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Document 1 of 36.

Newsweek

October 4, 1999, U.S. Edition

SECTION: YOUR FAMILY: FOCUS; Pg. 72

LENGTH: 901 words

HEADLINE: Uniforms Rule

BYLINE: By Pat Wingert; With Esther Pan in New York

HIGHLIGHT:

This fall, dress codes are an increasingly popular remedy for all that's wrong with American public schools. Do they deliver?

BODY:

Kiara Newsome's spotless navy jumper and demure white blouse won't win raves on the runways. But to school reformers, the 6-year-old is a real trendsetter. This fall, Kiara and her classmates at P.S. 15 on Manhattan's Lower East Side joined hundreds of thousands of students in the nation's largest school system, and donned uniforms for the first time.

Kiara likes her new duds cause they're pretty. Her mother, Alelia, is happy because it's much easier to find the clothes in the morning. Educators in New York and around the country believe uniforms could also solve some of toughest problems facing schools today. In the aftermath of the Littleton, Colo., shootings, many see dress codes as a cheap and simple way to make schools safer. This fall, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Boston, Houston, Cleveland and Washington, D.C., all have a majority of their students in uniforms. It's spreading to the suburbs now, says Vince Ferrandino, president of the National Association of Elementary School Principals. It's become a national phenomenon.

Proponents say clothing rules eliminate the baggy gang-inspired look that makes it easy for students to smuggle in weapons, drugs and other banned items. Dress codes also make it easier to spot intruders. Last week this boy walked into our cafeteria in jeans and we knew right away he wasn't one of ours, says Ramond Rivera, an elementary-school principal in El Paso, Texas, whose students wear uniforms. We immediately escorted him out.

Researchers say there's very little hard evidence that uniforms improve students' behavior or academic success. They do, however, affect student attitudes. One of the best studies compared two middle schools in Charleston County, S.C., one with a uniform policy, the other without. A survey of more than 300 sixth to eighth graders revealed that uniformed students gave their schools higher scores. Although school uniforms do not represent a panacea for all society's problems, says the lead researcher, Richard K. Murray, a principal in Dorchester, S.C., research now shows that school uniforms do significantly affect student perceptions of school climate.

Keith King of the University of Cincinnati recently published a review of research on the effectiveness of dress codes. He says that overall, students in uniforms felt more like a team. That's important, King says, because the No. 1 protective factor against school violence is having a student feel connected to his school and that he fits in.

Uniforms are getting the most attention at middle and high schools, where security and school unity are big issues, along with the extremes of current teen fashion: spaghetti-strap tanks, face painting, body piercing. You'd be amazed at the amount of time administrators have been spending on what kids are wearing to school, says Susan Galletti, a middle-school specialist at the National Association of Secondary School Principals. With uniforms, all that is eliminated, and they can spend more time on teaching and learning.

While some schools stick to traditional plaids and navy blue, others allow polo shirts, chinos and even capri pants. Still, teens in the throes of adolescent rebellion often object and in a few cases, they've even sued for the freedom to choose their own clothes. The older kids get, the more aware they are of their rights, says

Stephen Yurek, general counsel of the NASSP. If you try to restrict what they can say or wear, you'll start hearing that their rights are being violated. Yurek says the courts have made it clear that students don't have the same rights inside school as they do outside; clothing requirements are not considered a violation of their freedom of expression if there's a valid educational reason for imposing them. To avoid legal hassles, though, most schools will provide uniforms to poor students who can't afford to buy them, and many allow parents to opt out if they have religious objections.

Educators say the best way to get kids to accept uniforms is to start in the early grades. Noelle Ebright, 16, a student at Wilson High School in Long Beach, Calif., has been wearing a uniform for eight years. I've slowly adapted to it, she says. This year, she says, all I have to do is grab some khaki bottoms and a white shirt with a collar and I'm out of the house. Still, she admits, if I had my personal preference, of course I would prefer not to wear one. Any kid would.

Some adults sympathize. Norman Isaacs, principal of Millikan Middle School in Sherman Oaks, Calif., has resisted uniforms. He believes clothing gives teachers insights into what's happening with individual students. Our counselors and teachers monitor the way kids are dressed, he says. If we see a big change in the way a student dresses, that sends up a signal and tells us we need to address that person.

Other critics say they fear the spread of uniforms will smother student creativity. But experienced educators have learned that kids often dream up truly inspired loopholes. El Paso's Rivera remembers the girl who came to school wearing contact lenses that gave her the appearance of having yellow cat eyes. It wasn't a strict violation; no one had thought to include contacts in the dress code. Still, he says, We had to put a stop to that... It was a distraction to every kid in her class. And a real eye-opener for the principal.

With Esther Pan in New York

GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Students on New York's Lower East Side show off their new looks ; PHOTO: No Sneakers Allowed: White Shirt, $6; White Blouse, $6;

Navy Tie: $3.50

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

LOAD-DATE: September 28, 1999

Document 4 of 36.

Newsweek

August 23, 1999, U.S. Edition

SECTION: SOCIETY; Pg. 39

LENGTH: 1131 words

HEADLINE: The New Age of Anxiety

BYLINE: By Barbara Kantrowitz; With Erika Check, Elizabeth Angell, Sherry Keene-Osborn in Littleton, Donna Foote in Los Angeles and bureau reports

HIGHLIGHT:

Whether they live in a leafy suburb or an inner city, parents can no longerpretend that their children are immune from the threat of guns. The challenge is to make kids feel secure--but also aware of the real risks.

BODY:

It is indeed an anxious season--nowhere more than in Littleton, Colo., where students return this week to Columbine High School. Some, like junior Lance Kirklin, whose face was shattered by a bullet in the massacre last spring, bear physical scars of the tragedy. Others carry wounds in their hearts. Parents in Littleton say they are determined to protect their children. We're trying very hard to make it as normal as possible, insists the mother of junior Diana Cohen. But will things ever be normal again, in Littleton or anywhere else?

Columbine--and Paducah and Granada Hills--sounded the alarm for parents around the country. Whether they live in the inner city or the most serene suburb, they now know that their kids are not immune from the threat of guns. The places you used to think were safe have been violated by these random acts of violence, says Kathy Thomas, a mother of three from Thousand Oaks, Calif. I certainly don't want my kids to live in fear. Parents worry about how schools will protect their children and aren't sure how to begin the uncomfortable but essential dialogue with their kids about the risks of guns. In that task they face a terrible dilemma, says Neil Guterman, a professor of social work at Columbia University and an expert on children and violence. They have to convey a sense of safety and security to their children and, at the same time, not hide the truth.

Although 81 percent of those surveyed in the NEWSWEEK Poll think there has been an increase in gun-related incidents at schools lately, violence in the classroom has actually declined dramatically in this decade. Schools are among the safest places children can be. The National School Safety Center reports that last year there were just 25 violent deaths (including 15 at Columbine), compared with an average of 50 in the early 1990s. Only a tiny fraction of all homicides involving school-age children occur in or around schools, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But it's also true that guns are a serious threat to kids. People are too worried about school, says Kevin Dwyer, president of the National Association of School Psychologists. I think they need to be more worried about the avalanche of guns in the community. According to government statistics, 4,223 children were killed by firearms in 1997, many of them in accidents while playing at friends' homes in their own neighborhoods. Thousands more were injured by guns. Some experts predict that firearm-related injuries could soon replace car crashes as the leading cause of death for young children.

More and more people seem to be getting that message. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, 64 percent of parents of kids under 18 were somewhat or very concerned that their children might get hurt or into trouble while visiting the homes of friends who own guns. I lived in New York City for 14 years and felt safer there because nobody had a gun in the house, but here people have rifles, says Debra Leonard, a physician who lives in rural Bethel Township, Pa. I tell my kids nobody can protect themselves from a gun if it's not locked up in a cabinet, so they should leave the [friend's] house and call me to pick them up if anyone ever handles a gun.

Unlike some parents, Leonard did allow her two sons to play with toy guns. Our children have water guns and cowboy guns, she says. If you don't give them guns, they build them. My younger boy was a Lego maniac, and he built guns out of Legos. In fact, there's no evidence that playing with toy guns turns kids into killers. Many studies confirm Leonard's experience, that children--particularly boys--will turn anything available (a carrot, even a piece of spaghetti) into a weapon. Toy guns are a minor issue, says Kathleen Heide, a criminologist at the University of South Florida. The real concern should be helping kids deal with negative feelings and resolving conflicts. But the problem is that younger children often think real guns are toys. Parents should make sure their kids understand the distinction between play guns and weapons that kill.

Staying alert is the best defense. Karen Kaul, the mother of a third grader in suburban Wilmette, Ill., took quick action recently when she overheard the younger brother of one of her daughter's playmates say he was going to get a gun from his house. Although it turned out to be a BB gun, I called the parents, and they talked to the kids about it, Kaul says.

Experts advise tailoring information about guns and violence to the age of the child. Youngsters under 6 may have heard news about shootings on TV and worry that they are directly in the line of fire. Adults should be saying very emphatically that they are doing everything they can to keep kids safe, advises Betsy McAlister Groves, director of the Child Witness to Violence Program at Boston Medical Center. And, she says, limit their exposure to violent images on television and in the movies. Slightly older kids, from about 6 to 10, may sound more sophisticated than they actually are, McAlister Groves says. Talk to them, reassure them. Young adolescents, from about 11 up, are more able to understand real risks and statistics.

At all ages, McAlister Groves says, allowing kids to voice their worries is very important. The worst thing a parent can do is fail to provide an opportunity for children to talk. We tend to think that if they don't talk about it, it will get better, but that's not the right message, she says. They might think it's something that

frightens us, and that would only increase their own fears.

The wave of gun violence has irrevocably altered the national self-image and should be a wake-up call to parents. People had their confidence shaken and their complacency dispelled this past year, says Cornell University's James Garbarino, who has studied children and violence for years. There is a growing recognition that the epidemic of youth violence has now reached a point where virtually every school contains boys who are troubled, angry and violent enough, who have access to weapons and violent scenarios and images, to become the next tragedy. I think people are now understanding that in their hearts--and minds.

No one is safe anymore. That's the lesson Lance Kirklin learned last April at Columbine High School. One bullet dug a crater in his cheek, and he faces four more operations. Still, he says he's not worried that such a cataclysmic tragedy will strike Littleton twice. Should people in the rest of the country be scared? Yes, he says. It will definitely happen again. Parents everywhere can only hope that he's wrong.

With Erika Check, Elizabeth Angell, Sherry Keene-Osborn in Littleton, Donna Foote in Los Angeles and bureau reports

GRAPHIC: GRAPHIC: (Chart) Discussing the Dangers (Graphic omitted); PHOTO: HUMAN TOLL: Student Lance Kirklin was badly wounded at Columbine High; other students after the shootings (right) ; PHOTO: SEEKING SOLACE: A small boy clings to an adult following the Aug. 10 shooting at the North Valley Jewish Community Center

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

LOAD-DATE: August 17, 1999

Document 7 of 36.

Newsweek

August 23, 1999, U.S. Edition

SECTION: Pg. 45

LENGTH: 729 words

HEADLINE: All Carnage, All The Time

BYLINE: By Richard Turner; With Esther Pan

HIGHLIGHT:

The media say they're just doing their job: the shootings are news, and people want to watch. So why is the public so mad at the messengers?

BODY:

Journalists used to be cast as magpies, or canaries, or even wise old owls. Let's just say that these are not the dominant ornithological metaphors right now. The norm in this day and age seems to be the news media circling like vultures, each hoping to be the first to feast on the gory details of a story, a city court judge in

upstate New York wrote last month, refusing to give the press a transcript of a preliminary hearing in a rape and murder trial.

Parents and alumni at Columbine High School planned to form a human chain around the school this week to keep the media away from the students. Large majorities of those polled by NEWSWEEK say they believe media coverage encourages copycat killings (88 percent) and makes people feel more endangered than they really are (72 percent). There've been other charges: all-mayhem-all-the-time desensitizes us to violence. It intrudes on private moments. It gives dysfunctional losers an opportunity to go out in a blaze of glory, and facilitated Buford Furrow Jr.'s horrific wake-up call. It almost feels as if the infotainment empire is producing these shootings, providing a stage for the psychos to walk onto as if making an appearance on The Jenny Jones Show.

To journalists, the complaints are troubling but double-edged. They reward us by watching, laments Fox News vice president John Moody, then complain about what they see. And, media types say, they are ever-vigilant about practicing restraint. CNN says it made sure not to show the children's faces as they left the building hand in hand last week. The Chicago Sun-Times played the Columbine shootings inside the paper the next day, saying it wanted to protect young children and prevent copycat crimes. Last spring, local TV stations in Los Angeles were properly contrite when they cut away from regular programming (one from Animaniacs) to cover a police pursuit, only to have the suspect shoot himself in the head on camera. Some news outlets have begun using a several-second delay on live coverage so they can pull the plug.

But rigid, across-the-board guidelines aren't going to happen, executives say. Neither is walking away from these stories. You can just whitewash it, or try to minimize the terrible things that are going on, says Jeff Wald, news director of KTLA-TV in Los Angeles. [But] the public has to know about these things. They're

newsworthy... this is the unfortunate reality going on in the country right now.

News outlets also tend to blame other news outlets. The print people blame the TV people; the network news people blame the cable people. And indeed, news consumers in the 1990s need to recognize that there's no media monolith out there. Everybody's product is different. Sure, 24-hour cable-news channels get mind-numbingly repetitive, but their audiences are tiny: fewer than a million homes normally tune in to the three services. Ratings for last week's shooting spiked to 2.5 million (compared with the 12.3 million that viewed the post-Littleton 20/20 episode). That's still out of nearly 100 million TV households. They're niches for news junkies. So common sense applies: punch the remote, monitor the kids. Or go elsewhere: when everybody was complaining about John Kennedy Jr. overkill, The New York Times never once gave the story the lead position on its front page, subordinating it to tax cuts and Israel. But no, the tabloids and local TV stations, duking it out in the ratings and on the newsstands, won't renounce their mantra, If it bleeds, it leads. And sells.

The big three networks, by contrast, do little live coverage, and they aired fewer crime stories last year than in any year since 1990, according to consultant Andrew Tyndall. But they're especially starved for big, sweeping news events. Like the news magazines, they've cut back on certain plain-vanilla stories in favor of more news-you-can-use about health, education, religion, entertainment. But they still retain their chops for get-me-rewrite news, and their infrastructures of reporters around the world. So when a big story breaks, they swarm all over it. The news magazines particularly like it if a story is imbued with the Zeitgeist, a little bit of everything. And these days, you can add one more element--perched ravenously on a dead tree, perhaps. The media are part of the story, too.

With Esther Pan

GRAPHIC: GRAPHIC: (Graph) TV Crime Time (Graphic omitted); PHOTO: SAFETY VALVE: Some television news editors now delay the broadcast of live' coverage by several seconds to avoid the unwitting transmission of on-screen carnage

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

LOAD-DATE: August 17, 1999

Document 10 of 36.

Newsweek

June 28, 1999, U.S. Edition

SECTION: NATION; Guns; Pg. 31

LENGTH: 1037 words

HEADLINE: Caught in the Cross-Fire

BYLINE: By Matt Bai; With Debra Rosenberg

HIGHLIGHT:

How gun control turned into a casualty of the capital wars

BODY:

After 40 years in the house of Representatives, Democrat John Dingell more or less does what he pleases. But the old bull from Michigan knows what it's like to feel the hot brand of the gun lobby. In 1994 Dingell, then a board member of the National Rifle Association (NRA), infuriated the group by voting for his party's

crime bill, which banned assault weapons. Dingell won re-election, but other old-timers who voted for the bill did not, and the Democrats were booted from power. So when the latest gun-control bill hit the Hill last week, Dingell wasn't taking any chances. This time, instead of backing the president, he deserted the party and joined with Republicans and NRA lobbyists to author a compromise. After a week of emotional debate, Dingell's bill went down to defeat on both sides of the aisle, all but killing any chance for stricter gun laws this year. The final result stunned gun-control advocates and provided a painful political lesson: even the biggest bull in the House won't lock horns with the gun lobby again.

The loss was crushing to anti-gun forces and the White House. In the wake of the Columbine massacre, polls show that more than 80 percent of Americans back stricter laws. Just weeks ago, the Senate took advantage of the national mood to pass a tough law requiring safety locks on new handguns and a detailed

background check on buyers at gun shows. But as they have so many times before, activists underestimated the ferocity and might of the NRA and its 2.5 million members. It may seem a liberal shibboleth, but last week's clash proved once again that the NRA is a powerful force on Capitol Hill.

In an all-out assault, the NRA unleashed thousands of callers to clog congressional switchboards while a dozen lobbyists worked the halls. The group's Web site featured a dubious article implying that Bill Clinton, like the Nazis, was trying to disarm the populace. In the end, the House passed a law allowing the Ten Commandments to be displayed in schools, but backed away from gun control. It was just the latest example of a strange political disconnect that has characterized the gun debate for most of this century. Virtually every gun-control initiative since 1934 has enjoyed strong public support--only to be weakened or killed by the Congress.

This time, it was Dingell who tinkered with the process. The politically crafty veteran is driven by the desire to get back his committee chairmanship, something he can't do unless the Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives. Hill aides say Dingell worried that a strong gun-control law could cost Democrats critical seats in the South and West--wrecking the party's hopes of winning a majority in November. His solution: draft his own compromise bill, with the NRA's blessing, that called for less thorough background checks for buyers at gun shows. Dingell's bill attracted more than 40 vulnerable Democrats, who could avoid the wrath of the gun lobby but still tell constituents they voted for gun control. The plan also reaped unexpected rewards. When Republicans--who thought even the

compromise was too tough--killed the bill, they handed House Democrats, and Al Gore, a powerful campaign theme to use against the GOP in the upcoming election. Ironically, even Dingell himself voted against the bill he authored; aides say he never really intended it to pass. He was satisfied with the outcome, says a source close to Dingell. So were many of his colleagues. Privately, some Democratic leaders approached Dingell and thanked him for the maneuver.

One Democrat who wasn't smiling was the commander in chief. The NRA beat me, he complained to reporters traveling with him in Europe. Earlier in the week, aboard Air Force One and again in Paris, Clinton picked up the phone to make what one congressman called a passionate appeal to 14 conservative blue dog Democrats and moderate Republicans. He got 12 of them. One of those who ultimately snubbed Clinton was Nick Lampson, a Texas Democrat who watched his powerful predecessor, Jack Brooks, get taken down after the 1994 gun vote. Lampson wasn't about to repeat the mistake. From the time I ran, it was clear that I would vote to protect the rights of all citizens to buy and bear arms, Lampson said in an interview.

It's hard to blame vulnerable Democrats for taking cover. It's a common misperception that the NRA's power derives from its money. The real muscle of the group is its tenacious membership. Its members will mobilize, says Robert Ricker, head of the American Shooting Sports Council, a gun-industry group. They'll call. They'll send faxes. They'll threaten and they'll cajole.

They've certainly had plenty of practice. Last week's gun vote was just the latest in a long string of NRA victories. In 1968, with some 70 percent of the public supporting stepped-up gun control, the NRA thwarted President Johnson's call for registering all guns. Congress did manage to ban the import of lethal junk guns known as Saturday night specials, but domestic manufacturers rushed to fill the void. Four years later, the NRA helped kill a bill that would have banned Saturday night specials altogether. In 1986 the NRA worked to weaken a ban on so-called cop-killer bullets. The streak was interrupted in 1993, when Clinton stung the NRA by passing the most sweeping gun-control law on the books: the Brady Bill. But more guns are now sold at the gun shows and flea markets that the law left out. The assault-weapons ban, bitterly opposed by the NRA, proved easier to thwart. Many companies simply retooled the weapons slightly and put them back on the market under another name. The best known of these is the Intratec TEC DC-9 used in Littleton, now sold as the AB-10. The AB stands for After Ban.

Gun-control advocates are already preparing for their next confrontation with the NRA, building a grass-roots network and bringing in more PAC money for lobbying. The goal is to beat the NRA at its own game by mobilizing militant anti-gun votes in 2000. The lesson of last week--and the last 50 years--is clear enough: if gun-control advocates want Congress to take on the gun lobby, they'll have to make the politicians pay at the polls.

GRAPHIC: GRAPHIC: (graph) Do Laws Save Lives? (graphic omitted); PHOTO: Lock and load: Congress nixed safety devices and wait periods

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

LOAD-DATE: June 21, 1999

Document 13 of 36.

Newsweek

May 10, 1999, U.S. Edition

SECTION: NATION; Pg. 34

LENGTH: 553 words

HEADLINE: Follow the Firearms

BYLINE: By Andrew Murr

HIGHLIGHT:

How did Harris and Klebold get their arsenal? The answer says a lot about the limits of gun control.

BODY:

If nothing else, the continuing effort to trace the guns used in the Columbine High School massacre shows how gun control works in the real world--which is to say, it doesn't. Under Colorado law, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were entitled to own rifles and shotguns but were too young to buy them. No problem: according to investigators, they had 18-year-old friend Robyn Anderson do the buying, and she got two shotguns and a 9-mm Hi-Point carbine for them. Their other weapon was a spooky-looking pistol whose predecessor, the TEC-9, was banned in 1994. Under state and federal law, Harris and Klebold were too young to buy or own any kind of handgun, which means that whoever sold the TEC-DC9 to them could face prosecution. The penalty for selling a handgun to a minor under Colorado law is two to six years in prison; to the Feds, it's only a misdemeanor.

The slowly unfolding history of these four weapons is a case study of just how porous America's gun laws can be. All four showed up in manufacturing records kept by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and ATF agents were able to follow the TEC-DC9 pistol and the Hi-Point carbine to gun dealers in the Denver area. The two shotguns, both 30 years old, had no useful paper trail, and dealer records did not show who bought the carbine or the TEC-9. But investigators in Denver had leads suggesting the four guns had something in common: the Tanner Gun Show, an event that fills the Denver Merchandise Mart nine times a year.

Like gun shows elsewhere--there are more than 4,000 a year in the United States--the Tanner show is neither sinister nor illegal. But gun-control advocates say this is where regulations like the Brady bill and the federal ban on assault weapons break down. Brady requires licensed gun dealers to check buyers' backgrounds and reject convicted felons. But gun shows routinely rent space to private sellers who are not covered by the law and who do not make Brady checks. A 1999 report by the ATF and the U.S. Department of Justice estimated that felons illegally bought weapons at gun shows in 46 percent of the 314 cases studied and concluded that gun shows involve a disturbing pattern of criminal activity.

The assault-weapons ban prohibits dealers from selling guns like Uzis and TEC-9s to anyone. But private collectors can buy and sell virtually any kind of gun, and gun shows are full of collectors offering assault weapons for sale. Last summer U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado sent a staffer to the Tanner Gun Show to try to buy a banned weapon. The aide readily bought a Chinese-made SKS assault rifle for $450. The dealer said that because he was giving up his federal license, You don't need to do all the paperwork.

The TEC-9 used by Harris and Klebold also came from the Tanner show. According to investigators, it was sold by a vendor named Larry Russell, who told reporters he wouldn't have sold the gun to a minor. Somebody could have bought it at the show, and it transferred two or three times before it got to the [suspects], he said. Authorities said they knew who sold the gun to the suspects and that a pizza-delivery man may have acted as a go-between. The seller, they said, was telling investigators what he knew--and with 15 dead, that seemed like the right thing to do.

GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Recoil: On Saturday thousands protested the NRA convention in Denver ; PHOTO: Outlaw chic: The TEC-9 pistol

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

LOAD-DATE: May 5, 1999

Document 22 of 36.

Newsweek

May 10, 1999, U.S. Edition

SECTION: SOCIETY; Beyond Littleton; Pg. 36

LENGTH: 1514 words

HEADLINE: How Well Do You Know Your Kid?

BYLINE: By Barbara Kantrowitz and Pat Wingert; With Anne Underwood

HIGHLIGHT:

The new teen wave is bigger, richer, better educated and healthier than any other in history. But there's a dark side, and too many parents aren't doing their job.

BODY:

Jocks, preps, punks, Goths, geeks. They may sit at separate tables in the cafeteria, but they all belong to the same generation. There are now 31 million kids in the 12-to-19 age group, and demographers predict that there will be 35 million teens by 2010, a population bulge bigger than even the baby boom at its peak. In many ways, these teens are uniquely privileged. They've grown up in a period of sustained prosperity and haven't had to worry about the draft (as their fathers did) or cataclysmic global conflicts (as their grandparents did). Cable and the Internet have given them access to an almost infinite amount of information. Most expect to go to college, and girls, in particular, have unprecedented opportunities; they can dream of careers in everything from professional sports to politics, with plenty of female role models to follow.

But this positive image of American adolescence in 1999 is a little like yearbook photos that depict every kid as happy and blemish-free. After the Littleton, Colo., tragedy, it's clear there's another dimension to this picture, and it's far more troubled. In survey after survey, many kids--even those on the honor roll--say they feel increasingly alone and alienated, unable to connect with their parents, teachers and sometimes even classmates. They're desperate for guidance, and when they don't get what they need at home or in school, they cling to cliques or immerse themselves in a universe out of their parents' reach, a world defined by computer games, TV and movies, where brutality is so common it has become mundane. The parents of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold have told friends they never dreamed their sons could kill. It's an extreme case, but it has made a lot of parents wonder: do we really know our kids?

Many teens say they feel overwhelmed by pressure and responsibilities. They are juggling part-time jobs and hours of homework every night; sometimes they're so exhausted that they're nearly asleep in early-morning classes. Half have lived through their parents' divorce. Sixty-three percent are in households where both parents work outside the home, and many look after younger siblings in the afternoon. Still others are home by themselves after school. That unwelcome solitude can extend well into the evening; mealtime for this generation too often begins with a forlorn touch of the microwave.

In fact, of all the issues that trouble adolescents, loneliness ranks at the top of the list. University of Chicago sociologist Barbara Schneider has been studying 7,000 teenagers for five years and has found they spend an average of 31/2 hours alone every day. Teenagers may claim they want privacy, but they also crave and need attention--and they're not getting it. Author Patricia Hersch profiled eight teens who live in an affluent area of northern Virginia for her 1998 book, A Tribe Apart. Every kid I talked to at length eventually came around to saying without my asking that they wished they had more adults in their lives, especially their parents, she says.

Loneliness creates an emotional vacuum that is filled by an intense peer culture, a critical buffer against kids' fear of isolation. Some of this bonding is normal and appropriate; in fact, studies have shown that the human need for acceptance is almost a biological drive, like hunger. It's especially intense in early adolescence, from about 12 to 14, a time of hyper self-consciousness, says David Elkind, a professor of child development at Tufts University and author of All Grown Up and No Place to Go. They become very self-centered and spend a lot of time thinking about what others think of them, Elkind says. And when they think about what others are thinking, they make the error of thinking that everyone is thinking about them. Dressing alike is a refuge, a way of hiding in the group. When they're 3 and scared, they cling to a security blanket; at 16, they want body piercings or Abercrombie shirts.

If parents and other adults abdicate power, teenagers come up with their own rules. It's Lord of the Flies on a vast scale. Bullying has become so extreme and so common that many teens just accept it as part of high-school life in the '90s. Emory University psychologist Marshall Duke, an expert on children's friendships,

recently asked 110 students in one of his classes if any of them had ever been threatened in high school. To his surprise, they all raised their hand. In the past, parents and teachers served as mediating forces in the classroom jungle. William Damon, director of the Stanford University Center for Adolescence, recalls writing a satirical essay when he was in high school about how he and his friends tormented a kid they knew. Damon got an A for style and grammar, but the teacher took him aside and told him he should be ashamed of his behavior. That's what is supposed to happen, Damon says. People are supposed to say, 'Hey, kid, you've gone too far here'. Contrast that with reports from Littleton, where Columbine students described a film class nonchalantly viewing a murderous video created by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. In 1999 this apparently was not remarkable behavior.

When they're isolated from parents, teens are also more vulnerable to serious emotional problems. Surveys of high-school students have indicated that one in four considers suicide each year, says Dr. David Fassler, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Burlington, Vt., and author of Help Me, I'm Sad: Recognizing, Treating and Preventing Childhood and Adolescent Depression. By the end of high school, many have actually tried to kill themselves. Often the parents or teachers don't realize it was a suicide attempt, he says. It can be something ambiguous like an overdose of nonprescription pills from the medicine cabinet or getting drunk and crashing the car with suicidal thoughts.

Even the best, most caring parents can't protect their teenagers from all these problems, but involved parents can make an enormous difference. Kids do listen. Teenage drug use (although still high) is slowly declining, and even teen pregnancy and birthrates are down slightly--largely because of improved education efforts, experts say. More teens are delaying sex, and those who are sexually active are more likely to use contraceptives than their counterparts a few years ago.

In the teenage years, the relationship between parents and children is constantly evolving as the kids edge toward independence. Early adolescence is a period of transition, when middle-school kids move from one teacher and one classroom to a different teacher for each subject. In puberty, they're moody and irritable. This is a time when parents and kids bicker a lot, says Laurence Steinberg, a psychology professor at Temple University and author of You and Your Adolescent: A Parents' Guide to Ages 10 to 20. Parents are caught by surprise, he says. They discover that the tricks they've used in raising their kids effectively during childhood stop working. He advises parents to try to understand what their kids are going through; things do get better. I have a 14-year-old son, Steinberg says, and when he moved out of the transition phase into middle adolescence, we saw a dramatic change. All of a sudden, he's our best friend again.

In middle adolescence, roughly the first three years of high school, teens are increasingly on their own. To a large degree, their lives revolve around school and their friends. They have a healthy sense of self, says Steinberg. They begin to develop a unique sense of identity, as well as their own values and beliefs. The danger in this time would be to try to force them to be something you want them to be, rather than help them be who they are. Their relationships may change dramatically as their interests change; in Schneider's study, almost three quarters of the closest friends named by seniors weren't even mentioned during sophomore year.

Late adolescence is another transition, this time to leaving home altogether. Parents have to be able to let go, says Steinberg, and have faith and trust that they've done a good enough job as parents that their child can handle this stuff. Contrary to stereotypes, it isn't mothers who are most likely to mourn in the empty nest. They're often relieved to be free of some chores. But Steinberg says that fathers suffer from thoughts of missed chances.

That should be the ultimate lesson of tragedies like Littleton. Parents need to share what they really believe in, what they really think is important, says Stanford's Damon. These basic moral values are more important than math skills or SATs. Seize any opportunity to talk--in the car, over the breakfast table, watching TV. Parents have to work harder to get their points across. Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute, has studied teenagers' views of parents. One 16-year-old told us, 'I am proud of the fact that [my mother] deals with me even though I try to push her away. She's still there'. So pay attention now. The kids can't wait.

GRAPHIC: GRAPHIC: (charts/graphs/map) Peril and Promise: Teens by the Numbers (graphic omitted); PHOTO: Mixed bag: These Santa Monica teens form close friendships but adopt a hard demeanor. Says one: No one messes with you if they think you're tough.' ; PHOTO: Images: Because I have long hair, everyone assumes I'm a drugged-out hippie,' says Illinois sophomore Brett Goldberg (with his parents). He says he's never done drugs.; PHOTO: More than 90 percent of 12th graders said it is 'easy' to get marijuana if they want it; PHOTO: Less than half of teens regularly date; PHOTO: Only 2 percent of teens said they don't watch TV in the course of a week

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

LOAD-DATE: May 5, 1999

Document 31 of 36.

Newsweek

May 3, 1999, U.S. Edition

SECTION: NATION; Pg. 36

LENGTH: 1290 words

HEADLINE: How to Fight Back

BYLINE: By Jerry Adler and Karen Springen; With Pat Wingert, T. Trent Gegax and Evan Halper

HIGHLIGHT:

School administrators are doing their best to prevent campus massacres like the one last week at Columbine High. But it's the kids themselves who see the ominous early-warning signs--and they have to start taking better care of each other.

BODY:

As a parent, you know that from your children's first day of school, their safety is out of your hands. They vanish into a kid world of mysterious cliques and rivalries, of grievances rendered in the primary colors of adolescent emotions and animated by comic-book fantasies. You try to know your kid's friends, but do you

have to keep track of his enemies as well, not to speak of a host of alienated loners downloading nihilistic rock music from the Internet? Out of powerlessness comes fear: 64 percent of adults surveyed in the NEWSWEEK Poll considered a shooting incident at their local schools either very likely or somewhat likely. In fact, in 1996 only 10 percent of schools registered even one serious violent crime; on average a high-school senior is 200 times as likely to be admitted to Harvard as to be killed in his school. Out of fear comes the impulse to do something to control an unruly and dangerous world, even at the most basic level. In the wake of the massacre attributed to members of a group called the Trenchcoat Mafia, Denver school authorities last week prohibited students from coming to school wearing the long black coats.

Unfortunately, not all the lessons of the tragedy are as straightforward as a ban on these intimidating garments--which, school officials rightly noted, can be used to conceal weapons. There are certainly steps that schools can take to improve physical security, and many have done so since the appalling spate of massacres began a few years ago. But many educators and even law-enforcement officials now believe that armed guards and weapons sweeps and intruder drills must be supplemented with attention to the psychological and social dynamics of high school. Teachers, counselors and parents all need to be looking out for the teenager whose alienation boils over into rage. This is a daunting task, since he's likely to be one in, literally, a million. But the realization is growing that much of the burden of preventing future tragedies like last week's will rest with students themselves.

They are, after all, in the best position to know. In nearly every case of recent school violence, there were warnings, according to Ron Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Council. Unfortunately, usually no one was paying attention. Stephens cites a shooting at an Austin, Texas, high school a few years ago in which two students were injured; officials later determined that 54 students had seen the weapon before it was accidentally fired, but none of them reported it.

Of course, not all tragedies signal themselves so clearly, and it's glib to conclude, after the fact, that the responsible adults were always asleep at the switch. Kip Kinkel, the Portland, Ore., youth whose shooting spree a year ago left four people dead and 22 wounded, had just been suspended from school after a loaded

handgun had been found in his locker, and his parents had been frantically seeking help for him. But in Racine, Wis., a potential disaster was headed off when three teenagers were overheard discussing a plot to shoot up Burlington High School; twe week before, principal Jose Martinez had circulated a message urging students to report any threats to the authorities. The students, who said later that it was all a joke, pleaded no contest to minor charges and were ordered to undergo counseling.

For this to happen regularly will naturally require some adjustment in teenage attitudes. Kids have two concerns, says Richard Lieberman, a Los Angeles school psychologist who has helped counsel students after shootings. They're afraid of being called a snitch. They're also afraid that if they drop a dime on someone carrying a gun, that gun may be used against them. Both fears are reasonable, he adds; schools have to assure students that they are doing the right thing by informing, and that their identities will be protected. It is the role of parents to get their children to break the code of omerta that governs all the lower-case mafias around the country. The rule is: never promise your friend that you won't tell if your friend is talking about hurting someone else or making an attempt on his or her own life, says David Capuzzi, an authority on counseling troubled youth. Teach kids never to make those promises.

Schools have begun treating threats of violence, no matter how farfetched, the way airlines treat jokes about bombs. An eighth-grade girl, annoyed that a classmate was intercepting notes she was passing to a friend, wrote that the interloper was an ugly, flat-chested ho, and I aught to kill her. The note itself said it was all a joke, but a juvenile-court judge didn't see it that way, according to the girl's lawyer, who asked that her client's name and city not be used; last month the girl was convicted of third-degree terroristic threatening and sentenced to six months' probation. Some schools have made discipline issues out of violent imagery in creative-writing assignments, a tremendous victory for bureaucracy over common sense. Zero-tolerance policies on weapons have reached down to kindergartens; a Pennsylvania school suspended (although only for a day) a 5-year-old who brought in a plastic ax as part of a fireman's costume.

So school administrators will have to exercise some judgment. I don't mind every kid reporting every flip comment, as long as we have somebody who can say, 'That's a flip comment; this is a serious comment', says certified psychologist Kevin Dwyer, principal author of a school-safety guide the government sent to every school in the country last fall. One student may say, 'Mrs. Jones gave me a D, and I could just kill her for that.' That's different from 'Mrs. Jones gave me a D, I have my dad's magnum in my backpack and at 4 o'clock this afternoon I'm going to put four shots in her head'. An example of how not to handle the situation was provided by a teacher in another Colorado city last week who in the wake of the shootings asked his class: Is there anyone in this school who you think could do something like this? The kids started calling out names, said the mother of one student. They were unanimous about who it would be, but I don't think it was right for him to do that.

The utopian ideal is for children to stop bullying one another. I don't think we'll ever change the reality that kids group themselves into cliques, says Dwyer. But it's the respect for the other person that's critical. Bullying should not be tolerated in any school in the United States. A few schools are beginning to address bullying from the victim's perspective, with programs to teach social skills to kids who don't seem to fit in. Starting well before high school, says psychologist Jan Hughes of Texas AM University, you need to create a culture that promotes prosocial ways of dealing with conflict. As last week's tragedy demonstrated, we are all–jocks and nerds, teachers and parents, even the misunderstood Goths themselves--in this together.

HOW SAFE ARE SCHOOLS?

Homicides: Fewer than 1 percent of homicides involving school-age children occur in or around schools, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control.

Shootings: Since 1992 the annual death toll from school shootings has ranged from 20 to 55, according to the National School Safety Center. In the last school year there were 40.

Theft: 43 percent of the nation's schools had no crime at all in the 1996-97 school year, according to the Department of Education. The vast majority of incidents were minor crimes such as theft and vandalism.

Weapons: In 1997, 8 percent of high-school students said they had carried a weapon to school in the preceding month. That was down from 12 percent in 1993.

GRAPHIC: GRAPHIC: (Chart) How Safe Are Schools?; PHOTO: TEARS OF RELIEF: After hours of panic, most of the anxious parents--but not all–were reunited with their kids at a Littleton elementary school

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

LOAD-DATE: April 27, 1999

Document 34 of 36.

Newsweek

May 3, 1999, U.S. Edition

SECTION: NATION; Pg. 39

LENGTH: 946 words

HEADLINE: Loitering on the Dark Side

BYLINE: By Steven Levy

HIGHLIGHT:

The Columbine High killers fed on a culture of violence that isn't about to change

BODY:

Now for the recriminations. Was the Colorado tragedy a legacy of our technoculture: Doom, Natural Born Killers, hate-amplifying Web sites and pipe-bomb plans from the Net? Or simply two teenage killers' ability to collect enough ordnance to sustain a small army? Gathering the potential culprits seems less an exercise in fixing liability than tossing random darts at the violence-fixated cultural landscape. After the massacre, there were calls to cancel two upcoming Denver events: a Marilyn Manson concert and the NRA's annual convention. Guilt has to be spread pretty widely to make bedfellows of the androgynous Goth crooner and Charlton Heston.

Still, we've got to look for answers to prevent further massacres, if not to clear up the mystery in Littleton. The Internet has been getting heat not only as a host for some of the sick enthusiasms of the Trenchcoat Mafia, but as a potential source of explosives information. Defenders of the Net rightfully note that criticizing the reach of the increasingly pervasive Web is like blaming paper for bad poetry. Still, it's undeniable that cyberspace offers unlimited opportunity to network with otherwise unreachable creepy people. What's worse is how the Net makes it easy to succumb to the temptation to post anything--even Ubermensch song lyrics or murderous threats--without the sure sanctions that would come if you tried that in your geographical community. The Internet credo is empowerment, and unfortunately that also applies to troubled teens sticking their toes into the foul water of hate-mongering. As parents are learning, the Net's easy accessibility to the netherworlds is a challenge that calls, at the least, for a measure of vigilance.

Hollywood is also a fat target. From Oliver Stone's lyric depiction of random murder (rabidly viewed by the Columbine killers) to stylish slaughter in The Matrix, violence is the main course on our entertainment menu. We are a nation that comfortably embraces Tony Soprano, a basic-values type of guy who not only orders hits but himself performs the occasional whacking. The industry's defense is summarized by Doug Richardson, who's scripted Die Hard II and Money Train. If I were to accept the premise that the media culture is responsible, he says, then I would be surprised that the thousands of violent images we see don't inspire more acts of violence. In other words, the sheer volume of carnage is proof of its harmlessness.

Then there are the shoot-and-splatter videogames like Doom--cited as a possible template for the Colorado killing spree. Some are concerned that hours of participating in a killing-machine fantasy might make a real-life version more palatable--a concern made more alarming since millions of people regularly play Doom and its cousins. Doom's creators aren't talking, but Bob Settles, who works on similar games for Bungee software (which makes the popular Myth II game), disputes that racking up virtual body counts is a prelude to real-life mayhem. Mostly people who play our games get a little relief--it allows them to let out anger, he says. That may be, but isn't it logical to assume that a kid on the edge, after spending days immersed in these killer simulations, might gain a comfort level with the experience?

I'm less worried about Myth II in the hands of a troubled teenager, says Settles, than the danger of having a gun in the household.

But it's not an either-or situation: guns are all too available to troubled kids steeped not just in videogames or slash movies, but the entire volatile stew that's, well, America. Videogames, the Net and Hollywood are just the low-hanging fruit in this blame game. The violent-entertainment complex survives because it caters to us: its brutal images and dark-side pursuits exist because they're popular and profitable.

Traditional media exploit this, too; the week's news coverage speaks directly to our fascination with home-bred violence. The killers may have been steeped in a crock pot of fantasy carnage, but now the nation is willingly marinating in its very real aftermath: a tissue-consuming orgy of victim interviews and 911 tapes. As a TV-anchor magnet, suburban-school killers easily outpace a complicated conflict in a consonant-ridden corner of the world. (To be fair, NEWSWEEK sent its share of correspondents, too.) Like it or not, the dramatic personae of Columbine High School were destined to be familiar characters in the ongoing American docu-drama.

Katie Couric's emotional interview with two bereaved victims was great television, but as NBC and its cable sisters reran it as frequently as an MTV video in heavy rotation, the line between news and tear-jerking entertainment got fuzzier. ABC's Nightline arranged a town meeting where victims in Jonesboro, Ark., still smarting from last season's school massacre, were recruited to offer guidance to freshly grieving Littleton victims. Perhaps such communication can be helpful, but should it be conducted under the gaze of millions of onlookers, and broken up by commercial breaks? This is what comes when victims become gets in the increasingly intense competition to win the ratings war for the tragedy du jour.

What we're left with is a vicious cycle where even the examination of a disaster reinforces the violence-obsessed culture that may have helped trigger it. How can you pull the threads of violence from a society when those strands are so deeply woven into our character? We're left with a bromide: make sure that your kids don't get in so deep that fantasies cross over to horrible, heartbreaking reality. It'll have to do because the culture isn't changing. We like it too much.

GRAPHIC: PHOTO: REMEMBERING THE DEAD: A mourner at Rachel Scott's funeral on Saturday

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

LOAD-DATE: April 27, 1999

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