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Coral Gables High murder: Metal detectors, lockers, backpacks, civility. Where does the answer lie?
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Tuesday, September 15, 2009, will remain for two families a date that will forever recall violence, tragedy, despair and the destruction of life.
For the family of Juan Carlos Rivera, 17, who was stabbed to death, apparently in a scuffle over a girl, it will be remembered as the day a loving, well-adjusted young man was senselessly murdered. Juan Carlos, the son of Cuban physicians, one of whom still lives on the island and the other of whom lives in Spain, had been sent to live with his grandmother and uncle (also a physician) in Miami, in the hopes that he would have a brighter future.
Instead, less than a year after he arrived, and only a few weeks into his first full school year at Coral Gables High School (a school that does not immediately conjure up images of violence, in one of the wealthiest parts of Miami-Dade), he lost all chance of having any kind of future at all--bright or otherwise. It now appears he probably would have had a brighter future in Cuba, after all.
For the family of Andy Rodriguez, 17, charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing late Tuesday, it will be remembered as the day when resorting to violence ended all hope for the teenager to grow up and lead a normal, productive life. He faces a possible life sentence for the charges.
Naturally the tragedy created a media frenzy, as persistent television stations hounded the victim's family outside their own home and honed cameras in the sky again and again on Rivera's lifeless body, draped in a white sheet, in the courtyard of the high school. Parents pounded their fists on the school gates, demanding their children be released (although the suspect was already in custody and the incident was targeted against the victim, with no one else injured).
And, just as naturally, the media circus surrounding the terrible events has brought up, over and over, the questions: Are our children safe at school? If they're not, where are they safe? What is the solution to the problem? Metal detectors? Removing lockers? Banning backpacks? Censoring television, movies and video games?
Thursday--two days after the murder--six students in Miami-Dade County public schools were arrested on weapons charges, at four different high schools and two middle schools. Whether the arrests were due to extra vigilance among staff, unusual willingness for students to report one another in the wake of the tragedy, or whether the weapons were brought out of a fear or preparation for violence brought on by the murder, is not known. The weapons siezed included knives, a box cutter, a Taser, and a loaded .38 revolver. One of the arrested students was reported to police by his father, who had seen him putting a knife in his backpack as he left for school.
As inevitably happens after an event of this nature, metal detectors are pondered as a means to resolving the problem. Currently, Miami-Dade County schools and Broward County schools do not have metal detectors, though principals often have handheld metal detectors that can be used if someone is suspected of carrying a weapon.
Installing metal detectors at the entrances of every school countywide would be an enormous expense. Using them thoroughly and effectively would make bringing students into school in the morning a very long, tedious process. Moreover, they have not proven to stop violence within schools. Those wishing to use weapons tend to be very creative. Furthermore, it would create a prison-like atmosphere for many students who already feel like they are in "jail" at school. It should be remembered that children more often than not live up to the expectations that their parents, teachers and authority figures in general: if they are treated like criminals, there are more than a few who will begin to believe that is what they are expected to be, and consequently, what they are.
In an article in the Miami Herald this morning, the disappearing phenomenom of hallway lockers in public schools in South Florida is discussed. Though multiple reasons for the vanishing lockers are cited in the article, including fewer textbooks being carried (due to fewer classes per day with block scheduling and increased technology within classrooms), and the fact that mild winters in South Florida mean that students do not need to stash heavy winter coats like they do in other regions, one reason brought up is security. Removing lockers, they say, removes places for students to hide weapons.
While the necessity of lockers in high schools is certainly debatable (my school, for instance, has them, but only a handful of students actually use them), they do not seem to pose a great security risk. Backpacks are far more dangerous culprits in that regard. Most weapons found on school campuses are found inside backpacks or in pockets--indeed, a weapon is of limited utility if it is in a locker. And while a student could indeed hide a weapon in a locker, he or she has to bring that weapon in somehow--and it is usually in a pocket or a backpack. In fact, some years ago, some schools required backpacks to be transparent, for that very reason; other schools have banned backpacks altogether. The high school where I work does ban backpacks the last week of school every year, when textbooks have already been turned in anyway and students have no reasonable excuse for needing them, to prevent children from bringing in anything that could be used to perpetrate "senior pranks" and other end-of-the-year stunts that have been so popular among high school students since long before I was in high school myself.
In some respects, banning backpacks is not such a terrible idea, particularly in block schedule schools where students have no moe than four classes a day and rarely have to carry more than a couple of textbooks with them. But then one has to ask whether girls' purses (which are often very large) are to be banned as well, and if not, is that fair, and does that show partiality, an assumption that boys are more likely to bring in weapons or plan acts of violence than girls?
That could be a deadly assumption, given the shooting death of 15-year-old Amanda Collette at the hands of a female friend, Teah Wimberly, also 15, at Broward County's Dillard Performing Arts Magnet School, on November 12, 2008. (Wimberly was subsequently charged with first-degree murder.)
At the end of the day, we have to face the facts. Metal detectors will not prevent every weapon or act of violence perpetrated by teenagers or children on school grounds, let alone off school grounds. Doing away with lockers will do little to prevent students from bringing weapons to school. Banning backpacks may make it a bit more complicated, but will not likely prevent a child who is determined to bring in a weapon from doing so. And we cannot have the children coming to school naked. Nor can we perform routine searches on students as if they were prison inmates rather than children going to school.
It is very tempting to blame the violence on television, movies and video games for children acting out violently or resorting to violence to solve problems or disputes, and indeed, there is some case to be made for that. It is an ironic paradox that the United States has such a culture that parents who are horrified at the idea of their children seeing frontal nudity in a film do not think twice of letting their kids watch TV shows and movies where people blow one another to smithereens with machine guns, and play video games where the object is to kill as many people (often with graphic blood and gore) as possible. For some reason, the prudishness of American culture does not seem to extend to graphic violence, and America's youth does seem to be immune to any sort of shock or revolt from witnessing it. It is telling, as noted in a Miami Herald editorial, that one student who witnessed the stabbing at Coral Gables High remarked, "It was just like watching a movie."
Yet censorship of television, films and video games is not really the answer either--though we should certainly ask ourselves why such constant violence is necessary to provide "entertainment." Many children (and adults) regularly watch violent movies, shows and/or play violent video games, and never display any violent tendencies or view violence as a solution to problems or disagreements.
But perhaps that constant intake of violence by children who lack structure, supervision and positive inflouences in their lives can be a part of what detaches them from reality and shuts them off to empathy, foresight and reason.
While Andy Rodriguez's mother defends her son, saying that he acted in self-defense, and his grandmother claims that he had never been in trouble, was hard-working and had been "picked on for days" by the victim, police records show a slightly different version of the story. It is true that Rodriguez does not have a criminal record, but their records do indicate a troubled home life. Police units have been called to their home at least nine times since February, for incidents including a "large family fight with knives," a dispute with neighbors, help needed with a psychiatrict patient, and relatives on drugs fighting over a car. Apparently the most recent time police had been called to their home was last weekend.
None of those incidents necessarily indicate that Andy Rodriguez himself was a bad or violent individual. But they do indicate a deeply troubled family with some very real problems. Violent behaviors, drug problems and mental illness within one family...any one of those would alone be enough to cause some psychological damage to a child; combined, they could create a suffering child lacking positive influences or role models--and perhaps one with a limited understanding of empathy and a limited grip on reality.
The mother's claim of self-defense does not match police records of the incident, according to witness reports. The two boys had apparently exchanged looks and/or words the day before. The next day, Andy Rodriguez brought a knife with him to school. The mother says that the victim was choking her son and that he stabbed him in self-defense, but this story is not backed up by witnesses' testimony. And the very fact that he had the knife with him to use in self-defense indicates that the suspect went to school that morning with the idea in his mind that he might engage in violence that day--whether or not he truly had the intention of murdering Juan Carlos Rivera.
While the mother's argument that the murder was actually self-defense could just be a mother's desperate hope that her son's life is not over, or a blind will not to believe that her son is capable of such a cold, heinous act, it could also be construed as displaying an unwillingness to take responsibility for one's actions...a role model of dishonesty and blaming others, if you will. If the mother's and grandmother's attitudes extend to other situations, and have done so throughout Andy's childhood and adolescence, it could indicate that he has grown up seeing those around him pass off personal responsibility onto others.
Tragedies such as the one that occurred at Coral Gables High this week are always shocking, and almost never anticipated. They prove that violence can erupt at the places and times they are least expected. Security measures such as metal detectors and banning backpacks are, essentially, placebos--designed to make parents and citizens feel more secure, but without addressing the root of the problem. Nor is violence on television or movies really the root of the problem--though children's (and even adults') intense interest in such forms of "entertainment" should be questioned, and examined. In most cases, violent tendencies start in the home, and children most often demonstrate in their behavior outside the home and in their interactions with others what they have grown up seeing around them. When one's youth is pervaded by various social ills and poor examples of conflict resolution, it does not necessarily mean that one will become a killer--but in combination with other factors, one would be naive to suggest it does not contribute.
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