maintain a safe learning environment. On the other, even at the elementary school level they're talking about certain boys (it's always boys, and often boys with IEPs) "targeting" and "harassing" other kids. Many of these are the kids who are still learning social behaviors, many of which are on the spectrum. Tap a girl on the shoulder so you can talk to her? You're harassing her. We're sorry you don't understand social cues. You're still harassing her.

Several of my son's friends and classmates are wonderful and socially awkward children. I spent an hour a week last year in the classroom helping them out with reading comprehension, and already I can see a couple of them potentially going the trench coat route, as I did in college. My school district's criteria for identifying threats is completely misguided, and I intend to let this new superintendent know. Otherwise, we'll be reading this article again in a few more years.

I imagine that the district office today is busily dealing with the fallout of this article, or will be soon. The potential silver lining that I see is that this new guy might actually make some much-needed changes.
posted by vverse23 at 9:34 AM on June 25, 2018 [10 favorites]


This, from the kid who "accused" Sanders, is where I went from frustrated anger to full-on rage and despair:
The Oregonian/OregonLive tracked down the student who was overheard in the library. At the first mention of Sanders, the student said, “He’s a great guy!”

The student was stunned to learn someone had reported something he said. He didn’t remember the library conversation. No one, he said, had ever asked him about it.

The name Shooter, he said, was a cruel label other kids put on Sanders because they thought he was weird and didn’t really know him.

“I think it is total stereotype and I think it is horrible,” the student said. “I never ever want to associate him with that.”

He said he knew Sanders as someone who is kind and strong enough in the face of social pressures to have his own interests. Sanders, he said, knows a ton about WW II planes, a history the student said he had been fascinated to hear.

“I had no idea because one day he was just gone. That really sucks. I feel really, really bad,” the student said. “I thought I could trust Parkrose.”
posted by Flannery Culp at 9:41 AM on June 25, 2018 [11 favorites]


Here's a checklist that covers most school shooters:

- Access to guns
- Threats to use the guns

That's it.

When to look for those things is an open question, but I can't think of any of the school shooters in the news over the past decade who didn't openly brag about their future deeds. Laws that take guns away from people that make threats to use guns would be a start.
posted by runcibleshaw at 10:25 AM on June 25, 2018 [11 favorites]


Okay, we can be pretty sure that trench coats, not washing your hair every day and being interested in weapons are actually pretty common

I'm just going to point out right here that this was fucking me in high school, except I was a girl and more interested in knives and swords, and my mother shared this superintendent's phobia of anything remotely alt-looking so that even if I had gotten my hands on a trench coat--I thought they looked cool!--it would have been immediately confiscated.

Jesus.

The worst thing is that in my informal experience, it's not uncommon for kids on the spectrum who are getting bullied, male and female, to decide that if adults won't do anything about it that hitting the bullies is the best way to make it stop. It's not, but who knows that at fourteen?

(And I mean, this kid is sixteen, sure. He's also male, and like. I have a lot of complicated thoughts about the intersection of gender and autism, but the way that we socialize boys does not serve autistic boys well in some crucial ways, and this is one of them: the general societal pressure on girls to manage social skills effectively, not use violence, and mask anger combined with girls on the spectrum being more likely to find a friend or two who help is huge.

My experience is that less in the way of social and emotional skills are expected out of autistic men and boys than women and girls of the same age, and autistic men and boys are a little more likely to wind up isolated and confused and frustrated about it. Negotiating that alongside the particular kinds of double standards and toxic messages aimed at men, with far less in the way of social support for men and boys trying to figure out how to be. When you're trying to figure out how to negotiate a complicated situation and half of what you see around you suggests that punching is the answer, but only punching from the right sort of people, it gets... confusing. And of course that also goes for girls--fuck knows that's where I picked up a lot of my ideas about what might work to make people leave me the hell alone as a middle and early high schooler!--but again, the gender policing experience is going to, well, beat that idea out of you. It's not... the same, I think, for boys.)

Anyway. If you don't know how to leverage social systems to make bullies leave you the fuck alone any other way, and you're enough of a marginal kind of kid that your friends can't work it out either, assuming you have them, trying to kick up a big aggressive threat seems like a decent solution to the problem. Especially if you can cloak yourself in an armor of protective coloration and maybe scare the people bothering you for what's weird about you (your hair, your oversized clothing, your strange fashion choices) into leaving you alone completely.

God. The details. The fish named explosion, for example; I wasn't much younger than he is when I got to name my first pet, a hamster I named Pike--after the weapon, I'd proudly insist, not the fish. I liked history, and I was interested in all the strange shapes of blades that people had invented over the centuries; not many people knew what a pike even was.

And all of this intersects with the desire to characterize Klebold and Harris as bullied children lashing back against their peers in such a dangerous way. That characterization is popular in the first place so that people don't have to grapple with what it means to have parented a child who believes that other people are less than--and so that the general public doesn't have to grapple with the reality of what warning signs look like, because they tend to crop up first as offenses against such convenient targets.

I just... I don't know what to do about it, except for the obvious: minimize gun violence so the death counts drop. But let's be real: school shootings in the US have been happening since before I was born, and Columbine happened when I was in the third fucking grade. It's hard to have faith that anyone will give a shit about that obvious harm reduction factor sometimes.
posted by sciatrix at 10:39 AM on June 25, 2018 [21 favorites]


Harris and Klebold didn't wear trench coats. Who knew? Actually, we have known for a long time.
That, among countless other troublesome little facts about Columbine cloud this story and so many like it. It is so...easy to slide into a narrative reinforced by tacking blame onto vague ideas about evil and bullies.
There is so much out there about that shooting, and the countless since, that echo waht sciatrix has said. It is easier to blame those external, amorphous concepts that will presumably respond to Thoughts and Prayers (TM) rather than accept that there are specifc things we could do (massive gun reform, ahem), actual supports (see xarnop's post), and addressing structural issues of toxic masculinity (uh, where do we start).
posted by oflinkey at 10:49 AM on June 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


I was told I was dangerous and scary and threatening,...drive up long side them on the freeway and have a shootout

The proper answer when this line of questioning starts is to not start quoting the suprisingly high survivability of low velocity handgun rounds due to car door metal construction. Mainly the change in velocty of the 2 cars in the shoot out per the remembered NPR spot 2-3 hours before this comes up as a topic.

Just saying.
posted by rough ashlar at 1:06 PM on June 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


"Dude, you're, like, Adam Lanza." (Sandy Hook) and he was "As if. He was lame. I'm Dylan Klebold -- the ORIGINAL trench coat mafia." (Columbine). Now, okay, that's got really bad optics but (a) it's funny and (b) it's completely teenaged male posturing for nerds and (c) it's the kind of black humor I would have said in high school.

To me, that kind of statement is a valid reason for concern. Saying things like that isn't funny, and it's not normal. Just like how rape jokes normalize rape culture, this kind of "humor" normalizes the idea that those kids were renegades. That is something that needs to be educated out of all kids, neurotypical or not, period.

/former elementary school teacher's perspective, poorly articulated, I am sorry about the way in which your nephew was treated and think that parents should have been contacted first vs police coming to the door
posted by Hermione Granger at 3:06 PM on June 25, 2018 [12 favorites]


Okay sure. This kid was treated terribly.

But what else is there right now? Most schools don't have threat assessment protocols and when teachers have very valid concerns about kids, there's nothing to do with those concerns. Nothing. Recently, a kid all my colleagues and I worried about used a hunting knife to murder a stranger in the town library. This was a kid we ALL felt was dangerous and there was literally nothing we could do about it. And he killed someone.

So from my perspective, of course what happened to this kid was awful and lessons need to be learned from his story so these protocols are improved, but the reality is that for US teachers--just as Parkland teachers said--there are kids we KNOW could become very dangerous and we just have to live with this, because there are no mechanisms to use this information to help people.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 4:12 PM on June 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


When I was in HS we'd make bombs in the creak by dropping aluminum foil balls into a jar of bleach. And then someone blew a huge hole in a sound wall along the freeway with a pipe bomb. Not wanting to end up being questioned by the FBI we decide maybe setting off homemade bombs in the creek was not the best look and stopped. But in today's atmosphere we'd be lucky to be only suspended from HS.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 4:29 PM on June 25, 2018


"School officials had told Mark the police report described a house with 30 knives. Did the report explain that more than a dozen were pocket knives that Sanders’ grandfather had given him? Were they counting the pirate swords, one for each of them, that had been part of their yearly tradition of dressing up for a pirate festival? Were they being judged just for being gun owners? Most of the firearms were antique, handed down from family in Colorado and Oklahoma."

Fuck trench coats, I would be (am) alarmed by the weapons, number of weapons, elevated interest in weapons. I have 3 brothers and 10 male cousins: None of them were given 12 pocket knives by a relative. "Most" of the guns are antiques.

This reads to me as toxic. In my not be that much more toxic than an average American family, what do I know, but come on, you need 5 pirate swords to dress up for a festival?
posted by vunder at 4:49 PM on June 25, 2018


Fuck trench coats, I would be (am) alarmed by the weapons, number of weapons, elevated interest in weapons. I have 3 brothers and 10 male cousins: None of them were given 12 pocket knives by a relative. "Most" of the guns are antiques.

A good friend of mine has a giant box o' knives and has always been into collecting them. Some people are just...into knives. For no particular reason, certainly not a sinister one. I've asked him why the knives and he, normally a very articulate person, pretty much says, "I dunno, they're cool". This is not a stabby, violent person - quite the opposite.

In fact, he has a machete. I was all, "WHY for the love of god do you have a machete" and then we needed to chop down some weed trees, and it turns out that a machete is very good for cutting down weed trees.

With pocket knives, you can - as I now know! - collect all kinds of different ones. Multitool ones, damascene steel ones, ones with dyed bone handles, special fancy wood handle ones, vintage ones. If you like to collect things, pocket knives are actually a good thing to collect - they don't need to be super expensive, they're sort of vaguely useful and there are many, many variants. A kid collecting pocket knives seems entirely explicable to me.

As a society we are so weird about knives. I used to be able to bring a pocket knife to school - lots of kids did - and it was a totally normal thing to do, not a stabby deviant thing. Now you carry around a multitool with a useful blade and people think you're a criminal weirdo, at least until they want to borrow it to open a heavyweight box or something.

Also, if everyone dresses as a pirate, you need a pirate sword for each participant. What good is dressing up as a pirate with no cutlass?
posted by Frowner at 5:35 PM on June 25, 2018 [12 favorites]


I mean, no doubt there's some deep, like, psychosexual issue that you could uncover with enough therapy, but that's true of almost everything everyone one does - use a psychoanalytic lens and everyone looks very, very ill.
posted by Frowner at 5:36 PM on June 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


This reminds me of a good friend of mine who was once called into the principal's office to see if he "knew anything about" a fight that happened at lunchtime. None of the kids involved were friends of his. He didn't even have that lunch period! He was (still is) a very large and imposing person though, and he liked (still likes) to wear a trench coat when it's trench coat weather.

Augh, I hate everything.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:04 PM on June 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


Oh yeah, and then there was that kid who was a stagehand in the drama club who was overheard making a crappy joke (you know, the kind of crappy joke teenagers make) about how if he was going to do a school shooting, he'd show up wearing all black. Guess what stagehands wear? A few days later after the gossip mill had had a bit of time to work, another kid noticed the black clothes in his backpack that he was going to wear at drama club after school. Kid ended up getting expelled.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:11 PM on June 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


I actually have *thinks about it* three machetes. I have a big one, a little one, and one that a friend bought me as a present. They're useful for yardwork and camping stuff and it's fun to chop stuff with 'em. I'm not about to go lopping off anybody's limbs.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:21 PM on June 25, 2018 [5 favorites]


Now you carry around a multitool with a useful blade and people think you're a criminal weirdo, at least until they want to borrow it to open a heavyweight box or something.

Fuck, I know, right? Two years ago my partner whipped their flip knife out to cut wrapping paper at a white elephant party at my work, and everyone still stares at them like they're dangerous and possibly unhinged. They were working at a pawn shop at the time; everyone carried them because everyone was constantly having to open packages.

One of my kids whipped out a knife recently to cut a gel a little more efficiently in lab, and tell you the truth I was glad he had it. (It's not really great safety protocol, but in the context of the lab class it was more or less fine as long as he washed it afterwards.) It made an annoying task that students tend to mangle really easy, having a flip knife on hand. But you'd have thought this kid was a serial killer in the making from the spooked reactions some of his classmates had, at least until they noticed how unbothered I was. He used the knife for the task he'd pulled it out for--they are handy things!--and then immediately put it away. End of.

This particular kid never bothered anyone, was engaged and worked hard on class with me, listened to boundaries both from me and from his classmates, and generally did not appear to be a threat risk. I can think of other students I have taught who I would be concerned about carrying a knife. But it's not the knife that is really the root of my concern; it's the likelihood that the student might decide to harm someone else that would drive my concern. And knives qua knives... aren't really things that factor into those decisions for me.

Like, I did ARMA--Rennaissance Martial Arts, of the flavor that are concerned the SCA are too, well, anachronistic in college. I have met an awful lot of people who are into swords and knives and martial arts and history, and the object of their nerdery isn't really the thing that determines whether or not I felt safe. The way they treated me and others, and the way they responded to boundaries, did. The one student I have had who truly terrified me never raised a hand to me; that didn't stop him from deeply worrying me or making me very uncomfortable around him.

We need to train teachers on what actual threats look like, and we need to provide real support and resources for handling those kids. As it is, these programs plus predictably lackluster funding for tangible and evidence based support winds up further isolating children and adolescents who may or may not actually be threats to anyone.
posted by sciatrix at 6:42 PM on June 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


I have 3 brothers and 10 male cousins: None of them were given 12 pocket knives by a relative.

The photo spread that shows Sanders's collection of knives along with similar collections of Nerf weapons, wood cutouts of guns, and toy spaceships is instructive. The implication, if you are familiar with autism, is that the knives are part of a "restrictive and repetitive" interest. I wonder if any of them were multi-tools; I can imagine a kid with autism wanting to tell you how THIS Swiss army knife has a corkscrew, and THIS one has a pre-1982 corkscrew, which is oriented to the left, and THIS one has a nail file which can also be used as a fire starter...

I found the whole article kind of upsetting. It's really hard for kids with disabilities to get appropriate support in school. In particular, I don't understand how "representatives from local police agencies, the county mental health office, a child welfare agency and the county developmental disabilities office" all had a meeting with the school team and decided that the child did need to be randomly searched and placed under "discreet supervision" but did NOT need a crisis removal or a more restrictive educational setting or any kind of mental health intervention or support related to his autism although now that you mention it, Dad, would he like to go to night school? I would be reeeeal interested to review the school's paperwork on this. Which they won't release. Even to the parents. Although they definitely did nothing wrong. Uh-huh.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 6:51 PM on June 25, 2018 [10 favorites]


Okay sure. This kid was treated terribly. But what else is there right now?

Most obviously there are surely better ways to determine who gets on The List than by looking at what people wear and what catty teenagers say about them. As Frowner noted above, like looking for boys who beat up girls or harass them (ugh I have to say this) more severely than "usual."
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:55 PM on June 25, 2018 [7 favorites]


To me, that kind of statement is a valid reason for concern. Saying things like that isn't funny, and it's not normal. Just like how rape jokes normalize rape culture, this kind of "humor" normalizes the idea that those kids were renegades. That is something that needs to be educated out of all kids, neurotypical or not, period.

And... hrm. I've been thinking about this and turning it around in my head all day, because, like... when I hang out with teenagers? This kind of thing is totally normal in that it's common, especially as teenagers push at boundaries and work out what is and isn't a good way to socially interact with others, and particularly as much of teenage social behavior is peer-driven. That does not mean that it should be encouraged or even that it shouldn't be actively discouraged. But "this teenager voiced a statement that was problematic and should be educated out of kids" and "this teenager is abnormal and a potential threat to others" are very, very different things to me. I work with slightly older students that this kid--I TA college students--but I enjoy teenagers and often chat back and forth with them, and I see stuff like this among young adults and teenagers who do not appear to be nascent threats all the time.

It's not too hard to discourage, either, whether you're an older peer or an authority figure: you can go "what's funny about that?" and make them explain it, whereupon it gets awkward for them real fast; or you can say "that isn't funny to me" and explain why, which lets you open up a discussion that you can draw them out on; or you can simply say "in this space, we don't make jokes like that" and be done with it. It isn't very different from dealing with adults who make jokes in poor taste, except that teenagers are very conscious of their newly-formed dignity. If you can make an effort to respect that dignity, even when they are being ridiculous, you can often get a lot farther with them.

Teenagers are basically nearly-fully-formed people with terrible impulse control and very little life experience under their belt: this kind of thing is pretty common. The trick is to encourage them to empathize with other opinions and socialize with different kinds of people as part of learning how to be an adult, and singling a teenager out on basis of "too alt" has the unfortunate side effect of making them less likely to spot actual predators within their subcultures as they flock together against the adults who clearly just don't understand, man!

And, unfortunately, literally every subculture has its predators, so this kind of misinformation gives great cover for both alt-culture and mainstream predators: the first go "we have to stand together against those mainstream jerks, no matter what!" as an excuse for harmful behavior, while the second blame threatening and harmful behavior on those scary alt-culture renegades while casually flying under the radar. It's not helpful.
posted by sciatrix at 6:59 PM on June 25, 2018 [15 favorites]


And yeah, I carry a pocket knife at all times. A pocket multitool actually, but I carried a knife instead for years until I found a multitool with a pocket clip and a decent blade on it. Damn thing comes in handy constantly, to the point where if it's not in my pocket I'm sure to find myself groping for it sooner rather than later. I still have a bunch of other knives and multitools lying around from before I found the one that I carry now, and I have a larger fixed-blade knife for camping stuff. I dunno, they're useful? I don't even intentionally collect them and I probably have half a dozen knives, not including the aforementioned trio of machetes, plus whatever pointy and sharp-edged and blunt, heavy objects are in my carpentry kit. Any carpenter basically has a full set of burglary tools and murder weapons in their truck at all times.

I mean, I'm a pacifist or damn near it. I'm pretty solidly anti-gun—I don't know if I'd go for a full ban, but given a choice between a full ban and the status quo I'd vote to melt every last one of 'em down. I haven't been in a fight since seventh grade. It's not necessarily sinister to own a bunch of knives.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:06 PM on June 25, 2018 [9 favorites]


Agreed that teenagers make shitty jokes sometimes. There's this thing called gallows humor? Teens use it too, especially when they're unhappy, the way people do. It's not hard to be unhappy when you don't fit in at school, when the teachers don't like you and the other kids are obnoxious toward you and it's boring and it's arbitrary and you feel like most days you aren't even learning anything and yet you're required to get up five days a week and stand in the dark of morning in the middle of the winter waiting for the bus to take you somewhere you hate, and you're not allowed to quit and they don't even pay you. Being a kid can suck, and that's even if you are smart and neurotypical and come from a supportive family with plenty of resources and love for you. And of course you haven't totally figured out what's appropriate and what's not, because you're a child for chrissakes. So teens make stupid jokes sometimes, dark jokes, inappropriate jokes. It's normal.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:12 PM on June 25, 2018 [8 favorites]


(Also, let's not lie: even among adults, gallows humor often comes across poorly to people who don't share the particular stresses or traumas of the people using it to cope. For example, the joking in the first Deadpool film reads very differently to people who have experienced survivors joking to each other about shared trauma versus people who.... haven't, in my experience. That's not necessarily a good thing or a bad one, it just sort of... is.

And I don't always think it's possible or even necessarily good to insist that all jokes and all communication happen in good taste. There's a reason dark humor is so popular, and that's because it's a common and honestly helpful coping mechanism, particularly in the short term. But that's a very, very different rant.)
posted by sciatrix at 7:19 PM on June 25, 2018 [5 favorites]


I definitely make jokes when I'm alone with my closest friends (like the guy in the trenchcoat above) that I would never, ever make in other company. When you're with someone who has known you long and deeply and who you feel utterly safe with, you can say things that would be wildly inappropriate for anyone who knows you less well than that. Not because you're a different person, but because you don't have to wonder whether what you're about to say is going to be taken the wrong way or not—when you have a shared context with somebody that reaches back to childhood, you know that they know who you are, that your words aren't going to hurt.

Kids have lots of friendships like that. Teenagers too, often. It's less and less common as we get older, that kind of unconditional friendship. But kids and teenagers operate on that wavelength pretty regularly, and aren't always so careful to codeswitch when they find themselves in mixed company. That kid up above who was joking about a school shooting was among friends, a pack of other drama weirdos whose mode of humor often involved trying to outdo each other with the outrageousness of their statements. Peurile, but that's teens for you sometimes.

He didn't take into account that other kids were listening, or that they might pass on his joke to the authorities, or that the authorities might take it out of context. And he got expelled over it.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:33 PM on June 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


I guess I'm the only one in awe of Sander's dad's naivete.
posted by notreally at 8:07 PM on June 25, 2018


Preach the lab pocketknife, sciatrix!

My dad was into pocket knives and I grew up interested in them. Late 80's/early 90's, my folks convinced my elementary school teachers to allow me to have an 'xacto' blade (miniature boxcutter). In college, my small collection got me into a bunch of trouble, but nothing ultimately came of it.

Very early 2000s I was teaching a 'biotech outreach' thing where we invited highschool science classes to come in and do some basic molecular biology demonstration. One time we had a rural class that had bussed for a couple of days - there was one girl who had a nice folder in the 'condom pocket' of her jeans. I noticed and chatted about how useful a blade is in a working lab, especially if you end up being the "fixer" and/ or had to deal with most of the deliveries dropping off throughout the day.

After the lunch break, she had it stowed out of sight - I mentioned it and she said that some people were super weirded out and security got involved.

Last year, I had a date who squicked and immediately left after finding out that I carry a (albeit assisted open) folding knife.

One of my coworkers is secretly apprehensive of me carrying, but another (and his best friend) teases him about his apprehension at every opportunity.

*edit: c'mon, even EtBr isn't that bad, sciatrix...
posted by porpoise at 8:25 PM on June 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


The main thing I would worry about, using a pocket knife for labwork, is DNA contamination.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 8:34 PM on June 25, 2018


Yep. This was a training lab and if I remember right the gel in question was a protein gel that was being trimmed for a Western, so there wasn't too much risk of contamination in the fallouts. (Also, only half of them worked anyway for reasons that probably had more to do with either me or the extraction process than anything else, which helped.)
posted by sciatrix at 8:46 PM on June 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


DNA contamination.

That's what the twice-weekly made 10% bleach solution and kimwipes are for =D

S30V laughs at bleach.

Yeah, once polyacrylamide has set (and a run gone through it), the neurotoxicity danger is next to nill.

I love all you guys!
posted by porpoise at 8:57 PM on June 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


I guess I'm the only one in awe of Sander's dad's naivete

I cringed at a few points in his dealings with the school. Storming into the VP's office for an unscheduled venting session in particular was not a good look. I suspect his son's tendency to be "blunt and impatient when he felt others weren’t following the rules" is not idiopathic.

But naive about his son being a threat? No, I don't think so. His predictions were all entirely correct: the school had no credible evidence, didn't know that the nickname "Shooter" was a cruel taunt, and didn't follow their own protocols around specific threats, and the only child hurt as a result was Sanders, who began to worry so much he burst a few blood vessels and is now attending night school, where he gets roughly a third as much instruction as other students.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 11:03 PM on June 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


Re: the knife thing

My husband carries a folding knife. Different people over the years have made comments about how weird it was...until they needed something opened or cut. Then they mysteriously started carrying their own knives as well.

And my husband has started to have quite a collection, through no effort of his own. It seems to be the go-to gift for the <$15 family gift exchange for whoever draws his name.
posted by LizBoBiz at 1:19 AM on June 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


I was 12 when Columbine happened. My small lily white town school administrations’ response was to ban the wearing of “gang symbols” I guess because there had also been a lot of news about gangs in schools in LA and they thought the “trenchcoat mafia” was a gang? There were no gangs or anyone wearing gang symbols for at least 100 miles in any direction. Several weeks later I was in a play in my English class where I played a Russian grandmother. My “costume” was a beige chiffon scarf tied around my chin. After English I ran to gym class with the scarf still on and immediately got dragged from the locker room to the principal’s office by my gym teacher for “wearing a gang symbol—a ‘bandana.’” If you’re very confused it’s because I haven’t yet mentioned that I was one of the only brown kids in this lily white town. I was only sent home for the day and told not to wear the scarf again. I imagine it could’ve been worse if I was a brown boy instead of a girl.

I think that we can’t count on anything but that both the adults and other kids will use this panic to target the kids who are “different” on whatever axis who they would’ve targeted anyway.
posted by Waiting for Pierce Inverarity at 5:59 AM on June 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


I think they were just trying to drive the kid out of school so they'd feel better. Mission accomplished! I wonder if Sanders started wearing parkas, every single weapon in the house was put in storage elsewhere and he didn't do drama any more, they would have backed off. But probably not. Once you have a Reputation, your life is ruined.

He didn't take into account that other kids were listening, or that they might pass on his joke to the authorities, or that the authorities might take it out of context. And he got expelled over it.

Yup. If you make the slightest joke or mistake or anything these days, you've ruined your life forever once the mob comes for you. If anyone hears you, god forbid.

I think that we can’t count on anything but that both the adults and other kids will use this panic to target the kids who are “different” on whatever axis who they would’ve targeted anyway.

Yup. It all boils down to "You're different and you're weird and that makes me uncomfortable and I hate you so I have to get rid of you." Every single fucking time.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:22 AM on June 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


Okay sure. This kid was treated terribly. But what else is there right now?

Not doing anything because it's all security theatre until y'all get serious about gun control.

You can't prevent school shootings as long as you can still get AR-15s on every street corner.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:56 PM on June 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


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