Month: April 2010

A lesson in community and tolerance

This is one of the hardest entries for me to write. But it needs to be said, and I have a tie-in for the Houston locals out there reading this.

This story has been mentioned/written about in so many places that I’m going to just make a list for the links rather than stringing it together in prose:

  1. HRC Back Story blog
  2. Baby Rabies
  3. lezgetreal.com
  4. Candace Gingrich (huffingtonpost.com blog)
  5. rightpundits.com (older article)
  6. Libby Post (timesunion.com) (older article)

The summary: Constance McMillan challenges a school policy that prom dates must be of the opposite gender. Constance takes school to court. Court finds school district is wrong to deny Constance attendance, but does not actually order school district to run the prom. School district cancels prom. Parents and private citizens offer to run prom for the school instead, details of which are kept mysterious and Constance isn’t invited. School reinstates prom at country club, where it’s attended by a total of seven students, two of whom have learning difficulties, plus some teachers and the principal as chaperones.

Obviously, the rest of the students wouldn’t stay home from “the prom.” So “the good kids” had their prom elsewhere, and the school district just happened to be in on the setting up of a decoy prom for Constance, her date, and the outcasts.

The actions of those involved in this shell game are despicable and inexcusable. We’re talking about a school district here, an entity whose very reason for existence is teaching. And teach they did, whether they realize itor not. What has the school district taught the entire senior class, and possibly the entire population of the school, by their actions regarding the 2010 prom?

The lesson taught to these kids is that discrimination, ostracism, and cutting out a few from a community for arbitrary reasons is acceptable. Now, the kids will do this on their own without any help from the school district. In fact these kind of silly checkers games are exactly what students do on their own without any help.

The school district and the parents in the community are supposed to be better than that. The right thing for the principal to do is to address at least the senior class, if not the student population about tolerance, and turn this entire ordeal into a lesson about building community that will last for a lifetime. The lesson that setting personal discomfort aside is sometimes what it takes to build a community. A lesson that appears to be lost on a fair number of people.

I dread what these young adults will be doing some years from now, when it’s not the high school prom anymore, but the adult social scene.

In a few years time, it won’t be about the prom. It’ll be about the block parties, cocktail parties, bachelor/bachelorette auctions, Halloween and New Year’s Eve parties. The kind of events that make a community amazing.

I feel for Constance and the other students that were deceived by their own school board. The same school board they and their parents trusted to look out for their best interests. And they did the exact opposite.

It’s simple enough, isn’t it? So I’m sure some of you may be wondering why it was so hard for me to write this.

Something very similar to what happened to Constance has been happening to me for the past year. This “community” we have in Houston… I mean, the people came from all over. Some are lifelong locals, others came from cities like Denver, Miami, New York City, Los Angeles, others from smaller towns like Beaumont or Conroe. But many of them appear to have been taught the exact same lessons that the Itawamba County School District taught Constance and her classmates. And the sad thing is, some of these people I’m talking about went to private schools where the faculty should know better.

People in the arts have a reputation for being stuck-up and exclusive. I refused to believe that; I wanted to believe those people were just average people like me. Similiar things could be said for the tech and marketing/PR crowds, to a lesser extent, but my experience is the stereotype of those surrounding ballet, opera, dance, orchestra, and similar events is one of noses twenty feet in the air, and thus is probably the best example.

The good news is, a community is not like a piece of glass. It may be broken, but it can be fixed. And it should be fixed. Because cutting people out isn’t how you build a community. It’s how you destroy one.

No, I’m not perfect. Nobody is. I’ve made my mistakes. But I think we all would do well to learn from what happened to Constance McMillan. And since most of us are long since out of high school, I’d like to think we’re above the way high school kids act.

Suicide barriers and landmarks: my thoughts on the Golden Gate Bridge

A recent entry on bayareaspot.com poses the question of whether or not a suicide barrier should be installed on the Golden Gate Bridge:

I just saw a movie called “The Bridge” about all the suicides that take place at the Golden Gate and it was shocking to watch all those people leaping to their deaths…. Average number of jumpers is 1 every two weeks and the grand total now is well over 1200 people ages ranging from 80 to 14. It is the most popular location to commit suicide in the world. Yet, San Franciscans refuse to build a barrier (ala Eiffel Tower, Empire State building) because it would not look aesthetically pleasing.

The article concludes with an incompletely-attributed quote by Eve Meyer from this SF Chronicle article:

“When suicide becomes difficult,” Meyer says, “people do not switch to another method. They tend to get help.

Now the last part of the article is technically incorrect as the plan to build a barrier has been approved but not yet funded. We’ll get to that in a minute.

I admire art, including architecture. The Golden Gate Bridge is beautiful in its present form. But when a landmark becomes known for its suicides almost as much as its beauty, I feel it is absolutely, positively, patently devoid of good judgment to place the preservation of aesthetics above the preservation of human life.

Moving on…

The SF Chronicle article reveals how this could have been avoided when the Golden Gate Bridge was originally built. The original plans by chief engineer Joseph Strauss called for railings of a specific design at a height of 5&12frac; feet, which he believed would make the bridge suicide-proof.

Enter architect Irving Morrow, who was originally brought in to design the plazas and entryways. For some reason, he reduced the height to 4 feet, a decision with tragic consequences for over a thousand people who have chosen to end their lives at the bridge, and the thousands more surviving friends and family, in the decades since. What the heck could he have been thinking? The only possibility that makes much sense to me is that first, Strauss not clear enough in his original plans why the height was set where it was, and second, the change was made for primarily aesthetic reasons. If this is the case, we’ve found out the hard way in the decades since that looks can indeed kill.

So we’ve identified the problem. How to fix it?

This LA Times article from 2008 October documents that the plan to build steel netting below the bridge was approved, and was chosen as the least expensive alternative. From what I’ve been able to find out, it has yet to be built, assumably due to funding issues as documented in this SF Examiner article. The cost is estimated at $50 million with annual maintenance costs well under $100,000.

To say the least, I’m horrified. Funding issues? Maybe the beancounters standing in the way of a decades overdue fix to a flawed, suicide-friendly bridge should give their excuses to the surviving friends and family every time there’s yet another jumper. I’m pretty sure the money would be found rather hastily thereafter. Is $50 million a lot of money? Yes. But there’s no objective way to place a price tag on human lives. The first suicide prevented will make every dollar spent worth it.

Cyberbullying, suicide, reactions, and moving forward

A recent entry on Jamie Tworkowski’s blog for To Write Love On Her Arms addresses the suicide of Alexis Pilkington, the role of Formspring as the forum for where the bullying leading to her suicide occurred, and the surprising response of a boycott of the site as the reaction.

Jamie is spot-on in her reasoning why the boycott is a bad idea, and her post is the blogosphere’s equivalent of a Wayne Gretzky shot that blazes right past the goalie:

…I don’t believe that boycotting Formspring is any sort of solution. I don’t believe it will prevent suicide. The same problems exist on Facebook and MySpace and Twitter and countless other websites. And with that, it’s worth considering that hate, as well as pain, have been around much longer than the internet. If that’s true, then perhaps the problem is not the internet at all – perhaps the problem is people.

I believe there’s a bigger picture and better solutions to consider. […] [I]f you want to learn to fight for the lives and health of the people around you – my guess is that it won’t have much to do with the strangers on the internet. My guess is that it will happen in the context of real relationships and honest conversations.

This sentiment is echoed by commenters on the post (relevant portions of comments, with identification):

  1. I agree, boycotting Formspring won’t do much. People need to reach out to their community. (a texas girl)
  2. I don’t think Formspring is the problem, its people. Why can’t we all just get along? (Sydney)
  3. I was surprised that anyone would think boycotting Formspring would solve the problem. It’s clear that the problem was the people who sent hateful messages, not the site itself. (Kenna)
  4. I do agree that formspring should NOT be boycotted. It’s not going to help at all, it’s not going to stop suicide, it’s not going to bring Alexis back. (Brigette)

Not surprisingly, I also concur with what Jamie is saying here. Verbal bullying, harassment, and ostracism predate electronic communications media. Blaming Formspring for this is irresponsible and wrong. The responsibility for actions of an online service’s users ultimately lies with the users themselves. There is really only so much an online service can do in cases like this; Formspring includes the ability to block questions from anonymous users, requiring at least that the users register.

No one in Alexis’s position should feel like help is not available to them. We will never know for sure what Alexis was thinking before taking her own life. This is a great chance for teachers and faculty at schools across the country, or even around the world, to remind their students help is available and where they can get it. Nobody–particularly at that young of an age–should feel they are helpless.

Those who drove Alexis to suicide get my strongest contempt, which they deserve. They know who they are and they will have to live with the results of their cold, thoughtless, selfish, hateful, and (perhaps most importantly) deadly conduct for the rest of their lives. That is the real problem we should be attacking here: how can people be this insensitive toward someone? By the time one is of high school age, one is closer to adulthood than kindergarten. Yet bullying, particularly cyberbullying, shows no sign of letting up, and it appears most adults are still catching up on technological literacy when it comes to their children’s interactions over the Internet. But this is only part of the problem. What does it say about us as a society and our school system when so many teenagers in high school are patently devoid of scruples during their final four years prior to adulthood, to the point they would bully another student into suicide?

[Edited 2021-06-23 to update URLs due to link rot]