“Do you remember Jeremy Strohmeyer, the 18-year–old accused of raping and murdering Sherrice Iverson in a Nevada Casino bathroom in May ’97? After Jeremy left the bathroom, where he had left the little girl’s body stuffed in a toilet, his friend asked him what happened. The Los Angeles Times reported: “”He answered, his voice calm. ‘I killed her.’ “” I was shocked and speechless when I read about this. How could he be calm when he just killed someone? Why didn’t her dad keep an eye on her?
But I’m not here to write about Jeremy’s crime. I want to comment on the way violence is portrayed in the news. Jeremy’s crime was the kind of thing that I always hear on the news. We hear about these stories all the time—the mother who drowned her kids, the husband who killed his wife, the little kid who killed his baby brother with his parents’ gun, the father who molested his daughter. We hear about these stories and then we move on. Although Jeremy’s crime horrified me at the time, I can’t dwell on it or it will eat me up. Am I being cold when I say this? Am I another immoral teen who doesn’t care? I don’t think I am. I hate what Jeremy did but there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t want to get depressed and paranoid thinking that every man is like Jeremy Strohmeyer. It’s not healthy for me to live in fear. It’s not fair that I would stereotype all men as brutal and sick like Jeremy.
‘Teen Morality’ is not dead
I think that’s why I was so mad when the Los Angeles Times published an editorial cartoon that had two gravestones. One of them was a gravestone for Sherrice Iverson and the other was a gravestone that said “”Teen Morality,”” referring to the fact that his friends didn’t turn him in. It’s true that his friends didn’t turn him in. However, three of his classmates who weren’t close to him did turn him in. Why is the L.A. Times stereotyping us teenagers, saying our morality is dead? You don’t see us stereotyping adults and saying that they are all evil just because some of them commit evil crimes.
It’s especially unfair since adults kill a lot more teens than teens kill adults. All the blame lands on teens. According to youth expert Mike Males, “”Three of four young murder victims—90 percent of them under the age of 12 and 70 percent of them aged 12-17—are killed by adults, not by juveniles.””
When I step out of the house, I’m not worried about some sicko teen hiding behind the bushes waiting to kill me. I worry about the ugly, stinky men on the bus. Right in front of everyone, they’ll try and grab me or make some perverted remark. Shame on them for hitting on 15-year-olds.
Once I was listening to a call-in radio show where they were saying that teenagers are all bad and that we “”gravitate towards negative things”” such as horror movies like “”Scream”” and “”Halloween.”” The radio host said we should “”watch shows like ‘Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman’ and movies like ‘The Prince of Egypt.'”” I wanted to tell him off. First of all, I do watch ‘Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman’ (Yes, I know that’s dorky.) Secondly, the fact that teens watch horror movies doesn’t make them horrible people. What about all the adults who watch horror movies? Are they immoral too? Are they gravitating towards the negative?
At school I see my classmates with Barbie necklaces, Sesame Street bookbags and Rugrats watches. Are all these things evil?
The media focuses on the negative
My editor says maybe these media people should visit our school so they can see what teens are really like. Yeah. That might be good except then they’d go to the bathrooms and see all the graffiti and emphasize it. The media gravitates towards negative things.
But it’s not just the media that is to blame. It’s us—the viewers. They’re giving us what we want—the juicy stuff, the big ball of bad news and trash that’s thrown at us every night on the news. We don’t really like it, but we want to hear it. Last year, a study showed that Americans closely followed the news story of the shooting attack by a high school in Oregon. But very few people paid attention to a news story that fewer teens were getting pregnant. (I didn’t even know that.) The study was by the Kaiser/Harvard Program on the Public and Health Policy.
A lot of adults out there form their opinions based on what they hear and see—but they don’t see everything. They don’t know all of us. Instead of putting us down, they should look for the best in us. Instead of expecting us to be killers like Jeremy Strohmeyer, they should expect us to be humans, just like they are.”