The Internet Monk
"the power of opinion, the phenomenon of speech, the impact of truth"
A Webjournal and News Review by Michael Spencer
Updated 2/3/01
Special Feature: Randy As We Knew Him
by Michael Spencer
Our
school is one of those "faith-based" organizations that has a history
of accepting students who are not connecting with family, school and
community. We have a strong academic program, special help for
struggling students, extra-curriculars, a work program for every student
and, appropriate to our tradition, religious education and an appeal to
make a personal commitment to Jesus Christ. (Relax, liberals. We don't
get any government funds.) Every student who comes to us is brought by
their family, so we're working with families to find success for their
children.
Randy Halprin's family was unusually supportive of what we were doing. Everyone who worked with Randy and his brother recalls the story of his Jewish father bringing his boys to us, saying he would rather his boys be good Christians than bad anything else. But we could also see the pain this family was experiencing. Something wasn't going right. Like so many adoptive parents experiencing problems with teenagers, there seemed to be a sense of desperation. This needed to work.
Randy was a very well-behaved and pleasant young person. He made a good impression on those who worked with him. I can't find a single staff member with a bad memory of Randy. But Randy didn't fully take advantage of what we had to offer. He made friends, he passed his classes, but he didn't get involved in activities or sports, he didn't excel at anything, and he didn't ever show the insight into his own life that is the basis of real change.
Two things about Randy stay in my mind. One was his relationship with a girl. Randy and this young lady were one of those couples that everyone thought would never break up. She was bright and flamboyant; he was quiet and utterly taken with her. They took up residence in the school grill and spent every available hour together, gazing at one another with total devotion. When I think of "a young man in love," I always think of Randy.
The other was a Sunday evening when the preacher gave a public invitation to our students to come forward and indicate their desire to receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Master. In our tradition, this is an adult step, a life-changing step, and the most serious single commitment a person can make in life. Randy came to me, weeping and sincere, wanting to become a Christian. I talked with him, we prayed together and Randy went back to his room with a new faith in Jesus.
My tradition also says that everyone who walks forward, cries and prays is not necessarily genuinely converted. It is the beginning of a journey that reveals true faith and nurtures growing faith. It is a journey that may include terrible mistakes and seasons of darkness. In the end, we leave the results up to God. But we remember Jesus said it is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick.
Randy got in trouble at our school. At first, it was pranks like sneaking in a girl's restroom and going out his window after bedcheck. Then he carved his name- and his girlfriend's name- into a bench on campus. For these problems, he was briefly suspended from school. Then, in 1995, Randy went to a city nearby for a weekend with friends of his family. While there, he got in trouble with the law for theft. When he returned, we determined we were no longer appropriate for Randy and we expelled him.
Then Randy's story becomes the story of millions of young people in America. His family refused to take him back. Now legally an adult, they gave him money and put him on his own. he was on the streets. In 1996, Randy had returned to Texas, and was living in a homeless shelter, where he was befriended by a young mother. He moved in with her and her children. A few months later, under the influence of drugs, Randy brutally beat her infant son, inflicting many serious wounds including a fractured skull. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison. (Randy's brother, who was much more of a problem for us, was also incarcerated during this time, and is today.)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
On one of the many television shows about the Texas Seven, an official of the Texas prison system kept referring to Randy as "scum." John Walsh said that he hated Randy the most because he had attacked a child. In his ABC interview, Randy said he broke out because he thought he would have a chance to be a different person, not this "monster" he'd become in the eyes of the public. Another official said that the fact these men were prisoners made any comment about the abuses in the Texas prison system meaningless.
I'm sorry, but as hard as I could ever try, I will never be able to think of Randy in this one-dimensional way. Now don't think I'm a laying aside my conservative values. Randy will be charged with capital murder, and even though I'm personally convinced he didn't pull the trigger, he is as guilty as those who did. He'll be charged, likely convicted and should be executed if found guilty. I would say this to Randy. And I would say it with a broken heart.
Randy Halprin isn't scum. He isn't a monster. He is what we all are- a sinner. A rebel against God and a person utterly committed to selfishness, not love. In his heart, and in all of our hearts, is every evil from lying to murder to genocide. I've been to prisons and I didn't feel like I was visiting aliens from another universe. I recognized all these prisoners as very much like me. There but for the grace of God, go I.
Randy made terrible choices. He increasingly made choices based on his own survival at the expense of others welfare and lives. The further down this road he traveled, the more pathetic and dangerous these choices became. It's a long way from stealing a credit card to killing a cop, but its not as far as some of us think.
But we, all of us who knew him, failed Randy as well. He behaved in such a way that his family couldn't help him any more, but all of us with children know that something is very wrong in American family life. Something that is tearing children away from their families, and into a violent and empty. Too many young people are divided from their families by divorce, drugs, materialism and rebellion. Schools, counselors, the community: all of these had a chance to impact Randy's life. The choice of how to respond was his, but the opportunity was ours.
Our school had its opportunity. I know I could have done more for Randy and thousands of others like him, but I routinely say that what I am doing is enough. Now I can wonder if one day invested in that young man, one more effort at friendship and mentoring, one trip to the movies or out to eat, would have changed his life. I'll never know.
At the Republican National Convention, George W. Bush said something interesting. Listen.
"A
couple
of years ago, I visited a juvenile jail in Marlin, Texas, and talked
with a group of young inmates. They were angry, wary kids. All had
committed grown-up crimes. Yet when I looked in their eyes, I realized
some of them were still little boys."
"Toward
the end of the conversation, one young man, about 15 years old, raised
his hand and asked a haunting question, ``What do you think of me?'' He
seemed to be asking, like many Americans who struggle: Is their hope for
me? Do I have a chance? And, frankly, do you, a white man in a suit,
really care about what happens to me?"
"A
small voice, but it speaks for so many: single moms struggling to feed
the kids and pay the rent; immigrants starting a hard life in a new
world; children without fathers in neighborhoods where gangs seem like
friendship or drugs promise peace, and where sex sadly seems the closest
thing to belong. We are their country too. And each of us must share in
its promise or the promise is diminished for all."
"If
that boy in Marlin believes he's trapped and worthless and hopeless, if
he believes his life has no value, then other lives have no value to
him, and we're all diminished."
"When these problems are not confronted, it builds a wall within our nation. On one side are wealth, technology, education and ambition. On the other side of that wall are poverty and prison, addiction and despair. And my fellow Americans, we must tear down that wall."
What I hear in that recollection is the truth that we accomplish nothing by demonizing those whose problems and behavior tell us something important about all of us, and something important about our country and our political culture. By simply saying that everyone in prison is a deviant and the rest of us are all right, we are building bricks in a wall that is dividing America in ways we cannot afford to be divided.
It is time for conservatives to develop an approach to every social issue that doesn't just blame, but creates results. We can be for excellence without leaving majorities of minority children behind. We can be for law and order and still work for non-prison justice alternatives. We can, and must, take a look at our "drug war" and see it is a failure for America and for its young people. There are alternatives: faith-based, humanistic, effective alternatives that are tough and possible. It is time we invest in literacy, job training and entrepreneurship for all Americans, especially those at risk and who need to start over.
And it is time we looked and listened to our young people, rather than seeing them as monsters. These are our children, and God will ask us about what we did with them.
I
will write Randy and tell him we remember him. We know he is not a
monster. He is part of what we do right. He is part of what we do wrong.
He is a predator, and he is a victim. He is the challenge of compassion
and conservativism for a new generation of conservatives.