Why Schools?

Virginia Tech, occurring near the anniversary of Columbine and other school shootings, brings back a lot of ghosts. These gun massacres do not always happen at schools - they happen at post offices (bestowing upon us a new definition for "postal"), malls and other workplaces. But the schools have a different ring to them - the victims seem to have an added layer of innocence, and we are fascinated how the perpetrators could be so twisted at such a young age.

School is where the winnow starts, it is the first imposition of the American caste system. The popular kids form their cliques, the rebels form their gangs, and some people are left out. The outcasts do not understand, encounter rejection, ridicule and humiliation. School is where the humiliation begins.

Add, then, the Dirty Harry lesson: guns solve problems, vengence can be yours for a fistfull of dollars and a dolop of revengeful rage. Injustice meets its maker, and you escape responsibility for your actions by putting the final bullet in your brain. Guns blaze in primetime throughout the week, and all the cop regret over the inevitable result doesn't bring the victims - those people who have humiliated you all your life - back to life.

As life goes on, some find a niche with friends and family combined to community, some create a personae that does not rely on the acceptance of others. Still, the outcasts suffer throughout life, always insecure, often self-reviled, never happy. Society finds ways to rub it in, from portraits of beautiful families on a coffeehouse wall in Indianapolis' Broad Ripple district to the heroes of all our television and film stories, constant reminders that you're not one of us, you're not okay.

Those of us who don't quite fit, aren't quite cool enough occasionally luck into friendships with people who recognize talents, compassion, enough virtue to sustain love and support from others over a lifetime. Some people have even formed communities to love and support unconditionally, to realize the blessings of a benign universe in the pursuit of personal bliss. Still, some outcasts never make it in, and they resent their exclusion, their only reward for not succumbing to revenge or suicide comes from sad, dreary lives of quiet degradation.