Anti-Bullying Shot Down in Albuquerque

Three days into Albuquerque, New Mexico’s school year, a 13-yr-old boy is the first killed-in-school casualty.  Bennie Hargrove stood up to a bully and tried to get him to stop punching a smaller victim. The alleged perpetrator, Juan Saucedo, pumped multiple bullets into Hargrove and snuffed out his young life. The community has hailed Bennie a hero, a junior Good Samaritan who died trying to save a schoolmate in distress. As far as the incident goes, this appears to be the gist, and no more information has been released.

The terrible outcome blares out a warning that everyone involved in school safety, student behavior, and  anti-bullying for all to heed: The world is now a different place. Virtually all anti-bullying programs deride the passive onlookers or witnesses of a bullying scenario. Get involved, be proactive, intervene physically or verbally, provide information. Be the good citizen. The Hero. Be like Bennie.

 No one saw this coming, except for the reality-based educators experienced in student culture. Too many times deans and security APs heard the stories of threats, retribution, intimidation of witnesses and victims. It is a picture often pushed to the middle pages no one reads so the ugly, bloody schoolyards and cafeterias and hallways gain little attention compared to the marvelous work being done to make victim and perp meet on equal ground in the guidance office, a ticket out of math class.

How often students are told to be a good guy interventionist, be  an anti-bullying activist. Enlist in the  kindness brigade, do the right thing. The pipes, the pipes are calling, from school to school, and down the auditorium walls. Now the street angst of teenage life has claimed a victim because of naïve, courageous actions.  

Perhaps his intervention might have  been impelled by training, by altruism, by friendship, or a combination. We don’t know yet. Too much still lies in the deep background, the details of which must be gathered up and analyzed. What were the relationships, history; why did the shooter bring a gun to school. What set the wheels in motion that spun into a lunchtime murder at school lunch.

Too many anti-bullying approaches suffer the same fault as online financial business: it all sounds so convenient and miraculous, just  don’t ask about that security thing. It doesn’t serve the purpose at hand and may dampen the mood, so no negatives, please. Too many political activists (oh how we love activists) and professionals ignore the bare facts of adolescent reality because they just get in the way.

 We ask kids to be the soldiers in the anti-bullying army, give the recruits some boot camp for the kind and courageous,  then send them off to the front lines. And now we have a young teen gunned down by a boy the same age, alive yet all but dead. The authors, creators and pushers--school districts included--who construct  anti-bullying programs, school lessons, special presentations and its culture of therapeutic loquacity for violators and magnanimous fortitude for the brave  better go back to the drawing board and figure out how to protect kids who want to help. The shooter may be a bully and a  murderer, but the adults in the room have a lot to answer for.