The
article, “Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings,” written by Katherine
S. Newman, starts off with a story of a school on any ordinary day. The story, staring off from the students just
going about their day as your everyday students shifts quickly into something
nobody could have expected. The peace
that the story started off with was quickly interrupted by a student firing
rounds at his peers. Sadly, the
unexpectedness of this happening is a reality that is hard to grasp. At any moment, something tragic like this can
occur in a place where you should expect to be safe and free of harm.
The article then goes into asking
the question many people would like to find an answer to: How could something like this happen? Communities are left with many questions that
cannot be easily answered, such as, who is to blame, how can this be prevented,
and will it happen again. I do not think
that there is one exact answer to any of these questions. There are far too many factors to
consider. Some feel that this instances
occur because the perpetrator has some sort of psychological issues. Others blame the media, feeling that violent
video games, movies, and music cause people to act out. Many also think that this happens because the
culprit does not feel socially accepted at school, or emotionally accepted at
home.
Although these all may play a part
in why rampage violence happens, it may also have to do with the committers
seeing how much attention is brought forward from previous cases of rampage
violence. Acts of violence, such as rampage violence, get
exposed all over the internet and news stations, attracting attention from all
over to the tragedy that had occurred.
Maybe those seeking attention are aware that these acts of violence are
capable of attracting such wide schemes of attention, even though it is so
negative.
The article, “Mass murder, shooting sprees and
rampage violence: Research roundup”, written by John Wihbey, discusses the sad
reality that is, much knowledge is not known about why rampage violence
occurs. The article stated, “Though much
speculation is offered in the media immediately afterward, scholars often note
the limits of existing knowledge”.
Because not much is known, it is extremely hard to find patterns. I think that this is a good reason to start
going into schools and teaching administrations and staff what to do when an incident
like this occurs, since it is not something that can easily be prevented.
Resources:
Whibey, John.
“Mass murder, shooting sprees and rampage violence: Research roundup”. 2014.
Web.
Newman, Katherine. “Rampage: The Social Roots Of School Shootings”. New York. 2004.
Pages 3-73. Web.
Perhaps media plays a different role in rampage shootings than what is normally thought. Instead of violence in media causing youth to imitate what they see, maybe the knowledge that their actions would be widely disseminated gives kids who are socially rejected a chance to garner attention.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, Newman's article contains a quote from one of the shooters who explicitly states that he thought committing a shooting would make him seem "tough" to his peers.
However, it is difficult to determine whether the desire for media attention is itself a form of imitation. After all, shooters only know about the ability of the media to spread news of a shooting by watching TV. It may prove difficult to determine whether a shooting results from a desire for fame or an imitation of a real-life event. Learning about real-world violence as opposed to video games could also provide potential shooters with a justification to do what they may have been unsure of before.
In Kupchik, we learned that the school is perhaps the safest place a student can be in; there is less of a chance to be murdered in school than it is to be murdered on the streets. This fact is brought up again because school rampage shootings are so rare that it is difficult to see a pattern and form a hypothesis on why they occur.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you in that it is indeed difficult to gauge the main perpetuator, and Newman does an in-depth run-through of possible relationships. Out of all the things you've listed (violence in media, social frustration,) and reviewing all the scientific research regarding these rampage shootings (for example, the correlation between media and violent behavior), I myself confess that I am not convinced; I am as unsure as I was before reading her chapters.
All of them sound semi-convincing, but at the same time, I feel as though there is something crucially missing; like Newman mentioned, being a loner simply could not fuel a massacre of your classmates, no matter how bad the bullying was. The shooting is itself such a BIG step, requiring of the greatest determination, careful planning, and daily conviction, things like social rejection cannot uphold constantly enough for the action to be born.
I fully agree with the statement that pinpointing an issue about why rampage violence occurs is difficult because there are so many different reasons. From Newman’s studies, we saw that in each case of school shootings, all the shooters had different reasons for why they attacked the school. In addition to her findings, many other researchers find different reasons for why students would go off the way they do. Though I do think that going into schools and training teachers and administrators how to handle students in situations like these, in actuality it would be difficult to implement this. Giving extra training to staff and increasing security can have negative effects, such as those found in Kupchik’s study.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Yut Yang when she commented on how media might effect youth in a different way than what is the most obvious to perceive. Like some of the sources she stated, there were some research articles in the reader that looked into topics like the effects on media violence on youth. It is perhaps too far fetched to say that violent media causes these types of shootings and mass murders, but one can agree that the prevalence of media violence in everyday culture has the possibility of creating these types of fantasy violence in children where there was once innocence. However, it can just as easily be propagated that it is in human instinct and survival to be violent and paired with mental illness can cause these sorts of situations. There are many facets to why mass shootings occur so it would be too easy just to crucify one of the possible causes without exploring the others.
ReplyDeleteI think this essay touches on the difficulty of addressing rampage shootings and/or violence in general. As mentioned, there are many questions asked in regards to the topic and very few answered. However it failed to mention the difficulties of just going into schools and "teaching administration and staff what to do when an incident like this occurs" as there are many debates on how to do this and how appropriate these methods are. Such include, preventative methods like more security that would also be put into action if and when this type of catastrophe would happen or possibly arming the administration. I also don't agree with the idea that these things can happen at any time, because they are pretty rare, but because it's so publicized it brings so much terror to everyone across the nation.
ReplyDeleteThere is no silver bullet to address why rampage shootings happen because there can be so many different explanations due to the varying contexts that the shooters have negatively experienced in their social lives. However, Newman pinpoints two broad explanations in her article and explains, " the psychological troubles that were brewing on the inside and the sociological bruises that were collecting as the boys engages with peer groups, schools, and neighborhoods (281)." It is important to understand and engage with youth's emotional aspects that drive them to violence. I was mesmerized by Michael's case because it was not a single event that pushed into mayhem. It was the emotional scars that were left untreated over the years, and it was unfortunate that Michael did not have an outlet for those fear and furies. It is upsetting that youth don't feel comfortable going to adults for help in which this occurrence has led to many more misfortunes(rampage shootings).
ReplyDeleteI agree that the multiplicity of factors that can lead to an outburst of violence by a student makes it really difficult to find patterns. Yet, I disagree with your conclusion that this induces the necessity to redirect all attention to the emergency procedures in schools. While it is absolutely true that part of the effort should be focused on how to limit the casualties once an episode of school rampage violence erupts, most of our energy should still be turned towards prevention. Even if social sciences cannot predict these occurrences nor make accurate predictive models, it is still completely worth it to spend time and resources on social and psychological research to limit the recurrence of shootings as much as possible, even if only by one.
ReplyDeleteSabrina did a really good job, discussing rampage shooting, particularly because so much is still unknown about rampage shooting. We can only guess what the causes are from the situation shooters have been in. Some of them were mentally unstable, outcasts and watched a lot of violent media. Although you try to address the issues there is still so much that researchers don’t know which can often cause people to criticize any point of view taken on the subject. I think since there is so little known about rampage shooters we really cannot address any of the issues about helping children or trying to fix security concerns. There have been attempts to control for security problems and for children to be social outcasts but there will always be security breaches and those children that fall through the cracks that are the ones at the right time that will cause the most damage and without having any clue what these children are going through before their rampages I don’t think we can address other problems.
ReplyDeleteI think Sabrina does a good job at condensing the plot introduced in the narrative part of the article and jotting out the contemplating questions that scream for an answer. I also liked how the author addressed many of the relative factors people consider to be the probable issues that rampage violent perpetrators tend to have. The author also gave a focus to the notion of attracting attention and correlating it to or adding it to the relevant factors and issues that rampage perpetrators may have. I think the author did a god job at giving us an overview of the Newman article and am fond of how the author compared the article in congruence to the relative factors and issues that perpetrators have, which made me as a reader, think that many of the reasons for why this happens is all relative. Which is why came to find her last point slightly misleading because she states that not much is know in congruence to limits of existing knowledge, and I could not draw a correlation or distinction on how to teach administrators and staff what to do in an incident like this. I think the author could have maybe put forth a suggestion but overall I think the author’s piece was well produced.
ReplyDeleteI really like that the media’s impact in these situations as a whole was considered. If some people perform these acts of violence in search of notoriety, then the knowledge that the media will share their deeds with the world must only make the option look appealing.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that prevention does not seem likely in these cases due to their infrequency and sporadic nature, I wonder exactly what one could teach administrators and staff to do. While the idea that working on prevention and preventing even one incident is worthwhile researchers still don’t have enough information to build stable models, so for the moment teaching people how to deal with crisis situations could have more tangible results. But at the same time what could they be taught to do; besides get their students inside and bar entry to the area.
This blog post successfully addressed the variety of potential causes of rampage violence in schools. What is interesting about this variety, is that it shows a type of confusion consistent with that which arises from trying to understand youth culture in general. In this class, we have learned how researchers have tried to view youth culture from different perspectives (youth centered, and adult centered). Moreover, the different cultures have come to different understandings of youth. For example, while in the Progressive Era, youth were viewed as objects of saving and study, in the 1980s, the leading perception cast youth as super predators.
ReplyDeleteThe difficulty with understanding youth-led rampage violence comes from the fact that it is already inherently difficult for adults to understand youth. Independent of the variable of violence, adults find the liminal category of youth difficult to understand. Adding the confusing topic of rampage violence to the mix only further complicates an already challenging topic of study. Perhaps the most reasonable and ultimately the most effective way to understand why youth rampage violence happens is by understanding the dynamics of youth culture. This may be achieved when researchers make efforts to approach the study of youth violence through a youth-centered perspective. Understanding why youth commit rampage violence necessitates an “inside-out” approach, one that takes into account internal struggles of youth, rather than just the outside factors that influence them.