[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
[April 22, 1999]
[Pages 592-600]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks in a Roundtable Discussion With Students on Violence in Schools
at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia
April 22, 1999
The President. Thank you, Mr. Porter. I
think all of you know that we are being joined by several million
students through various media outlets that are covering this, and so
let me begin by saying I'm delighted to be here at T.C. Williams High
School. Thank you, Mr. Porter. Our superintendent, Herb Berg, is here, and I'm glad to be back in this school
district again that has hosted me for so many important educational
announcements. Senator Robb and Congressman
Jim Moran are both here with us, along with
Mayor Kerry Donley. I thank them for joining
us and our two teachers, Ellen Harmon and
Barbara Finney.
I want to spend most of my time today listening to you. I have a few
questions I want to ask, and I'm going to turn it over to the teachers
as soon as I make a few opening remarks. But I got up this morning, and
I made some notes and worked over them again, and I'd like to say just a
few things.
First of all, we're here obviously because of the terrible tragedy
in Littleton, Colorado, and because, even though it is the worst example
of school violence we've seen, it is by no means the only one. And
indeed, I think that some of the people joining us today are from
Paducah, Kentucky, and Jonesboro, Arkansas--at least those two
communities which had examples of school violence last year.
I think it's important that all over America students and teachers
have a chance to discuss their feelings about this, their ideas about
what we should do. And it's especially important for younger children,
who might be quite traumatized and wonder whether they are, in fact,
safe at school. So I want to talk a little about all of that.
There is really nothing more important than keeping our schools
safe. And we've tried to do a lot of things in that regard over the last
few years, having a zero tolerance for guns and drugs policy, putting
new community police officers in schools where they're needed, trying to
support more counselors in schools, more after-school, more mentoring
programs, more conflict resolution programs. We've tried to help school
districts and students and teachers who wanted to do it to have--for
younger children, elementary and junior high school--using school
uniform policies or dress code policies where they wanted to implement
those things. But we know that there are things which have to be done
sort of beyond the Government and beyond anything Government can do.
I spent a lot of time thinking about this, but I want to say, last
night and today I thought about the work that my wife has done on this for many years, and I went back and
reread the chapters in her book that deal with the problems that
children have in coping with violence and the responsibilities of
parents and the larger society. I thought about the work that the Vice
President's wife, Tipper Gore, started doing
well over a decade ago on this whole issue. And I think we have to ask
ourselves some pretty hard questions here. What are the responsibilities
of students themselves? What are the responsibilities of schools? What
are the responsibilities of parents? What is the role of the larger
culture here? Is there a sense in which the fact that all of you are
exposed to
[[Page 593]]
much higher levels of violence through television, through video games,
that you can actually figure out how to make bombs on the Internet--does
that make a difference? Does it make these kinds of things more likely
to happen? What are our responsibilities?
But before I open it to you, I'd just like to make one other
comment. I think, particularly for young people who may be quite
frightened as a result of this, or for parents who may wonder about the
safety of schools, I think it's worth restating two or three basic
things.
First of all, on balance, our schools are still the safest place our
kids can be in most communities, under most or all circumstances.
Secondly, I think it's worth reminding everyone that in spite of
these horrible instances, our country is still fundamentally a good and
decent place, and our people are good and decent people. And we have
seen the way the community of Littleton responded to this: people
standing in line for hours to give blood, people showing up to volunteer
their services as counselors and in other ways, with the way people have
reached out to each other. We see a kind of microcosm of how America has
reacted to this.
And I think it's important that the young people of our country know
this and that the parents know this, that they should remember we--as
horrible as this is, we have seen once again what is basically decent
and good about America. And we should remember that most schools are
more nearly represented by the kind of conversation we're having around
here today than by the horrible incident we saw in Colorado.
So I think that's enough for me to say. But I'm interested in what
you think about it, what your reactions are, what you've done here to
try to avoid this, and what you think the responsibilities of the rest
of us are, starting at home and going all the way up to the President,
and also the cultural issues I mentioned.
You know, we have to acknowledge, as Hillary does in this book--and
I went back and read some of the things we talked about over the last 20
years--that we do have more violence among younger people in America
than other cultures do. And everyone has to take a hard look at what all
the elements of our society are that contribute to that and what we can
do to diminish it.
I also would like to say--let me just mention one other thing. I
think it's important because of the action in which we're involved in
Kosovo today. We don't know all the facts about what happened in
Littleton, but one of the things that's come out of this that's really
made an impression on me is that the young men who were involved in this
horrible act apparently felt that they were subject to ridicule and
ostracism, and they were kind of social outcasts at the school. But
their reaction to it was to find someone else to look down on. And
apparently, they were very prejudiced against African-Americans and
Hispanics, and observed Adolf Hitler's birthday, and otherwise reacted
to that.
This is something that you see a lot around the world and throughout
human history, that people who themselves feel disrespected, instead of
developing an enormous sympathy for other people who have been subject
to discrimination, instead look for someone else to look down on so they
can always say, ``Well, I may be dissed at school, or I may be subject
to disrespect in some other environment, but at least I'm not them.''
And I think that's a larger problem we really have to fight, because
you look around this room--of course, we're in perhaps the most diverse
school district in America today--but this is a great opportunity for
us, as long as we lift other people up and recognize the inherent
dignity and worth of all individuals and all ethnic, religious, and
cultural groups.
And so I think that's another point that needs to be made here: They
had the wrong reaction to the fact that they were dissed. Hey, look,
everybody gets dissed sometime in life, even the President--[laughter]--
sometimes, especially the President.
So these are some of the things that I was thinking about that I
hope will spark your thoughts. And I think I'll turn it back to you and
to the teachers to discuss this in any way you'd like.
[Teacher Ellen Harmon opened the floor to the
students for discussion.]
The President. Yes, pass the mike.
[Teacher Barbara Finney, T.C. Williams peer
mediator adviser, introduced a veteran student mediator, who suggested
that the Littleton tragedy grew out of a buildup of anger or aggression
that could have been addressed through peer mediation. Another student
mediator described the mediation process at T.C. Williams.]
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The President. I wanted to ask this question, because I honestly
believe that young people can help each other, particularly at this age,
maybe more than adults can, maybe in some cases more than their parents
can, if things get out of hand.
But what I want to ask you is, how do they get there, if they're
really angry? What if they're too embarrassed about what they think is
being done to them to talk about it? Do they get there only when they
come to you, or do other kids say, ``Hey, these two people are having
trouble,'' or ``These two groups are having trouble. You need to go to
them.'' Can you all talk to me about that?
[A participant said students could be referred to mediation or could
approach the teacher in charge confidentially. She commented that
letting students vent their anger in a monitored setting was often
helpful.]
The President. Go ahead.
[A student said that T.C. Williams had instituted a confidential safety
hotline so students could reach the peer mediation people and suggested
that something similar in Littleton might have prevented the tragedy.]
The President. So you're saying if they had a hotline, as opposed to
a peer mediation group, then someone who was afraid----
Student. No, they work together--they work together.
The President. That's what I mean, in addition to. So, if someone
were afraid, they could call the hotline and say, ``Here's what I think
is going on.''
Student. Yes. And it's confidential. You just----
The President. Okay. Suppose I call the hotline and say, ``Listen, I
just talked to one of these people, and they're talking about getting
guns and shooting people.'' Then what happens? I called the hotline,
here. What happens?
Student. Peer mediation can be contacted with that, because you have
given us a name, or Mr. Porter can talk to them or something.
The President. I think this is good. That's wonderful.
Okay.
[A peer mediator said that students in mediation felt more confident and
comfortable because they did not have to worry about punishment, and
that the peer mediators gained a broader perspective on problems.
Another student noted that T.C. Williams was a very diverse school, and
perhaps part of the problem in Littleton was that school's lack of
diversity. A student then said that probably Littleton students had felt
their school was safe and its administration had been no less keen and
connected than that at T.C. Williams.]
The President. First of all, I think that's a very brave thing for
you to say. But there's no doubt that those people are very good people,
that they have a good school, that they thought things were rocking
along--which is why--that's why what you said, I think, is very
important, that there needs to be some organized outlet that people can
access privately. Because nearly everybody in America believes this
couldn't happen in their school. So I think having this way to call and
say, ``This is going on''--we all need warning systems.
Go ahead.
Student. But, see, the problem is--what I feel is, I feel the
administrators knew about this because a lot of people say, like, on the
news and stuff, the students seemed to know about this crew already and
seemed to not have done nothing about it. They didn't bother to prevent
it, because they had a page in the yearbook for this crew and everything
already.
The President. Yes, but the point I'm trying to make is that--a lot
of people seemed to have known in general, but most people didn't--a lot
of the people who knew, I think, didn't know that they might do what
they did. And that's why it's important to feed all this stuff in
someplace, because there are people who do know that--let me come back
to the beginning here. I'd like for you all to talk about this.
Let me just say what I was going to say. One of the things that all
kids are taught by their parents, you know, is this old ``sticks and
stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.'' That ain't
true--if you'll let me use bad grammar. [Laughter] That's not true,
because a lot of this stuff starts with words, you know?
And even in what I do and the people I deal with, it's amazing how
much energy is lost and how many things are not done for America because
people in Washington, DC, at the highest levels of power and influence,
get hurt by what other people say about them--mean, bad things other
people say about them. And then
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they get in the position where they try to bait each other to say mean,
bad things, you know.
And I think that somehow maybe we all, particularly in a culture
that desensitizes people to violence, if they're profoundly alienated--
and I still think that's a big part of this--all of us have to do a
better job of teaching young people not to let themselves be defined by
the words other people use against them.
That's something that really struck me when I read these accounts,
is how alienated these young people were because these athletes were
saying bad things about them or who else was saying bad things about
them. They were different, so then they had to look for somebody to feel
bad about.
And that's why I like this peer mediation thing, because it tends to
take the sting out of words at the earliest possible time. But people
really still get hurt so badly by what is said about them. And somehow,
we've got to make people more immune to that.
Go ahead.
[A student expressed concern that the Littleton attackers may have
learned to make bombs with information from the Internet, and asked what
the Government was doing to prevent the dissemination of such
information.]
The President. You know, when the bomb blew up in Oklahoma City and
the Federal building was destroyed and all those people were killed, we
pointed out that the way the Internet is going with these webpages,
people can learn how to build bombs like that on the Internet. And there
is a limit to how much we can control it. And we're looking for ways to
try to at least help parents deal with what their children can get off
the Internet, and a way to use ordinary law enforcement tactics
effectively against people who are trying to do illegal things over the
Internet. But it's very difficult.
I mean, one of the things that's wonderful about the Internet is
kind of its capacity for infinite expansion. And that's one of the great
things about it. I don't know how many teachers here now get research
papers where all the sources are off the Internet. But it's great.
That's the good news. The bad news is, it's almost impossible to find
this stuff, sort it out, and figure out whether it's illegal or not, and
do something about it.
But I agree with you; it's going to be one of the big challenges we
face, because there's been a lot of talk about--if you've seen in the
last 3 or 4 days--about whether the Internet plus having very young
people play very violent video games and where they learn to shoot
people and stuff, that those two things have added an extra element to
an otherwise already pretty violent culture. And I think we're going to
have to take another look at it.
It's not easy. I don't want to pretend that it's easy. If you look
at how many thousands and thousands of pages, webpages, are being added
to the Internet every day, it's the fastest growing organism in human
history for communications. And it presents us a great challenge.
[A student stated that it would be very hard for the Government to
control information on the Internet in a society with a free press and
free speech. He said that the responsibility rested with parents to
monitor what their children could access on the Internet.]
The President. Well, I do think it's important that in all these
discussions, we not take the focus away from the home. I agree with
that. If you look at all the facts that we know from the incidents that
happened last year, all the school violence incidents, it appears that
there were some cases in which the parents were--to go back to what you
said about how other kids knew and they didn't call in--there appears
that there were some cases in which the parents knew that the kid had a
problem, including an obsession with guns and bombs, and there were
other cases where they didn't know and might not have been able to know.
But I do think that we shouldn't minimize that.
The only thing I want to--to go back to what you said about the
Internet--I agree with that. You don't want me to choke off the
Internet. It's one of the greatest things that ever happened. But we've
got to figure out a way to apply the ordinary restrictions of the
criminal law in that context, just like you would any other. I think
that's all you're saying, is we need to--if somebody's doing something
illegal there, we should. But the problem is, how do you--how do parents
limit their children's access to something they shouldn't be able to
see? And I do think that the role of the Internet, and the way it's
bringing everything into the home, has made a parent's job much more
difficult. And it's harder to know what to do and how
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to do it. It's much, much harder. And I think we ought to just fess up
to that.
But I'm sympathetic with you. We don't want to destroy what's great
about the Internet. It's revolutionizing the American economy. It's
opening up opportunities for people, opening up educational
opportunities, bringing whole libraries to homes of people who could
never afford them. I mean, it's doing a lot of good. But we've got to
figure out a way to deal with these downside risks.
[A student stated that it appeared administrators and students in
Littleton knew there was a problem and that administrators should have
contacted the parents. Ms. Finney commented
that a Littleton student had said he heard the suspects planning the
attack last year, and she believed he should have taken the initiative
to tell someone.]
The President. I want to hear from the students, but that goes back
to what you said. What I would like to--the message to go out across all
the millions of students like you that are listening, and all of the
schools, is that no matter how good your school is and no matter how
good your programs are, we need a little humility here. And you're not
doing something bad if you hear people talking about doing something or
you see them becoming profoundly alienated in ways that could be
destructive, if you tell someone who's in a position of responsibility
to do something about it. They're not going to be punished if they
hadn't done anything wrong, but we might be able to prevent more of
these things.
I do think that one of the lessons that will come out of this
incident, no matter what the facts turn out to be, is that there has to
be a hotline, there has to be some sort of early warning system; there
has to be a climate in which children feel, young people feel that they
can ring the alarm bell when they see something like this.
[Another student introduced herself.]
The President. Oh, yes, you've been waiting a long time--she's been
waiting longer than anybody else. [Laughter]
[The student cited a lack of morality and urged more disciplinary action
from school administrators.]
The President. I agree with that. But what happens if all of that
still doesn't work because young people at some point develop a whole
other life? I mean, when you look at what is apparently the fact here,
these--they created a whole new culture for themselves, a whole other
life, which--we don't know the facts yet about what their parents did or
didn't know, about what the schools did or didn't know. I think it's
important for us not to make hasty judgments about Littleton.
I agree with what you say. But I also think in addition to what you
say, we've got to have some warning system to protect everybody else.
Go ahead.
[A student said that people should stop placing blame on movies and
video games and spend more time with their children. Another participant
said discipline should start at an early age, not in the teen years. A
student then asked if the fact that Littleton was a white suburban area
would take the focus off of racial groups as the cause of problems.]
The President. Well, I hope so. You know, it's interesting; all of
these instances of school violence, even though they occurred in schools
which some had a lot of racial diversity, some had not much racial
diversity, but they all occurred away from inner-city areas with very
high unemployment and high general crime rates. They tended to occur
more in small towns and rural areas or suburbs, where you normally would
not think that society itself falling apart around you would happen.
Now, part of that could be the absence of the kind of warning and
alert systems that you often have in the big city schools. I mean, a lot
of big city schools, for example, all routinely have metal detectors and
things like that because they know they've got to protect their kids.
But I think what it means is that whatever is out there in our culture,
whether it is the failure of parents to teach their kids, whether it is
that plus then the extra exposure to violent experiences when you're
young, kind of one step removed through media or video games or
whatever--whatever it is--what it shows is that the people in rural
America and in suburban America, in low-crime America and upper income
America are just as vulnerable to having alienated young people in gangs
or in isolation take violent action. I think that's what it shows. And
it should destroy any of our racial or economic
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stereotypes about this. This is something that can happen anywhere.
That's the point you made, and I think that's right.
[A student noted that T.C. Williams also had social workers and
psychologists in addition to the hotline and peer mediators, and asked
how many other schools in the country had these alternatives.]
The President. Well, the truth is that some do, and some don't. More
and more, I think, schools are doing that. Some have economic
constraints. Some may not think they need them. But I believe that--I
can tell you this. One of the things I have tried to do is to make it
possible for schools to have more trained personnel and more options to
serve children that have a whole variety of different needs.
And I suspect that one positive thing that will come out of this
awful incident is that schools all over America today will be doing an
inventory of what kinds of supports they have for their children. And
they will--I expect, just because we're doing this, your principal and
your teachers will be flooded with inquiries over the next 2 weeks about
what you have done here, about the peer mediation thing, about what kind
of social workers you have, what kind of psychologist do you have, what
kind of support do you have, because I think we will see everybody
taking a serious look at this.
I'm glad you made that point, though, because there are people who
have genuine emotional problems that require more professional, intense,
longer term help than even the peer mediators can provide. So I think
that's an important point you make.
[A student stated that other schools should have the violence prevention
alternatives offered at T.C. Williams and asked when the Government
would take action.]
The President. Well, first of all, you should know that we have
provided, already, funds--last year--for a lot of these services for
schools. And the Attorney General and the
Secretary of Education put out a booklet
that basically cited the best practices in all the schools.
We don't--the Federal Government doesn't run this high school. You
know, you have a local school board, and most of the money comes from
the State. We give some money, so--but what we did, we sent out a
handbook, which basically had the best practices, for early warning
signals, for preventive programs, for the kinds of things that you do
here. And we've provided a lot of support to help schools to have the
services they need to make them more safe.
Now, in the next few days I'm going to send another piece of
legislation up to the Congress to do even more of this. But for it to
work, people have to use the resources that are there and implement the
systems that are there, and it has to be done in every school in the
country.
Let me just say--this is kind of along the lines of your question--
when I called the county commissioner in Littleton, Colorado, the woman who is in charge of the local county
government there, she was very, I thought, quite brave, considering it
was in the middle of this crisis. The school hadn't even been--not all
the children had been taken out yet. And she said, ``Well, if this can
happen here, it can happen anywhere, and maybe, finally, every school in
America will do what is necessary to try to prevent this.''
So we have--last year we had the first White House conference in
history on school safety. We have sent things to every school in
America, and we have--and I said I'm going to send another bill this
week, or in the next few days, to do more. But it has to--every school
has to realize that if you want to be safe, you have to be prepared,
just like you are here.
Yes.
[A student stated that parents, teachers, government, and students
should work together to prevent school violence and provide for the
common welfare of the community. Another student said that having an
anonymous hotline was very important. Another commented that racism
should stop. Another student stated that there were no guarantees
against future violence, and high school students all over America
needed to be more sensitive to others and more considerate.]
The President. I must say, these things you say to me are among the
most impressive things of all, because all of us want to be part of
groups, and we are part of groups whether we like it or not. We're all
part of groups. You know, we just--from the families we're born in and
the lives we live. And the trick is to convince people that it's good to
be part of a group, a racial, an ethnic, a religious, a cultural group,
to be an athlete, to be a scholar, to be into music, to be into
whatever. But it's
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not--it doesn't have to be negative when compared with someone else.
That's the thing that breaks your heart.
And also, it's very important--another reason I like this hotline
and I like what you said is that it's very hard to be 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
years old; and if you are very lonely and very alienated and you feel
you don't belong with anybody or anything, and then all of a sudden, one
or two other people come along, and they're just like you, and then you
find something on the Internet that you can read that you can relate to,
and then things begin to spin out of control. And I think what you said
about reaching out to people who seem to be alone and have nobody to
care about them, I think that's very, very important as well.
I think that you know it a lot better than I do. But as old as I am,
I can still remember, it was--I had some pretty tough times when I was
13, 14, 15, 16 years old, and I had a very fortunate life. You realize
how hard you have to work to keep from getting into patterns that will
be destructive throughout life, where people feel that they only count
when they're in a group, that then they're opposed to somebody else,
they can look down on somebody else. It is the curse of human society
throughout the world.
Go ahead. You two, and then--this young man hasn't spoken yet, but
go ahead. We'll get you the mike as soon as he is finished. Who wants to
go next? Go ahead.
[A student said that young people were more desensitized to the value of
human life than they had been 20 years ago and therefore some violent
students may not have understood the impact of what they had done.]
The President. Yes. Let me say this: I really respect all of you
very much to have said that this is a matter of personal responsibility,
family responsibility, and you don't want to blame the culture. I
respect you for saying that--I don't want to blame the movies or blame
the video games; what you've said and how you've talked with your mother
and everything.
But I think you have to recognize--let me just say, for example,
when I was your age, if anything, the racism was more pronounced; the
social hierarchies in the schools were dramatic, between those who were
in and those who were out; people fought regularly on the school
grounds, and they were vicious to each other and--but you didn't have as
much gun violence.
And I think it is unquestionable that more people have more access
to more weapons, and more people at an earlier age can move from
profound alienation and misery into using violence against others than
was the case 20 or 30 years ago, because they either have--they have
more opportunities and because they've been desensitized and maybe
because they don't have a chance to sit down with a mother or a father
the way you do every night.
So the only thing I'm saying is, I think it's important not to
oversimplify this. And I hate it when people blame someone else and
don't take responsibility for what they did, but I don't think we can be
blind to the fact that there are more opportunities and there is a
greater openness to taking violent action on the part of alienated
people today than there was 20 or 30 years ago.
And I think the experience that these children have before, maybe--
maybe even when they're very young, before they form proper barriers in
life about what's right, what's wrong, what can or can't be done, makes
them quite vulnerable.
Go ahead. Who was next? This young man.
[A student said there might be a backlash against people who were into
the Gothic culture and rock music that would be blamed for instigating
the situation in Littleton. He also expressed concern that students
might be suspended on the spot for angry words.]
The President. So how do you think we should deal with that?
[The student said that people should be more careful about what they say
and find healthier ways to deal with anger. He said the school provided
counselors and psychologists for students to talk to, but he was able to
discuss his problems with his family.]
The President. Good for you. Let me say just generally, I don't
think--if all of you who have participated in this conflict resolution
thing, maybe you've seen enough of this in other students to know this--
but I can tell you from having lived a lot more years, this is a big
problem later in life, too. Sometimes it's a bigger problem for men than
for women because of the cultural sort of preconceptions of our society.
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If you don't learn to talk about your feelings when you're young,
and you don't have a constructive outlet for it, it just gets harder and
harder and harder as you get older. And we're talking today about
avoiding terrible tragedy. But we ought to talk just a minute about
having a good life. You know, most people won't do anything really
terrible, and most people will have some sort of life, but if you want
to have a good life, you have to have some constructive outlet for your
feelings.
And that's one thing that I really like about this whole way we're
talking today. And I hope that it's something that will go out across
the country and will change the way young people just live their lives.
And I hope it's something you can take out of high school, because you'd
be amazed how many people my age, in very responsible positions, still
can't manage their anger because they never learned to have a
constructive way to talk about it.
So this is not just--I mean, I know we're here to talk about this
school violence, and I don't want to get off the subject, but I think
that this is a general problem of life. And you have said a very
important thing. And I hope that all of you will remember this, that
it's not just something for high school. And to avoid having bad things
happen, learning to manage your anger and to actually share how you
really feel about something and get it behind you is one of the most
important aspects of growing up. And you would be amazed how few people
can really do it right.
[A student noted how easy it was for the Littleton attackers to get guns
and stressed the need for regulation of weapons.]
The President. There is no other country in the world where it is so
easy for people to get and misuse weapons. And we have a culture of
having a right to own weapons and a right to use them and a big hunting
culture, and I grew up in it, participated in it, and enjoyed it very
much.
But I have--every little thing I've tried to do, from the passing of
the Brady bill to the passing of the assault weapons ban, all these
things have met with violent opposition, as if I were trying to destroy
the American way of life. And all I'm trying to do is keep more people
alive.
And so I think that we need--we don't have, really, time to talk
about this, because I want all of you to talk, but this will be a part
of what we are trying to do, to strike a better, proper balance between
making it harder for people who are violent to get guns and misuse them,
without interfering with the constructive role that it plays in our
society.
Go ahead. Oh, I'm sorry.
Ms. Harmon. I was just going to say, we're
running a little short on time. Maybe we could take a few more
questions. It's up to you.
The President. Yes. Go ahead.
[A student stressed that high schools must avoid easy answers that would
restrict students' rights and ensure their security at the cost of their
freedom.]
The President. First, I think that's a point well taken. You
mentioned school uniforms. Let me tell you the position I took on that.
I spent some time in Long Beach, California, which is the third biggest
school district in California, which means it's huge. And it's the
biggest school district that early introduced the school uniform policy,
not applied to high schoolers for obvious reasons. But they did it in
part because when the junior high schoolers had uniforms, which were
basically just two-color outfits they wore every day, it distinguished
them from the gangs, which created a safety problem. And it made all the
kids safe.
But they found, interestingly enough, that kids from upper income as
well as lower income families did better in those very troubling years
where you're moving right into your teenage years. And it lowered
dropouts; it increased attendance; it reduced discipline problems. It
worked fine. What we tried to do was to say if the community decided
they wanted to do it, then we would help them. And we've seen it happen
a lot.
Now, my only question in this regard, in the order question you
asked--and, again, I think it's very important that we not rush to
judgment in Littleton. Those people are still grieving. They are still
heartbroken. We do not have the facts there. It is very important that
none of us make judgments about that now. But we can make judgments
about how we want all schools to run.
But one of the things that struck me there was this whole black
trenchcoat deal, and whether or not--if the hotline, if they'd had a
hotline, and whether or not you had this kind of stuff there--whether
the school administrators should
[[Page 600]]
have been able to say, ``We're not going to have a school uniform
policy, but we'll have a nonprovocative dress code policy.'' Is that too
much of an infringement on individual liberty?
We can't answer that question. You've raised a good question. But
let me just give you the other side of it. And you have to decide, in
every case, whether it's an infringement on liberty or it's like going
through a metal detector at an airport. I don't know how many times--
before I became President, I was just traveling around like all the rest
of us--how many times I went through a metal detector at an airport, and
I set it off because of my belt buckle or the money clip in my pants or
whatever, so I had to turn around, take it all out, go back in, blah
blah blah. Well, when all this started, people said, ``Well, is this
going to be an infringement on our liberty, right?'' And then people saw
planes hijacked and blown up, and they said, ``Please infringe on my
liberty a little bit''--[laughter]--so that no one felt--I say, nearly
no one felt that it was an undue infringement on our liberty.
I'll give you another, maybe what you think is a harder case,
motorcycle helmet laws. You'll say, ``I ought to have a right to split
my head open if I want.'' But that's not entirely true, because if I hit
you and you split your head open, and you wouldn't have if you'd had
your helmet on, then I and society are supporting you, in a way.
So these questions--I am glad you made the point, but the point
needs to be debated against the larger--the other large issue of
individual freedom versus heading this stuff off. That's all I'm asking.
And you might keep little models in your head about the importance of
free speech, see, on the one hand, and the airport metal detector on the
other, and then whenever somebody comes up with a specific, argue it
within that framework.A student stated that the First Lady knew what she
was talking about in saying that it takes a whole village to raise
children and that if everyone would just look out for everyone else's
children, good things would happen.]
The President. I agree with that. Thank you. [Laughter] I think
that's very important, that--one of you asked me what I was going to do.
I think that the import of what everybody said, all of you said today,
is that we all have responsibilities here and that all these children
are our children and we all have responsibility.
Who's next?
Ms. Harmon. I'm sorry to have to say this,
but the afternoon is drawing to a close here; students do have to move
on. And we're delighted----
The President. You guys have got to get on the buses, right?
[Ms. Harmon thanked the students and the
President for participating.]
The President. Let me just say this--I know we've got to sign off--
first, you were terrific, and I thank you. I thank you for being honest.
I thank you for being forthright. Second, in the next few days, as the
agony of the grief fades in Colorado and as the facts tend to come out
more, I think--I'm speaking not only to those of you who are here in
this room but the millions of children all across our country who are
listening and the teachers and the educators--we are going to be working
hard on this. And anyone who has more ideas for us needs to feel free to
send them to us at the White House and send them to the Secretary of
Education.
We are working to reach out to the country. We want to do what we
can to create more environments like this one and to do everything we
can to minimize the chance that anything like this will happen again.
And we want to, in the process, reassure the children and the parents of
America that overwhelmingly our schools are good, safe places.
Thank you.
Note: The discussion began at 12:45 p.m. in the media center. In his
remarks, the President referred to John Porter, principal, T.C. Williams
High School; Herbert M. Berg, superintendent, Alexandria City schools;
Mayor Kerry Donley of Alexandria; and Patricia B. Holloway, chair,
Jefferson County, CO, Board of Commissioners.