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A look at how youth became risky business
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April 8, 2001
Our coverage of the shootings at Santana and Granite Hills won't reach Simpsonian proportions anytime soon. For those keeping score, in the month of March the words "Santana" and "shooting" appeared in 208 Union-Tribune stories; "Granite Hills" and "shooting" in 48. Some of those tales, moreover, graced the sports pages. It's heartening to note that the overwhelming majority of shots fired by teens are fired on basketball courts and golf courses. Still, I know what you're thinking: More? Well, yes. "Young Lives at Risk" was reported and edited after the twin tragedies of Santana and Granite Hills. But, no, this series is not really about these crimes. We are not focusing on those aberrations, terrible as they are. We are focusing on ordinary teens and their lives, stressful as they can be.
Dear diary: I hate youMark Sauer's story, which starts on this page, is a perfect example. While California's teens have been committing fewer and fewer armed crimes, they live in a nation that is awash in arms.When kids do commit violent crimes, noted Josh Sugarman, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, they rarely launch apocalyptic assaults on schools. Instead, he said, they commonly engage in "run-of-the-mill" murders and suicides. "For America's youth and teens," he told Sauer, "a Columbine occurs every day, except that the killing is spread across the entire nation." Does popular culture encourage -- or even celebrate -- simple, explosive "solutions" to tangled, emotionally fraught problems? Should we worry when a teen like Santana suspect Charles "Andy" Williams is entranced by Linkin Park's "In The End"? I kept everything inside, the rapcore group preaches, and even though I tried it all fell apart. Peek into any adolescent's diary and you're liable to find an equally self-absorbed passage. So much melodrama is washed ashore on the typical teen's surging hormonal tides, it can be difficult to see the drama before it becomes a tragedy. While it appears that the culture caters to teens -- in film, fashion, music -- this is an illusion. The culture caters to consumers. But it's difficult to buy your way out of most serious problems, especially on a teen's allowance or minimum-wage salary. So some adolescents are buffeted, emotionally and even physically, by parents and bullies. In a mobile society, some kids never feel at home. Some teens escape into illegal drugs; others are legally drugged or "medicated"; still others are over-medicated. From the Golden Rule and the sporting figures who constitute the gold standard of a society fixated on celebrities, boys absorb conflicting messages about the "manly" way to handle conflict. Love your enemy? Or crush him?
Opening nightWe hope the stories in this series are original and thought-provoking, even if the themes are familiar. Even in the 16th century, the opening night audience at "Romeo and Juliet" was not surprised to see obnoxious, overwrought, weapon-wielding adolescents. There have always been troubled teens, because there have always been troubled societies.More? Yes. There always will be.
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 © Copyright 2001 Union-Tribune Publishing Co. |
The other day, I asked The San Diego Union-Tribune's electronic archives for every tale mentioning both "O.J." and "murder." Our search engine sputtered, backfired and nearly threw a rod before coughing up 1,835 stories.