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| CLINTON ON SCHOOL VIOLENCE | |
 April 22, 1999 
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President Clinton spent some time Thursday talking about school violence with students at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, VA. In addition, Betty Ann Bowser talks with four award-winning teachers about school violence after a background report on the aftermath of the Littleton school shootings.
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THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Mr. Porter. I think all of There is really nothing more important than keeping our And I think we have to ask ourselves some pretty hard questions here: What are the responsibilities of students themselves? What are the responsibilities of schools? What are the responsibilities of parents? What is the role of the larger culture here? Is there a sense in which the fact that all of you are exposed to much higher levels of violence through television, through video games, that you can actually figure out how to make bombs on the Internet -- does that make a difference? Does it make these kinds of things more likely to happen? What are our responsibilities? But before I open it to you, I'd just like to make one other comment.
I think, particularly for young people who may be quite frightened as
a result of this, or for parents who may wonder about the safety of
schools, I think it's worth restating two or three basic things. First
of all, on balance, our schools are still the safest place our kids
can be in most communities under most or all circumstances. And I think it's important that the young people of our country know
this and that the parents know this, that they should remember we --
as horrible as this is, we have seen once again what is basically decent
and good about America. And we should remember that most schools are
more nearly represented by the kind of conversation we're having around
here today than by the horrible incident we saw in Colorado. I also would like to say -- let me just mention one other thing. I
think it's important because of the action in which we're involved in
Kosovo today. We don't know all the facts about what happened in Littleton,
but one of the things that's come out of this that's really made an
impression on me is that the young men who were involved in this horrible
act apparently felt that they were subject to ridicule and ostracism
and they were kind of social outcasts at the school. But their reaction
to it was to find someone else to look down on. And, apparently, they
were very prejudiced against African Americans and Hispanics, and observed
Adolf Hitler's birthday, and otherwise reacted to that. And I think that's a larger problem we really have to fight, because you look around this room -- of course, we're in perhaps the most diverse school district in America today -- but this is a great opportunity for us, as long as we lift other people up, and recognize the inherent dignity and worth of all individuals and all ethnic, religious and cultural groups. And so I think that's another point that needs to be made here --
they had the wrong reaction to the fact that they were dissed. Hey,
look, everybody gets dissed sometime in life. Even the President --
(laughter) -- sometimes, especially the President. Goodness knows, adults have enough to say about this, so Who wants the mike? THE PRESIDENT: Yes, pass the mike. MS. FINNEY: Mr. President, I would like for one of my Now, I have some very good mediators in this building. Unfortunately,
I could not bring them all in here and I was very limited. So I got
some of my veterans. And I would like to hear from Zori (phonetic) first.
Zori is one of our veterans who is a senior who will be going off to
college, and I will miss her. MS. FINNEY: I'm sorry, I'm Mrs. Finney, the peer Q Hello, my name is Tomika Barber (phonetic). A mediation works where there are two students -- sometimes even more -- Ms. Finney gets a complaint. It can come from an administrator; it can come from students, themselves; teachers. And we have a circle table where we sit, two mediators, and let's say, for example, myself and Zori, and we sit at the table and the people that's are getting mediated, they come in and they're seated down also. We have four basic ground rules that we tell them that they agree to follow. One is no name-calling, no interruptions, to be honest, and to work hard to solve the problem. And we get into the mediation that way. And we ask who would like to go first. We hear both sides of the story. We then recount it to them, asking them, well, this is what you're saying to us. And once we come to agreement that this is what happened with the problem, the situation, then they try to, themselves, find a solution for it. And we, as mediators, we help them find solutions for their problem. And they have an option of going through with this, following through, being able to calm down, sit down and talk this problem out with us. And it's a good program. THE PRESIDENT: I wanted to ask this question -- because I honestly believe that young people can help each other -- particularly at this age -- maybe more than adults can, maybe in some cases, more than their parents can, if things get out of hand. But what I want to ask you is, how do they get there, if they're really angry? What if they're too embarrassed about what they think is being done to them to talk about it? Do they get there only when they come to you, or do other kids say, hey, these two people are having trouble, or these two groups are having trouble. You need to go to them. Can you all talk to me about that? STUDENT: Yes, Mr. President. My name's Jenny Dennis. And one of the things that Zori did say was that the problem in Littleton appeared to be anger that had built up, and the action that was taken could have been prevented, I think. But one of the things that we do do, in mediation, is we let the students vent out their problems. Each side gets a turn to talk, and sometimes there can be confrontations right at the table, but Ms. Finney and an administrator are there to take care of the problem. And I've noticed a lot of times that the more they talk about the situation, the more the real story comes out. It's hearsay that goes by, and the venting out, letting them talk about it, and talk to each other really helps them to get the anger out that it appears it built up in these few teenagers in Littleton.
STUDENT: Another good thing that this school has is, we THE PRESIDENT: So you're saying if they had a hotline, STUDENT: No, they work together -- they work together. THE PRESIDENT: That's what I mean. In addition to. So, if someone were afraid, they could call the hotline and say, here's what I think is going on. STUDENT: Yes. And it's confidential, you just -- THE PRESIDENT: Okay. Suppose I call the hotline and say, listen, I
just talked to one of these people, and they're STUDENT: Peer mediation can be contacted with that. Because you have given us a name, or Mr. Porter can talk to them or something. THE PRESIDENT: I think this is good. That's wonderful. STUDENT: Hello. I'm a peer mediator, and what's so wonderful about
peer mediation is that peers can talk to other peers without them being
punished. So it's more like they feel more confident when they come
to peer mediation, because you don't have to worry about getting punished,
or teachers bringing attitudes toward you or anything, you feel more
comfortable. STUDENT: Mr. President, as you noted earlier, this is a very diverse school. And one of the problems in Littleton was perhaps that that school was not as diverse, and the people who were feeling ridiculed felt that they maybe didn't have a place to go, like a group that they fit in with. And here at T.C. Williams, being so diverse, everyone really has a group they can be with. There really is no way a person cannot have a group they can go to, because there are so many different types of people here at T.C. Williams. It's really stunning, if you look down the halls how many different people we have, how many cliques, how many social groups, racial groups, national groups. It's really amazing.
THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I think that's a very brave thing for you to say. But there's no doubt that those people are very good people, that they have a good school, that they thought things were rocking along -- which is why -- that's why what you said I think is very important, that there needs to be some organized outlet that people can access privately. Because nearly everybody in America believes this couldn't happen in their school. So I think having this way to call and say, this is going on -- we all need warning systems. STUDENT: But, see, the problem is -- what I feel is, I feel the administrators knew about this because a lot of people say, like, on the news and stuff, the students seemed to know about this crew already and seemed to not have done nothing about it. They didn't bother to prevent it -- because they had a page in the yearbook for this crew and everything already. THE PRESIDENT: Yes, but the point I'm trying to make is Let me just say what I was going to say. One of the things that all
kids are taught by their parents, you know, is this old "sticks
and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me."
That ain't true, if you'll let me use bad grammar. (Laughter.) That's
not true, because a lot of this stuff starts with words, you know? And I think that somehow, maybe we all -- particularly in a culture
that desensitizes people to violence, if they're
That's something that really struck me when I read these accounts, is how alienated these young people were because these athletes were saying bad things about them or who else was saying bad things about them. They were different. But, then, they had to look for somebody to feel bad about. That's why I like this peer mediation thing, because it tends to take the sting out of words at the earliest possible time. But people really still get hurt so badly by what is said about them. And somehow, we've got to make people more immune to that.Go ahead. STUDENT: What really bothers me is the students, the two students having so many bombs and just having those booby -- I was wondering where they got it. And it seems to me that they're really into this Internet, having their own Web page. I think that they got their sources -- I mean, how to make them -- out of the Internet. I mean, what is our government doing to prevent this information, dangerous information, you know, so that they don't make bombs and they don't blow people up and they don't hurt people? THE PRESIDENT: You know, when the bomb blew up I mean, one of the things that's wonderful about the Internet is kind
of its capacity for infinite expansion. And that's one of the great
things about it. I don't know how many teachers here now get research
papers where all the sources are off the Internet. But it's great. That's
the good news. The bad news is it's almost impossible to find this stuff,
sort it out and figure out whether it's illegal or not, and do something
about it. It's not easy. I don't want to pretend that it's easy. If you look at how many thousands and thousands of pages, Web pages, are being added to the Internet every day, it's the fastest growing organism in human history for communications. And it presents us a great challenge. STUDENT: Hello. My name is Sean Sinota (phonetic). I can say that, whose responsibility is it, really, over the Internet? Because it would be very hard for the government to control it, and then you get into the ideas of free press and, you know, free speech. But what about the parents, what about the teachers, you know? These kids don't just have these computers in their own house and doing their own thing. There should be people watching them. It's not your responsibility, or anybody else in the government's responsibility to keep kids off it. It all comes back to home. It all comes back to school. It all comes back to the community. And I think that if people really wanted to have things like bombs taken off the Internet, then it would have to come from back home, come from people, come from houses, come from parents that are upset with their kids looking at how to make bombs and how to shoot guns. Not from the government, but it has to come from people that can -- they can cry all they want about how kids are looking at it, but it all really comes from yourself. Just keep your own kids off of it, and keep yourself off of it. And eventually, that's the way to destroy it. THE PRESIDENT: Well, I do think it's important that in The only thing I want to -- to go back to what you said about the
Internet -- I agree with that. You don't want me to choke off the Internet.
It's one of the greatest things that ever happened. But we've got to
figure out a way to apply the ordinary restrictions of the criminal
law in that context, just like you would any other. I think that's all
you're saying, is we need to -- if somebody's doing something illegal
there, we should -- but the problem is, how do you -- how do parents
limit their children's access to something they shouldn't be able to
see? But I'm sympathetic with you. We don't want to destroy what's great about the Internet. It's revolutionizing the American economy; it's opening up opportunities for people, opening up educational opportunities; bringing whole libraries to homes of people who could never afford them. I mean, it's doing a lot of good. But we've got to figure out a way to deal with these downside risks. STUDENT: My name's Erica Brisker (phonetic), and in terms of talking about parents and things, as much as I can see, people that I can perceive about this, that administrators and students knew what was going on, or knew that there was -- THE PRESIDENT: A problem. STUDENT: -- things happening, that there was a problem. MS. FINNEY: I also want to say, Mr. President, that there was a young man that was on the news the other day saying that he knew these two guys. And he also said that he heard them planning this last year. If this young man had had the initiative to tell someone he trusts in the school, or his parents -- I mean, we don't know now, but I would hope these kids here, sitting here, if they have a peer or they hear about it, that they can get in touch with someone. And someone -- it would be someone like me, their administrators, a supporter, and we will take that time to try to get those students in, just to see what's going on. And I know I have very sympathetic mediators, especially THE PRESIDENT: I want to hear from the students, but I do think that one of the lessons that will come out of this incident, no matter what the facts turn out to be, is that there has to be a hotline, there has to be some sort of early warning system; there has to be a climate in which children feel, young people feel that they can ring the alarm bell when they see something like this. STUDENT: Hi, Mr. President, my name is Cindy. THE PRESIDENT: Oh, yes, you've been waiting a long time -- she's been waiting longer than anybody else. (Laughter.) STUDENT: Coming from a different background, I'm Hispanic, and I go every day to maybe -- my two parents that work, and they work hard. But I think that what we're missing are morals. I think that we should be taught correctly. And even though they're not home, they know I'm doing right. Thus, it should also go to the administration in the schools. There should be more discipline toward the students. THE PRESIDENT: I agree with that. But what happens if I agree with what you say. But I also think in addition to what you say, we've got to have some warning system to protect everybody else. Go ahead.
STUDENT: Also, Mr. President, I think that one thing that my parents taught me is that, like a tree, you form it when it's little, and how you form it when it's little, it comes up right. So it should all start when you're a little person. Don't start to discipline your children like when you're 15. You can't do nothing at that age. It should start at home when the children are starting to grow -- maybe at the age of three, four, when they're learning their morals, when they're learning what's right and what's wrong. In that way, that tree won't be bended, that tree will be straight. THE PRESIDENT: Go ahead. STUDENT: I just had a quick question for you. A lot of THE PRESIDENT: Well, I hope so. You know, it's interesting -- all of these instances of school violence, even though they occurred in schools which some had a lot of racial diversity, some had not much racial diversity, but they all occurred away from inner-city areas with very high unemployment and high general crime rates. They tended to occur more in small towns and rural areas or suburbs, where you normally would not think that society itself falling apart around you would happen. Now, part of that could be the absence of the kind of
And I was wondering, I mean, how much of the schools THE PRESIDENT: Well, the truth is that some do and some don't. More and more, I think, schools are doing that. Some have economic constraints; some may not think they need them. But I believe that -- I can tell you this. One of the things I have tried to do is to make it possible for schools to have more trained personnel and more options to serve children, and have a whole variety of different needs. And I suspect that one positive thing that will come out of this awful incident is that schools all over America today will be doing an inventory of what kinds of supports they have for their children. And they will -- I expect, just because we're doing this, your principal and your teachers will be flooded with inquiries over the next two weeks about what you have done here; about the peer mediation thing, about the -- what kind of social workers you have, what kind of psychologist do you have, what kind of support do you have -- because I think we will see everybody taking a serious look at this. I'm glad you made that point, though, because there are people who have genuine emotional problems that require more professional, intense, longer-term help than even the peer mediators can provide. So I think that's an important point you make. STUDENT: Hi, my name's Jannelle Mitchell (phonetic) and And I think that it's going to need immediate action, for kids in other places that don't have the resources that we do, so they can feel safe when they go to school. I mean, it's a real tragedy that something like this had to happen before real action is done. And I want to know, when is the government, when are you going to do something for the other students out there? THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, you should know that we have provided, already, funds -- last year -- for a lot of these services for schools. And the Attorney General and the Secretary of Education put out a booklet that basically cited the best practices in all the schools. We don't -- the federal government doesn't run this high school. You know, you have a local school board, and most of the money comes from the state. We give some money, so -- but what we did, we sent out a handbook, which basically had the best practices, for early warning signals, for preventive programs. for the kinds of things that you do here. And we've provided a lot of support to help schools to have the services they need to make them more safe. Now, in the next few days I'm going to send another piece of legislation up to the Congress to do even more of this. But for it to work, people have to use the resources that are there, and implement the systems that are there, and it has to be done in every school in the country. Let me just say -- this is kind of along the lines of your question -- when I called the County Commission in Littleton, Colorado, the woman who's in charge of the local county government there, she was very, I thought, quite brave, considering it was in the middle of this crisis. The school hadn't even been -- not all the children had been taken out yet. And she said, well, if this can happen here, it can happen anywhere, and maybe, finally, every school in America will do what is necessary to try to prevent this. So we have -- last year we had the first White House conference in history on school safety. We have sent things to every school in America and we have -- and I said, I'm going to send another bill this week, or in the next few days, to do more. But it has to -- every school has to realize that if you want to be safe you have to be prepared, just like you are here. STUDENT: Hi. I'm a junior here at T.C. Williams. I just want to say that there's really no way where you can point out to a racial group or a social class that they're the ones responsible. I think we should -- parents, teachers, the government, the students, themselves -- we should all work together to try to prevent this thing. Many things we try -- many times we forget that a small crack can cause a big problem. We tend to ignore students, parents, teachers and so forth. We tend to ignore -- there are things which occur in life, or things that you hear when you're walking down the hallway and we just think nothing of it. But many things shape an individual -- influence from parents, what
they have taught you when you were little; influence from your teachers;
the actions which your friends made. But, overall, as an individual
you should be shaped by all these actions and everything that has gone
around you to make the right decision and know when to act on something. But I think it all depends -- it goes back to all of us STUDENT: My name is Anna, and I just wanted to say that one of the greatest things about the hotline is that it's anonymous. And I think oftentimes students are more tuned into other students. As connected as teachers and the community can be, it's very student-to-student relationships, where they can pick up on things that are going on. And I think a lot of times students don't come forward if they're
suspicious of things because they're afraid of the STUDENT: Mr. President, I also think that racism should THE PRESIDENT: Great. STUDENT: My name is Ryan. I was just going to say the So I think high schoolers everywhere just need to be more considerate and sensitive to other's feelings, because I mean, it really will take a long while to change the mentality of, really saying, that, okay, words won't really affect the way I feel. But in the meantime, I think being more considerate and just accepting people for who they are, like we do here at T.C., will hopefully eliminate some of the animosity. THE PRESIDENT: I must say, these things you say to me And the trick is to convince people that it's good to be And also, it's very important -- another reason I like this hotline and I like what you said is that it's very hard to be 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 years old; and if you are very lonely and very alienated and you feel you don't belong with anybody or anything, and then all of a sudden, one or two other people come along and they're just like you, and then you find something on the Internet that you can read that you can relate to, and then things begin to spin out of control. And I think what you said about reaching out to people who seem to be alone and have nobody to care about them. I think that's very, very important as well. I think that you know it a lot better than I do. But as old as I am, I can still remember, it was -- I had some pretty tough times when I was 13, 14, 15, 16 years old -- and I had a very fortunate life. You realize how hard you have to work to keep from getting into patterns that will be destructive throughout life where people feel that they only count when they're in a group, that then they're opposed to somebody else, they can look down on somebody else. It is the curse of human society throughout the world. Go ahead. You two, and then -- this young man hasn't STUDENT: Back to what you were saying about -- you said earlier about desensitizing our society. It seems like at this point, the children, the younger people still are more vulnerable to influence -- they're a lot more desensitized than maybe like 20 years ago. And I think the media really does need to take more responsibility for that, because the best-sellers in the box office these days are movies which have the most people killed. You know, like -- in the trailer, you see, oh, those people are dying, and the violence, and we see on the news, it seems like all the news is bad news. So I think because of that, the value of a human life has gone down. And that's why you see kids who think maybe they wouldn't understand the impact of what they really did when they went into school that day, or any other of the seven cases of school violence. THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Let me say this -- I really respect all of you very much to have said that this is a matter of personal responsibility, family responsibility, and you don't want to blame the culture. I respect you for saying that -- I don't want to blame the movies or blame the video games; what you've said and how you've talked with your mother and everything. But I think you have to recognize -- let me just say, for example,
when I was your age, if anything, the racism was more pronounced, the
social hierarchies in the schools were dramatic. If you were between
those who were in and those who were out, people fought regularly on
the school grounds and they were vicious to each other and -- but you
didn't have as much gun violence. So the only thing I'm saying is, I think it's important not to oversimplify this. And I hate it when people blame someone else and don't take responsibility for what they did, but I don't think we can be blind to the fact that there are more opportunities and there is a greater openness to taking violent action on the part of alienated people today than there was 20 or 30 years ago. And I think the experience that these children have before, maybe
-- maybe even when they're very young, before they form proper barriers
in life about what's right, what's wrong, what can or can't be done,
makes them quite vulnerable. THE PRESIDENT: So how do you think we should deal with that? STUDENT: I really think that people should be more careful of what
they say and use -- like when they're angry, there are more positive
ways of dealing with the anger than saying bad things to other people,
or screaming. There are healthier ways to deal with your anger than
just going out and threatening people because they're totally mad at
them, or sitting there and brooding over it. THE PRESIDENT: Good for you. Let me say, just generally, I don't think -- if all of you who have participated in this conflict resolution thing -- maybe you've seen enough of this in other students to know this -- but I can tell you from having lived a lot more years, this is a big problem later in life, too. Sometimes it's a bigger problem for men than for women because of the cultural sort of preconceptions of our society. If you don't learn to talk about your feelings when you're young, and you don't have a constructive outlet for it, it just gets harder and harder and harder as you get older. And we're talking today about avoiding terrible tragedy. But we ought to talk just a minute about having a good life. You know, most people won't do anything really terrible and most people will have some sort of life, but if you want to have a good life you have to have some constructive outlet for your feelings. And that's one thing that I really like about this whole So this is not just -- I mean, I know we're here to talk STUDENT: My name's Kelly Catrone (phonetic), and I just want to say that I think we also need to take a look at how easy it was for these boys in Colorado to get these guns. And I know we already have a waiting period on how long you can get guns, or whatever, but I think we need to take some other action to make regulations on weapons and other guns, so that they don't fall into the hands of the wrong people, and this sort of thing doesn't happen again. THE PRESIDENT: There is no other country in the world But I have -- every little thing I've tried to do, from MS. HARMON: I was just going to say, we're running a THE PRESIDENT: Yes. STUDENT: We are one of the most free countries in the We have to be careful that we ensure people's security without running high school like a prison system. We have to find a way where we can ensure people's safety without at the same time treating young people like second-class citizens. And I'm really worried that in the wake of a disaster like this, then the first thing people are going to say is, oh, they're kids, they're rights don't matter, you can just take them away -- take away their freedom of speech, take away their freedom to be a person. And I just hope that that doesn't happen. THE PRESIDENT: First, I think that's a point well taken. You mentioned school uniforms -- let me tell you the position I took on that. I spent some time in Long Beach, California, which is the third biggest school district in California, which means it's huge. And it's the biggest school district that early introduced the school uniform policy -- not applied to high schoolers, for obvious reasons. But they did it in part because when the junior high schoolers had uniforms -- which were basically just two-color outfits they wore every day -- it distinguished them from the gangs, which created a safety problem. And it made all the kids safe. But they found, interestingly enough, that kids from upper-income as well as lower-income families did better in those very troubling years where you're moving right into your teenage years. And it lowered dropouts, it increased attendance, it reduced discipline problems. It worked fine. What we tried to do was to say if the community decided they wanted to do it, then we would help them. And we've seen it happen a lot. Now, my only question in this regard, in the order question you asked -- and, again, I think it's very important that we not rust to judgment in Littleton. Those people are still grieving; they are still heartbroken. We do not have the facts there. It is very important that none of us make judgments about that now. But we can make judgments about how we want all schools to run. But one of the things that struck me there was this whole black trenchcoat deal, and whether or not -- if the hotline, if they'd had a hotline, and whether or not you had this kind of stuff there -- whether the school administrators should have been able to say, we're not going to have a school uniform policy, but we'll have a non-provocative dress code policy. Is that too much of an infringement on individual liberty? We can't answer that question. You've raised a good question. But let me just give you the other side of it. And you have to decide, in every case, whether it's an infringement on liberty or it's like going through a metal detector at an airport. I don't know how many times, before I became President, I was just traveling around like all the rest of us, how many times I went through a metal detector at an airport, and I set it off because of my belt buckle, or the money clip in my pants, or whatever, so I had to turn around, take it all out, go back in, blah blah blah. Well, when all this started, people said, well, is this going to be an infringement on our liberty, right? And then people saw planes hijacked and blown up, and they said, please infringe my liberty a little bit -- (laughter) -- so that no one felt -- I say, nearly no one felt that it was an undue infringement on our liberty. I'll give you another maybe what you think is a harder case, motorcycle helmet laws. You'll say, I ought to have a right to split my head open if I want. But that's not entirely true, because if I hit you and you split your head open, and you wouldn't have if you'd had your helmet on, then I and society are supporting you, in a way. So these questions -- I am glad you made the point, but STUDENT: My name is Lauren Losanto (phonetic), and, Mr. President, your wife, Mrs. Clinton, knows what she's talking about. It takes a whole village to raise people. And if we all -- as a community, and a nation, and everything in a world -- if everyone just looks out for everyone else's kids, including their own, good things are going to happen. And Mrs. Clinton just knows what she's talking about, I think. THE PRESIDENT: I agree with that. Thank you. I think that's very important, that -- one of you asked me what I was going to do. I think that the import of what everybody said, all of you said today, is that we all have responsibilities here. And that all these children are our children, and we all have responsibility. Who's next? MS. HARMON: I'm sorry to have to say this, but the THE PRESIDENT: You guys have got to get on the buses, MS. HARMON: Yes, coming up anyhow. We're very happy that all the students could participate today, and we're so glad that you shared your thoughts in the candid way that you did. So thank you very much. And especially thank you to President Clinton for coming here and sharing, and listening to us as well. We're delighted to have you here. THE PRESIDENT: Let me just say this -- I know we've got to sign off.
First, you were terrific, and I thank you. I thank you for being honest.
I thank you for being forthright. Thank you. |
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