Columnist Dean Juipe: Columbine may alter jock culture

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, June 22, 1999 | 10:15 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Because of, or maybe thanks to, what happened at Columbine High School, there figures to be a heightened awareness of athletes and their mores when classes resume in the fall.

Jocks who have become accustomed to walking with a swagger and setting their own standards may find school administrators a little less tolerant of their behavior.

That aspect of the athletes and their subculture was the focal point of a Monday evening show on ESPN, "Outside the Lines." For background purposes, the program conducted some 200 interviews with athletes and assorted high-school personnel.

Columbine, with its 15 dead, was the incentive for the piece, as the gunmen there supposedly were pushed to their personal breaking points by the abuse they had received at the hands of the Colorado school's athletes.

As has become apparent in the weeks since, Columbine is not alone. In fact, a recent survey indicates 72 percent of high-school students say there is "at least some tension" between the general student body and those who play sports. Many see athletes as brutish, uncaring aggressors.

The ESPN show reported that one in four high-school students knew of an athlete mistreating a nonathlete at their school, although most harassment cases go unreported. "It's more prevalent than most of us want to admit," added an interviewed principal.

This tension is the result of athletes feeling "entitled" and exploiting their stature as Big Men on Campus.

Sports stars have always had the run of a high school, so that part of it is nothing new. There have always been pep rallies and newspaper reports of significant games, and it has always been understood that many high schools measure themselves by their athletic achievements.

But, whereas athletes from a more humble time accepted these cheery plaudits with good graces, many of today's athletes get caught up in a misguided belief that they're better or more powerful than their classmates who can't hit a baseball over a fence or who can't throw a 50-yard spiral pass.

At Columbine, it was said "the jocks ridiculed (other students) quite a bit." They also posed blockades in the hallway and made the type of demands that, in retrospect, administrators should not have allowed.

In the aftermath of Columbine, however, it's realistic to expect athletes to be reined in and held to a higher standard than they may have become accustomed. If, as ESPN claimed, 75 percent of high-school students feel athletes get preferential treatment, the time may have come for administrators to do a little more introspection and not be so quick to look the other way when there are abuses.

Beyond a tightening of what is and isn't permitted, at least two other solutions deserve consideration and appear easy to implement. One is to get athletes involved in a broader peer group, perhaps, as one school will do this fall, by requiring athletes to participate in other school-sponsored activities such as music classes. Another thought is to hold pep rallies -- and mandate attendance -- not just for football and basketball games, but when a play or musical is scheduled.

At Columbine, a "pack mentality" influenced the jocks and, however indirectly, it eventually led to unbelievable horror.

Every school, if not every athlete, needs to learn from it.