Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET A Game Everyone Loses by MARGARET DICKSON My mother���s heart breaks over and over every time the story of stupid adolescent behavior in Steubenville, Ohio, rolls over my television screen. No one can forget the blurry smart-phone images of two young football players, one 16 and the other 17, hauling the unconscious body of a 16-year-old girl around like a deer they had shot on a Saturday morning hunting expedition. One of them actually described her in a text as ���like a dead body.��� The girl was not dead, just dead drunk, and she eventually woke up naked in someone else���s house with no recollection of what happened to her the night before. Lots of her peers knew, though, thanks to technologies we never imagined even a few years ago ��� photographs, texts, tweets, each communicating the victim���s humiliation even before she knew she had been violated and publicly shamed. My heart felt no better when I saw the strapping young men, some would say boys, sobbing in the arms of their families and attorneys, having been convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to detention. Worse still was when I learned that two other teenaged girls have been charged with making online threats not against the assaulters but ��� Lord help us! ��� against the victim! So much is wrong here that it is hard to know where to start. Alcohol abuse has caused as much human pain as anything I can think of, and it was certainly a factor here. I am not na��ve enough to believe we can stop underage drinking, but Steubenville is now our national symbol of just how negative this can be when immature young people delude themselves that they are grown up enough to handle alcohol. And the drinking was just the beginning. It was followed by the criminal assault, which was immediately the shot heard round the teenage Steubenville world. Before technology made social media possible, what happened would have been the subject of endless conversation in the days following the event, but technology now allows us to be in the know as a situation unfolds. But many of those receiving the Steubenville pics, texts and tweets were doing so in real time, meaning that they had the opportunity to intervene. They could have called parents, teachers, even law enforcement, but instead they remained bystanders, passively taking in the situation as if they were watching O.J. Simpson���s SUV ride on television instead of going to the aid of a victim of sexual assault. An Ohio judge found that criminal behavior did occur, and the two football players will have a lot of time to think about that in detention. It is also an astonishing cruel example of the adolescent phenomenon of bullying. Our national spotlight has shone on bullying in recent years, with many states, including North Carolina, passing legislation aimed at controlling it in schools. What happened in Steubenville involved a group of teenagers who collectively treated another teenager as if she were not a human being, but an object to be used for their own amusement. The assaulters clearly did that, and so did those who texted and tweeted about the situation while it was in progress and in the hours and days following. Their behavior might not be criminal, but they are truly complicit in the humiliation of another human being. As they say in politics, there is no way to put lipstick on this pig. A young woman ��� a girl ��� has been sexually assaulted and publicly humiliated. You and I might not know her name, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the people of Steubenville, Ohio, do. Two young men ��� boys ��� have been incarcerated. Two young women ��� girls ��� face criminal charges of communicating threats. Dozens, perhaps more, other teenagers are left to ponder and live with their own actions or lack thereof that, at best, did not help the sexual-assault victim or, at worst, have made her pain even more acute. Recent research at Duke University has found that both those who have been bullied and those who have bullied report higher levels of serious psychological problems. It is worse for the victims, but the bullies suffer from their behavior as well. Add in the families of all these young people, their teachers and a community whose very name now conjures up this entire painful and totally avoidable situation, and the carnage is widespread indeed. The lessons of Steubenville are still emerging, but one is absolutely clear. Technology and social media have changed our national landscape, especially among the young people who use them so freely, easily and seemingly constantly. Steubenville is a screaming billboard that MARGARET DICKSON, Conwe must learn to use them responsibly and tributing Writer, COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomingweekly.com. with compassion. Put Up & Coming Weekly���s Pocket Guide In Your Pocket! Fayetteville, Ft. Bragg & Cumberland County���s ���First Responder����� for local information & hospitality! By scanning the QR code you will be saving the 2013 Pocket Guide directly to your Smart Device for easy 24/7 access to local information. This is NOT an APP. This is an Adobe pdf ���le that is best viewed with Acrobat Reader. For more information call 484-6200 or visit www.upandcomingweekly.com. WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM SCAN THE CODE! MARCH 27 - APRIL 2, 2013 UCW 5