How did Kenny die?

Kenny's Facebook profile picture

I heard it first from a first hour student.  Kenny died.  No details. 

You want to know what happened, right? 

Kenny and three other students -- two girls and a boy -- skipped school and went to an empty house (lots of those in the the neighborhood). They had guns. The boys were showing off for the girls. Kenny shot himself in the head. 

This is a an argument in favor of an online student publication. 

I considered saving the details of what happened to Kenny for the end of the post to simulate the stress we all felt at not knowing, but you all would have stopped reading. 

Nobody beyond the rumor mill told us anything for hours. My principal didn't even tell staff that a student died. (Absorb that for a second.) She turned it over to the "crisis team," who gathered in our conference room 3rd hour and just talked to each other for the next hour and a half.  When they finally decided they had kept us from the copier and the microwave long enough, they interrupted four ninth-grade classes to say counselors would be available if anyone wanted to talk about their "feelings."

Never mind that they were all talked out by that time. Never mind that teachers, whether or not they had crisis intervention skills, had been left to deal with the students, the rumors, the fears. Never mind that word on the street said Kenny was murdered by someone in our school and no one knew where that kid was. Never mind that people were saying the girls who witnessed it had already been threatened by the "families" of both boys. Never mind that students were scared because the possibly-threatened girls were definitely in school and that put everyone else at risk. 

The local media hadn't offered anything more than, "A juvenile . . . was found dead . . . " We finally got good information from the cop who had been at the scene through the top cop assigned to our school (because I leave plates of cookies in the security office now and then). But even though we had good information, we had no place to share it.

The next time we have a situation like this, (and there's no doubt we will) I hope we'll have a website up and running, a place for our community to find accurate and updated information.  And I hope hope hope my new principal will understand how important this is.

Sara Hennes
Cody High School
Detroit, Michigan