Re: [UC] Kids Today

[John R Ellingsworth]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1   Rich   I find it appalling that the SHCA would take such a stance (this is similar to the one taken by Penn against the 40th street arcade).  I am glad that you did stand up for them; the irony is that the store is now an empty one.   I need to ask one question though: is there any documentation to prove that this was the position of SHCA?  I would like to read their justifications.   Thanks,   John Ellingsworth Project Leader Virtual Curriculum   - ----- Original Message ----- From: R. Hotchkiss To: University City Sent: Friday, March 08, 2002 2:24 PM Subject: [UC] Kids Today         Three years ago Fiesta Pizza was forced by the zoning board to give up some of their pool tables and pinball machines.  The SHCA was vociferous in its opposition to these amusements and got Janie Blackwell to support their cause.  SHCA members claimed that the availability of these amusements caused juveniles to commit more crimes, use more drugs and have more unwed pregnancies than they would in the absence of this amusement opportunity.  I argued that hanging out in the public of a pizza shop after school was definitely safer and more constructive than going home to an empty house (the kid's own or a friend's), where sex and drugs could occur freely until someone's mom got home at 6. This month's issue of the Atlantic Monthly explores why the percentage of teenagers who are criminals has shot up so drastically in the last decade (particularly in Vermont, once thought of as childhood innocence's last stand.)  And how giving kids something legal to do in the presence of adults is the way to keep crime down.  Taking away legal things that kids like to do, simply because adults find teenagers loud and distasteful, is actually a cause of what drives teens into more dangerous pursuits of amusement. (Dangerous first to them, and later to us.)   What follows is a few very short cuts-and-pastes from the article at http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/03/powers.htm I hope you skip my summary below and read the whole article.  I hope it causes you to think about what you, not being a parent to a teen, could do to keep neighborhood teens from turning into criminals who could prey on you.  Because there's things we can do today to make for a better tomorrow. You might think you know what it's like to be a teen today.  But if you're over 32 (like me), you're probably wrong.   The Apocalypse of Adolescence INCLUDEPICTURE  \d "/images/1pt.gif" This spring one of two Vermont teenagers charged with the knifing murder of two Dartmouth College professors will go on trial. The case offers entry to a disturbing subject-acts of lethal violence committed by "ordinary" teenagers from "ordinary" communities, teenagers who have become detached from civic life, saturated by the mythic violent imagery of popular culture, and consumed by the dictates of some private murderous fantasy.   On February 16 the New Hampshire attorney general announced that an arrest warrant had at last been issued in the Zantrop murders: for a seventeen-year-old boy, Robert Tulloch, from Chelsea, and his sixteen-year-old friend Jimmy Parker.   In their unvexed small-town habitat, and in the apparent absence of any motivating passions, Robert Tulloch and Jimmy Parker may come to be seen as representatives of a new mutation in the evolution of the murderous American adolescent.   Vermont's Department of Corrections reported that it supervised or housed one in ten Vermont males of high school age.  A report by the northern New England consortium HYPERLINK "http://www.justiceworks.unh.edu/"Justiceworks, released in 2000, asserted that "while overall crime rates are down in northern New England, a greater proportion of those crimes are being committed by children under the age of 18."   Some months after all the excitement had ebbed, I mentioned my bewilderment to Chris Frappier, an investigator with the state public defender's office. Frappier is a cheerful fellow with a beard and an earring who himself grew up poor in a small Vermont town.  "Look at the communities in this state that wage war on their youth. You've got Vergennes, kicking kids out of the park. You've got Woodstock banning skateboarding." The detective grew more heated as he spoke. "What I'm seeing in recent years is the total and complete alienation of youth," he said. "And it is not coming from them; it's coming from the adults who aren't bothering to reach out to them. And it is terrifying. Straight hedonistic drugs and music and misogynism. I walk Church Street in Burlington and I see kids that are walking dead and know it. And that is the biggest change of my lifetime in Vermont."     Holly Hotchkiss     -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.8 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com>   iQA/AwUBPIy6xwbexkNIm1OFEQIXgQCg0DRv9HgS0GXXS4kL8Th7t6L8LLUAn1cj ipf+rx1av43PQW6VfC0pcxgq =41/A -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----