I feel compelled to write about the fatal shooting at Perry High School Jan. 4.
When I heard of the shooting, my first thought was, “Oh, please, don’t let the shooter be Latino.”
I hadn’t lived in Jefferson long when I learned of a general attitude that Jefferson is somehow superior to Perry. People don’t often say aloud the source of that “superiority,” but we know.
The imagined superiority of Jefferson over Perry has been mentioned at recent Jefferson city council meetings by people who oppose a project that would provide affordable rental housing. Because the developer who would build the project has a similar project in Perry, naysayers warned the city council that Jefferson would become “another Perry,” that machete-wielding fathers would chase away neighbors who complained about misbehaving kids.
Even at a county supervisors’ meeting, a supervisor who is a longtime Jefferson resident commented that the project could turn into a “ghetto,” with all the negative connotations of the word.
I don’t like having to admit that people who live in the town I’ve come to love, a town I champion at every opportunity, have racist thoughts. Some do. The veils they use to cover them are thin.
So, a shooting in Perry and I worry that if the shooter were Latino it would bolster or justify the attitudes of undercover racists.
I was relieved to learn the name of the shooter, a 17-year-old who took his own life as part of the tragedy. Not a Latino name. The tragedy will not be ammunition in a fight against diversity.
Learning more about the shooting makes it very clear it could have just as easily happened in a Greene County school, at Paton-Churdan, Ogden, Carroll, or anywhere.
The troubled teen who went back to school after the holiday break armed and ready to kill had been bullied since he was in elementary school, friends told AP. The bullying had escalated recently and his younger sister had become a target for bullying, too. “He was hurting. He got tired. He got tired of the bullying. He got tired of the harassment,” the friend was quoted by AP.
Perry school superintendent Clark Wicks said the district takes bullying very seriously, and I’m sure it does. But, the thing about bullying is that victims don’t report it because they’ve learned early on that the bullying doesn’t end. It gets worse.
Bullying is addressed after a teacher or other adult witnesses it, or after a parent complains. Even then, the bullying doesn’t end. Some students find open enrolling to another school as the only option. Bullying in Greene County has resulted in more than one open enrollment out to Paton-Churdan.
The shooter’s parents are known, successful Perry residents. His dad was Perry’s public works director for years and now is the city’s airport director. His mother has owned a small business and served on a Perry city development board. We all know similarly situated people.
I am always angry when a shooting takes place in a school. Children and teachers should be safe at school. I get most angry when weapons are used for which there is no logical use in civilian life. That wasn’t the case in Perry. The shooter had a pump-action shotgun and a small-caliber handgun.
I’m not as angry about the Perry tragedy as I am sad. I’m sad a sixth grader was killed. I’m sorry a 17-year-old saw making a bloody statement and then ending his own life as the only response to the situation he was in. I can’t imagine the pain of those two sets of parents.
I’m sad that my daughter who loves middle school students enough to want to teach them spent Thursday crying in her classroom. I’m sad that schools have to conduct drills so students are prepared to respond in case of an armed intruder.
I’m sad that even now, when we like to think racism is in the past, the ethnicity of the shooter was the first thing that came to my mind.
