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Sad time for the Tar Heels

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by NightOwl, Mar 8, 2008.

  1. NoOneLikesUs

    NoOneLikesUs Active Member

    I'm sorry, but a random car-jacking by a young, black male in an affluent neighborhood just doesn't seem very likely. It could've happened, I don't disagree, but I sort of want to know if she had any sort of drug habit to support. This could very well be a drug deal gone awry.
     
  2. AgatePage

    AgatePage Active Member

    The mascot was killed last year at the regional in East Rutherford. It's worth your time: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=rayofhope
     
  3. steveu

    steveu Well-Known Member

    A certain song by Rainbow comes to mind here. Can't happen here, my ass. It can happen anywhere.
     
  4. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    It could also be a gang initiation.

    One of the high schools in my hometown has a football stadium that is named after one of it's alumni. It was built about 10-15 years ago. The alumnus wasn't a football player.

    She was working as a hostess at a restaurant one night when a kid walked in the front door, pulled a gun, robbed the place and shot and killed her and another employee in front of a restaurant full of customers.

    When they caught the animal that did it he confessed that the reason he robbed the restaurant and killed her was to pass a gang initiation.

    Unfortunately my home state does not have the death penalty so the monster's family can still visit him in prison. The victim was an only child so her parents were left with nothing but pain and pictures.

    The girl was a good friend of a girl my best friend had dated at one time. Makes me sick to think about it whenever I'm home and drive by that high school.
     
  5. leo1

    leo1 Active Member

    i have a three month old daughter and ever since she was born i've had a totally new reaction to reading stories about young people who are killed. i, like pretty much all normal people (i think) always felt awful, but now it's almost physically painful for me to read these stories.

    that said, my immediate reaction to this was more based on my childhood, when i was one of the unpopular kids. my thought was that i hope no one acts as though she is more important and her death is worse than if this had been a student who wasn't president, who wasn't beautiful and who wasn't, you know, white and blonde. white, black, fat, ugly, popular, unpopular...it's someone's child and that's what makes it tragic.
     
  6. forever_town

    forever_town Well-Known Member

    I saw this in the paper. To say I was stunned would be the understatement of the month.

    I'll definitely stay tuned to see what the investigation turns up.
     
  7. Piotr Rasputin

    Piotr Rasputin New Member

    Yes, because No Child Left Behind created this type of violence. Before that act, you never heard about young people getting shot.

    Oh, for a return to the utopia of a few short years ago!
     
  8. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    NCLB focuses on students passing a test. It takes away from the non-testing items like raising well-rounded young adults.

    NCLB has been around for about seven years, so the young men and women who are 17-20 are the first real results of this program. Fourth through seventh grades are the years that students are molded, and those students are now 17, 18, 19 and 20.

    A teacher who works 8-9 hours a day spends a large portion of that trying to have a student learn a certain fact that will be on the NCLB test. They used to be spending that time working with a student or trying to help them with a certain portion of their home life or trying to keep them out of a gang.

    Now, so long as they pass a test, they have done their job in George W.'s eyes.

    Things were not great 7-10 years ago, but, IMHO, they are worse today.

    And they are going to get a lot worse before things get better.
     
  9. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    Season four of The Wire nails it with Bunny Colvin's program and what happened to it.
     
  10. Piotr Rasputin

    Piotr Rasputin New Member

    Oh. It was on a TV show, so there ya go.

    I understand that things are getting worse. But your original post implied that this violence is new, because of No Child Left Behind. That's incorrect.

    It's so easy to just arbitrarily blame Bush for every ill in our society. But there has been a huge gap between the haves and the have nots for centuries, all over the world. No Child Left Behind just gives an easy talking point to blame, since it's nice and somewhat comforting to think "hey . .if we just get rid of this, things will IMPROVE!!!!!!"
     
  11. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    No violence is not new. Go through the archives of your paper from 40-50 years ago, and you will find people were doing some twisted shit back then as well.

    But to say young black males are doing better as a group now than they were 7, 10, 15 or 20 years ago? The gap you speak of is becoming a canyon. For many of those students, school is their only chance, and the NCLB schools of today are not doing them any favors.

    Watch the Central High School in Little Rock special on HBO. That is almost every school in America with a diverse population.
     
  12. Apex

    Apex Member

    Things have indeed been hard here (I'm an undergrad at UNC). Today started spring break, and I don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing for the campus community.

    It probably was good for us on the newspaper staff. Putting out Friday's paper was gutwrenching.

    Since then I've been in charge of reporting the developments and posting them online. While it's been very nice to see the outpouring of support, it bugs the fuck out of me that we had to disable the comments on the stories online because people began posting obscene, profane and sickening comments. I reckon some sad people just get their jollies off that way.
     
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