PSU Magazine Fall 1998

Distrust of the police and the soci– ety's laws also fuel youthful rebellious– ness, Blazak says. "Doing whatever you can get away with is a pervasive attitude in American society, and kids pick up on that." Then there's Measure 11 , which lets youth be tried for certain crimes as an adult. The new Oregon law can be outrageously unfair, he says, citing the case of a young girl who rece ived a mandatory six years in prison after getting into her third school yard fist-fight. "It was a case of assault– even though no weapons were ever involved." t all adds up to a world where flaunting authority comes naturally, Blazak says. It helps explain why Curtis' friends could party with him in Mexico without telling anyone about it, and why they cheered him at the airport after he was arrested and brought back to Portland. Indifference to society's norms is common in adolescence, according to Cathleen Smith, professor of psychol– ogy. "Studies demonstrate that a societal perspective, an understanding of justice and duty to society, a sense of your place in the larger world, normally don 't develop until early adulthood," she says. Marginalized, living in a vacuum from the rest of society, with their allegiance largely limited to friends and family, teenagers can easily go astray. Their confusion and alienation is embodied by the character Dulcie in Robert Boswell's Mystery Ride (a contemporary novel of suburbia), who doesn 't know where life is going or what any of it means. She observes: "The price of progress. In return for safety and speed, the world becomes sterile and blank and repetitive." To Ned, a character in Richard Russo's Risk School, dumb luck is all that matters in life: "I'd come to the conclu– sion after all. Life was a crapshoot." Such attitudes permeate among real-life youth, according to English Professor Mariels, who teaches at both Scappoose and Lakeridge high schools, as part of PSU's Challenge Program. The program allows high school seniors to take courses for college credit at their schools. "They see the world as screwed up or as someth ing they'd rather not mess with but are going to have to mess with anyway," he says. "They've been exposed to a lot. Many of them have been transported around by their mothers to music lessons and hockey games. They've watched a huge amount of telev ision and vacationed with their parents in all sorts of places. They've progressed from drinking a few beers to going to keggers and all– night parties. And it's still not enough. It doesn 't mean anything. So they go in for more extreme kinds of behavior to get their thrills, violent music and tattoos and nose rings and raves." one of this, of course, exactly explains what happened at Grant High, Mariels says. But it's only a matter of time before the mindless rebellion of privileged youth- kids who would appear to have everything-reappears in the news or shows up in popular culture. "That novel hasn't been written yet," he says. "But believe me, it will be." O (Jack Yost MA '71, a Portland writer and filmmaker, wrote the article "Hot Links," which appeared in the spring 1998 PSU Magazine.) : FALL 1998 PSU MAGAZINE 9