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Schools learning
to deal with community’s tragedy
For nearly three weeks the Yellow Springs school community
has dealt with the news that one of its students is accused of murdering
another two years ago, and though law enforcement officials have not disclosed
the facts about what really happened, the business of learning appears
to have returned to normal at Yellow Springs High School and the McKinney
School, several teachers and Principal John Gudgel said.
Finding out what students are feeling has been difficult,
however, after nine students declined to be interviewed for this article.
The reluctance to talk, some teachers and parents say, is disconcerting.
In the days following the discovery of Tim Lopez’s
body buried in the backyard where his classmate Michael Rittenhouse lives,
a blanket of silence settled over YSHS and McKinney, English teacher Elizabeth
Lutz recalled last week. Teachers tried to hold regular classes, but students
were not their usual selves.
“The kids didn’t talk all day long,”
Lutz said. “They were completely solemn and a little confused and
unsure of what they were supposed to feel and think.”
Lutz read to her students and let them play Scrabble
to give them room to talk about it if they wanted. But for the most part,
they weren’t ready, she said.
Though some students wanted to keep busy and others
wanted to talk, by Monday of the week following the discovery, students
began to express their shock and bring up rumors they had heard, history
and social science teacher John Day said last week.
“It was tricky,” he said. “But
talk was mostly honest and appropriate. They were wanting to process emotionally.”
Middle school students, who were more removed from
the people involved, were still frightened and upset, said Aurelia Blake,
who teaches language at the McKinney School. And for teachers who may have
taught either Lopez or Rittenhouse in their class, trying to conduct classes
was an emotional challenge, several teachers said.
Gudgel called four all-school assemblies when a
new piece of information regarding the case was released and used them to
inform students of the facts and encourage them not to speculate or spread
rumors.
A few students talked briefly to counselor David
Smith and Gudgel. The school also provided crisis counselors Dawn Cooksey,
Jack Layh, Bob Barcus and Esther Battle for students and teachers. Players
on the football team, on which Rittenhouse served as assistant coach, talked
with counselor Denise Runyon.
Day found the services to be somewhat helpful, but
they had their limits. “The lack of resolution makes it hard to deal
with because it’s hard to talk about when you don’t know much
but the fact that Tim has been murdered,” he said. “There are
still lots of questions about what happened and if others are involved but
didn’t say anything.”
Classroom discussions over the past two weeks have
sometimes lead to conversation about the issues surrounding the case, teachers
said. Lutz said that students in her class who were reading To Kill a Mockingbird
talked about capital punishment, evil and whether taking another human life
could ever be justified, issues they related to Tim and Mike.
Another discussion in Day’s class about a
gun that was discharged at a party held by Shawnee High School students
lead a few Yellow Springs students to mention that someone fired a gun at
a party in Yellow Springs last summer. Most students seemed to be aware
of the incident, but were slow to answer when Day asked why no one alerted
parents or authorities. According to Day, the students reasoned that their
silence was due to their desensitization to violence and to fear that “if
they talked they might get hurt.”
“It reinforced for me that there are a lot
more guns around than I had any idea about, and it also reinforced this
code of silence that no matter how bad, serious or dangerous the situation
is, students will never say anything to an adult about another student,”
Day said. “It’s a dangerous trend that there are life threatening
things happening and people aren’t talking about it.”
Hard to gauge reaction
The students who did not wish to comment for this
article declined for various reasons. Some said it was too soon to talk
about their feelings, and others were uncomfortable, as friends of both
the Lopez and Rittenhouse families, saying things that might hurt or offend.
Two students agreed to give their perspectives, but changed their minds
after discussing it with their friends.
Students are showing some anger and disbelief that
Rittenhouse could be guilty. When students scrawled “Free Mike”
graffiti across school walls and on classroom desks two weeks ago, Gudgel
told students in an assembly that it was inappropriate to show anything
but respect for both families.
Lutz said that she lectured her students about why
such behavior was inappropriate and disrespectful to a family who had lost
a son. She also told the students, she said, that having compassion for
someone was not the same as pre-empting due process.
“They’re confused about associating someone
they know with a horrifying act,” Lutz said. “They’re
also very concerned about Nicky [Rittenhouse’s younger brother]. They
love him, even those who don’t know him well.”
According to Anne Erickson, whose son, Julian, was
in the same class as Lopez and Rittenhouse, part of students’ reluctance
to talk could be protective silence. Rumors circulating around the village
imply that others could have knowledge about the case, she said.
“No one wants to make a crack in the ice because
of the don’t-rat-on-your-friends mentality, even if you don’t
know you’re doing it,” she said.
Gudgel agreed that students are likely feeling a
fear of favoritism and betrayal and are dealing with the difficulty of articulating
what’s going on inside them. No one wants to risk saying something
that possibly could be connected to the multitude of rumors going around,
he said.
Aggressive media attention just after Lopez’s
remains were discovered infuriated students, who then developed a distrust
of the media, Erickson said. According to Gudgel, students bonded to keep
the media at bay and to emphasize the positive successes of Yellow Springs
students, such as presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich’s recent
praise of students’ questions, the basketball team’s tournament
wins and the Mock Trial and physics teams advancement to state competition.
According to Erickson’s three high school
and early-college-age children, the issue is being addressed among small
groups of youth and is not a big topic of conversation.
Parental concerns
For parents who Erickson knows, however, the murder
and its implications for the community are the only things they talk about
lately. Many people, including students, teachers and parents, Erickson
said, were peripherally aware that both boys may have been involved in drugs,
and, she said, school and police should have investigated the drug problem
more cosely and been informed about the relationships of Lopez and Rittenhouse,
she said.
Lopez’s mother Barbara McQuiston had said
that she feared past drug use may have had something to do with her son’s
disappearance.
Though the schools and police have a role in shaping
students’ lives, Gudgel said, the community also needs to take responsibility
for its youth. Student support starts at home, he said, and “we all
need to do a better job of understanding and knowing our kids.”
Though Erickson would like more dialogue, she does
not hold the community responsible for what has happened.
“One of my biggest concerns is that we would
start to take on guilt for this incident,” she said.
The school community will have to keep dealing with
the tragedy, and as the details unfold, old wounds could be reopened and
a new round of healing could be necessary, Day and Blake said.
“I want to protect my babies,” Blake
said of her students. “I want to protect them from the bad things
but I also want to protect them from thinking the world is just a happy
place.”
—Lauren Heaton |
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