'Children Against Children' addresses youth violence

by Benjamin Lunn assistant news editor

Dealing with our differences and teaching our kids this lesson ,,......., IJ§,key to ending the violence that permeates our lives.

That is the message of the seminar "Children Killing Children: Who's to Blame?" The seminar and its panel of five speakers discussed the issue of violence and children on Friday, April 9 in the Grace Hall Atrium at 6 p.m.

Sitting among the panel of speakers was Philadelphia Police Commissioner John F. Timoney, a representative from Mayor Rendell's office.

Commissioner Timoney discussed the stem stance he and the mayor take on the issue of violence and the gun problem in Philadelphia.

According to Timoney, Philadelphia has not seen a steady decline in the homicide rate until recently. However, his views strayed somewhat from the main points of the seminar.

Azeen Keramati and Heather King, both sophomores, organized the program. "We are here to bring people together and to realize that there is a problem," Keramati said.

The rest of the panel was composed of Dave Thomlinson from

Families of Murder Victims, a program dedicated to helping covictims of homicides, and Jerry Gregory, the superintendent of Radnor Township Police Department.

From Cabrini, Doug Keith, a part-time professor and full-time media researcher, and Linda Collier, the head of the criminal justice department, also spoke.

Thomlinson, an active representative for Families of Murder Victims, read off that the leading cause of death of five to 21-yearolds in the nation is unintentional injury.

In Philadelphia, he added, the leading cause of death for that same age bracket is homicide.

"In the past, the weapon of choice would be a fist or a knife. Today it is a gun," Thomlinson said.

Collier admitted that there is a problem, but voiced that 'juvenile crime is not the epidemic we all think it is." She said that contrary to the pattern of recent events, 65 percent of the violent crimes in which children are involved happen outside of school and that a child actually has a "one-in-a-rnillion-chance of being shot in school."

Another misconception was the role of the media. Keith,a media researcher, insisted that the media does not create violence in our so- ciety; merely, it just spits our violent tendencies back out at us.

He also insisted that problems arise because the media portrays the world as black and white, whereas adults know that it is gray.

He said that the problem with children is that "we may understand that the world is gray, but our kids don't."

Keith said that we should not blame the media because "as long as we buy entertainment from the media, we get what we ask for."

Keith encouraged parents to teach media literacy to the children. Show them that what is on television or what they see in a video game is entertainment, not reality.

He felt that if this was taught properly, the video games and television programs could be a productive, safe outlet for aggression.

To bring the topic to the local area, Superintendent Gregory began by reading a local newspaper clipping which addressed the problem of children walking the streets with guns. Immediately thereafter, he read the dateline for the story: 1875.

Gregory stated that this is not a new problem, and that major crime surges directly correlate to the peak of the 15 to 24-year-old