Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
In September, Bridget Barringer, and Whitney Moore, both 11, comfort each other at the site of the fatal car crash on Fruitvale Avenue.
Students continue to cope with grief as tragedy dogs high school
By Kara Chalmers
Losses have extended beyond the athletic fields at Saratoga High School as the campus continues to struggle with the deaths of four students in the past 10 months.
"It's been an extraordinarily difficult year at our school," said Saratoga High School Principal Kevin Skelly. "Tragedy brings people together in a way that triumphs don't. We've dealt with the tragedies as well as we can, but I don't think that makes it easy."
A recent principal's newsletter covers just three topics on its front page--school safety, the recent dance and the emotional state of students.
In the bulletin, which is sent home to parents, Skelly wrote that, while there are many issues worth addressing, he emphasized the three on the front page, with the hopes that parents would read them carefully.
Recent incidents--such as the suspension of six students who were under the influence of alcohol at a school dance on March 2--have some members of the school's community thinking that the students at Saratoga High are acting out, because of the many tragedies that have struck the school since May 2000. To others, the students are just being typical teenagers. Skelly, who said students' grief could manifest itself in many different ways, doesn't know if recent incidents of student misbehavior apply.
If there's one thing on which parents, students and school officials agree, it's that the students at Saratoga High have been through a lot in the past 10 months and that they need continued support.
Lancy Chui
Troubles begin with suicide
The difficulties began last May, when senior Lancy Chiu, 17, took her life by taking an overdose of sleeping pills, in eerie similarity to a play she had written about a teenager contemplating the same course of action. In Chiu's play, a stranger's kindness kept the main character from committing suicide.
In September, juniors Eleanor Patrick, 16, and Nicola Rooke, 15, were killed in a car accident, in which Lucy Anderson and Alyssia Goddard, both 15, were also injured. Their car hit a power pole on Fruitvale Avenue in Saratoga, and fellow students watched in sadness and horror as paramedics and firefighters freed the girls, a process that took quite a while, according to those at the scene.
And in January, senior Jeff Swanberg, 18, also lost his life in a car accident. Swanberg and Jordan Gill, also a senior, were driving home from Santa Barbara when their car flipped. Gill, who suffered injuries, ripped off the door of his car and pulled his friend out. Gill threw his shoes at passing cars to get help for his friend and himself. Swanberg died the night of the accident.
After each death, counselors from the local Centre for Living with Dying came to the school to help students. "There aren't very many adults who live in this country who've seen this much tragedy," Skelly said. "There's a general sadness, a melancholy on our campus that we haven't shaken yet."
Senior Matt Bromage, the president of the school's Peer-to-Peer counseling service, said that students feel torn. They don't know how long to mourn and when to try to get on with their normal lives at school--lives which Bromage said are filled with pressures. "To put it in real general terms, the school doesn't know how to react to what's going on," he said.
Bromage said he believes the large majority of students at the school are suppressing their grief, and not talking to friends or parents, which could lead to short-term effects, such as turning to drugs or alcohol. He said that students are not so much ignoring their grief, but are "stuffing it down and talking about something else."
While Bromage said the faculty at the school and Skelly have given students a lot of support in the aftermath of the deaths--he called the school one of the most caring and nurturing environments he has ever been in--he advises students to also take advantage of their friends and talk to their parents, as well, about what they are going through.
Jeff Swanberg
Related Incidents?
At the high school's dance on March 2, according to reports from students, many of the teens had been drinking, but only six were caught. The six were given two-day suspensions for being under the influence, and, in response to the incident, the school is considering using breathalyzer tests at future dances, Skelly said.
Thoughts on the incident vary. While some parents think the drinking could have been an escape for the students from their built-up grief, some students say they don't see a link between the two issues at all, or if there is a link, it is tenuous.
Skelly acknowledges that there have been drinking incidents at school dances in the past, and there will be more in the future. Still, he said the March 2 incident made him concerned about his students' health.
Parent Agnes Gregorian, also a Parent Teacher Student Association board member, said she believes the students at the dance were acting out due to their sadness and other pressures, mainly because the act of getting that intoxicated seemed so out-of-character for them.
"I know for a fact that they're the most decent, well-behaved, well-mannered children," she said of the six students. "One of the causes is the fact that they're stressed out for all these things that are happening around them."
Gregorian said that besides having friends die, Saratoga High students must deal with being at an extremely competitive, academically challenging school, and many students "are trying really hard to please their parents.
"They think, how could I be possibly be doing enough to achieve what my parents achieve," she said. In addition, for seniors, now is the time they are thinking about college and waiting for acceptance letters--a time that is high-stress, Gregorian said.
In February, six students broke a window and climbed into the high school's administration building. While the incident was reported by the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office as a burglary and vandalism, nothing of value was taken.
Lt. Ernie Smedlund, who said the students were caught when they drove back into the school's parking lot as the sheriffs were leaving the scene, called the incident a prank. The students ultimately confessed.
"They had nothing better to do, by the sound of it," Smedlund said. "That's my take on it."
In January, someone scrawled the word "fag" in red lipstick on the door and wall of art teacher Stephen McCue's classroom. Although McCue cleaned up the writing immediately, it was reported in The Saratoga Falcon, the high school's newspaper, that, upon reflection, McCue realized the gravity of the offense and reported it. According to Smedlund, there are no suspects and the sheriffs have classified the incident as a hate crime.
Partly in response to this incident, Skelly and other administrators met with each of the high school's 53 English classes to talk about the need for students to treat people with respect, tolerance and dignity, Skelly said.
Photograph by Alexis Weiner
Eleanor Patrick and Nicola Rooke.
Speaker preaches "being nice"
One action Saratoga High School officials took recently, to help students with their grief over the four deaths and also in response to the hate crime, was to organize a motivational assembly on March 5. At the assembly, a well-known speaker, Michael Pritchard, host of PBS's "Saving Our Schools," addressed the school on tolerance, dealing with grief and just plain being nice to each other.
According to Pritchard, students need to be more careful today--since our society has become so violent--than ever before. Tormenting and teasing others leads to hurt, which can lead to anger, he said, which could lead to disaster.
"Whenever there's grief around, and sadness, there's the potential for triggered anger," Pritchard said.
Pritchard, who said he believes Saratoga High to be at risk of violence because of the high levels of pressure there, advocates peer counseling for students, as a way for them to deal with their grief. He also said that after 30 years of working with teens, he has learned that what they want most is to spend more time with their parents, and, even more importantly, to feel as though their parents really want to spend time with them.
"We need to spend time talking about these things and no one has time," Pritchard said. "Moms and dads aren't spending time with them."
At the end of his speech at Saratoga High on March 5, Pritchard left the stage and said a school administrator handed him a Yahoo! printout on a news story about the most recent high profile example of school violence. At Santana High School in Santee, near San Diego, 15-year-old freshman Charles Andrew Williams had allegedly just killed two students and wounded 13 people.
It could happen here
The alleged Santana shooter, who was apprehended soon after the shooting spree, had reportedly told friends that he was planning a violent attack on the school. He convinced fellow students and adults that he was joking and no one ever came forward to report the threat.
Williams had also reportedly been the target of many jokes himself. He was teased and bullied because of his small size and called a "nerd" and a "dork."
In the three days following the Santana High shootings on March 5, ABC News reports that there were 12 incidents across the country, in which students were arrested for either making threats of school violence, or carrying it out.
School officials across the United States are now worried about the same thing that happened at Santana would happen to their schools. And Saratoga High is no different.
"I think if you asked any administrators in those schools if there was any possibility of that happening, they would have said 'no,' " Skelly said about the schools--like Santana and Columbine High School in Colorado--that have been hit with school violence on a large scale. "But there's no way to be sure. We live in a violent society."
At Columbine, two students shot and killed 12 students and a teacher, before turning their guns on themselves, in April 1999. According to Michael Teng, a senior at Saratoga High, he wouldn't be extremely surprised if something similar to the tragedy at Santana happened at Saratoga.
"After so many incidents, you know you're not immune," Teng said. "Santana wasn't that much different, Columbine wasn't that much different."
But senior Matt Bromage, head of Peer-to-Peer, said he wasn't afraid for Saratoga, even considering all that the students there have been through.
"Our school is a very strong school," he said. "They can handle it. As a school, we can handle it."
Forgetfulness costs speaker
In an unfortunate side note, while students credited the school for putting the March 5 assembly together, some were dismayed when it became apparent during Pritchard's speech that he did not know the names of two of the Saratoga High students who had died.
"He blew it," Skelly said. "I think it hurt the presentation ... it was clear he hadn't done his homework."
Skelly said he plans to send a letter to Pritchard, expressing his disappointment. He said, and students agreed, that the forgetfulness cost the speaker the confidence and trust of many students.
According to Bromage, while he agreed that the speaker's action may have caused some students to take the speaker less seriously, the speech still didn't do more harm than good.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
