Remarks in a roundtable discussion with students on violence in schools at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, April 26, 1999

So we have - last year we had the first White House conference in history on school safety. We have sent things to every school in America, and we have - and I said, I'm going to send another bill this week, or in the next few days, to do more. But it has to - very school has to realize that if you want to be safe you have to be prepared, just like you are here.

Yes.

[A student stated that parents, teachers, government, and students should work together to prevent school violence and provide for the common welfare of the community. Another student said students are often more in tune with other students and that having the opportunity to be an anonymous source of information, as was the case with the T.C. Williams hotline, was very important. Another student said the racism should stop, and everyone should feel they were part of a group. Another student stated that there were no guarantees against future violence and high school students all over America need to be more sensitive and considerate of one another, which would help eliminate animosity.]

The President. I must say, these things you say to me are among the most impressive things of all, because all of us want to be part of groups, and we are part of groups whether we like it or not. We're all part of groups. You know, we just - from the families we're born in and the lives we live. And the trick is to convince people that it's good to be part of a group, a racial, an ethnic, a religious, a cultural group, to be an athlete, to be a scholar, to be into music, to be into whatever. But it's not - it doesn't have to be negative when compared with someone else. That's the thing that breaks your heart.

And also, it's very important - another reason I like this hotline and I like what you said is that it's very hard to be 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 years old; and if you are very lonely and very alienated and you feel you don't belong with anybody or anything, and then all of a sudden, one or two other people come along, and they're just like you, and then you find something on the Internet that you can read that you can relate to, and then things begin to spin out of control. And I think what you said about reaching out to people who seem to be alone and have nobody to care about them. I think that's very, very important

as well.

I think that you know it a lot better than I do. But as old as I am, I can still remember, it was - I had some pretty tough times when I was 13, 14, 15, 16 years old, and I had a very fortunate life. You realize how hard you have to work to keep from getting into patterns that will be destructive throughout life where people feel that they only count when they're in a group, that then they're opposed to somebody else, they can look down on somebody else. It is the curse of human society throughout the world.

Go ahead. You two, and then - this young man hasn't spoken yet, but go ahead. We'll get you the mike as soon as he is finished. Who wants to go next? Go ahead.

[A student said young people were more desensitized than they were 20 years ago and that the media needs to take some responsibility. She cited the popularity of violent movies as an example. She also stated that the value of human life had declined and that some of these violent students may not have understood the impact of what they had done.]