The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 171

Starts Stops B2 New England B6 Deaths D6 Boston Sunday Globe March 18, 2001 GT) Eileen McNamara i. Don't let bullies rule Dealing with school violence Strong response raises questions By Yvonne Abraham and John FJlement f. I i-1 It is the addendum, not the centerpiece, of Governor Paul Celluc-ci's school safety plan that holds the most promise for restoring civility to the state's classrooms. His predictable "get tough" proposals 'J GLOBE STAFF PHOTOSEVAN RICHMOND Maria Perez prays during a Monday evening Mass at the Most Holy Redeemer Church in East Boston. Jhaitn numbers East Boston church swells with influx of Latino immigrants 1 1Jl.

He had no way of really doing it. No guns in his house. No weapons either, except his Cub Scout knife. Still, the Winchester sixth-grader told a classmate he wanted to shoot him. He was only joking, he said.

But the classmate told someone because that is what they had all been taught to do. There was no going back. Schools in other parts of the country had failed to act in situations like this and tragedy had befallen them. That would not happen at the McCall Middle School. Police read the 11-year-old his rights.

He was evaluated by a psychiatrist, suspended for three days, and ordered to seek counseling. He was branded, said his mother. "If insulting to all of us that they would try to make him into something that he's not into this bad boy who is angry and sick like the students who have done all the shootings," said the mother, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Since Monday, potentially serious threats by students have piled up in local schools, and responses by school officials have been as clear and quick as the click of handcuffs. Make a threat, and no matter how idle it seems, nobody's taking any chances.

The police will be called. But the vigilance raises difficult questions for some educators and parents: In this climate of zero tolerance for violent rhetoric in schools, are innocent if careless children being lumped in with the truly dangerous ones? And if they are, is that a reasonable price to pay for peace of mind? Since the school shootings began in SCHOOL VIOLENCE, Page BS 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Starts Stops Thomas C. Palmer Jr. keeps track of his Fast Lane charges and finds that the computerized toll system is less than perfect, which reflects the experience of some readers. In fact, while Palmer noted he has taken a few free rides, some say the Turnpike is occasionally double-charging commuters.

B2 A If J. i By Yvonne Abraham GLOBE STAFF Head for the Most Holy Redeemer Church in East Boston, just before noon on a Sunday, and there, clogging Maverick Street, you might see the demographic bulge that has so surprised the Census Bureau. Every week, hundreds of Latino immigrants and their families stream down the narrow East Boston street toward the 160-year-old church. Inside, where the stained-glass windows bear names like Finnegan and Fitzgerald, parishioners cram the pews, shoulders pressed hard against each other. Soon they stand 10 deep in back, and eventually they spill out onto the steps.

By the time the Mass begins, the church is fainting hot On a recent Sunday, the Rev. Robert R. Hennessey led the service, in the Spanish he had practiced as a missionary in Bolivia. He spoke loudly, to be heard over the din of dozens of tiny children. (There were 21 new requests for baptisms last weekend alone.) When early figures from the 2000 Census showed a 60 percent growth in the nation's Hispanic population over the past 10 years, demographers voiced amazement They had certainly expected a large increase since 1990, partly because of immigration and partly because of more successful outreach in 2000.

But the final tally showed that they had underestimated the minority's growth nationally by several million. In 1990, 22.4 million people identified themselves as Hispanic In 2000, 35.3 million did. The increases are likely to be confirmed locally this week, Francisco Perez and his son, Ricky, 4, worship at the evening service. when the Census Bureau releases its results for Massachusetts. Nobody around this church is surprised at any of this, however.

Holy Redeemer church and community center rolled into one has been bursting at the seams for years. "We knew there were thousands they were missing," LATINOS, Page B5 mandatory incarceration of a student who brings a weapon to school, for instance might deter a shooting here, but they will do nothing to stop the far more common harassment of students who endure daily emotional abuse as an adolescent rite of passage. It is hard to argue with the governor's assertion that "we must do everything in our power to prevent school tragedies," but shootings are only the most extreme manifestation of a social breakdown that has divided too many high schools into camps of bullies, victims, and bystanders. In the aftermath of the massacre at Columbine, public safety efforts have focused almost exclusively on stemming violent eruptions by marginalized teenagers. Far less attention has been paid to reining in the abuse inflicted on them by their more mainstream tormentors.

Cellucci acknowledged as much in announcing a token increase in the number of schools to be included in a statewide Bullying Prevention Program. "Ridding the schools of bullies will go a long way towards establishing the type of caring, nurturing environment we need to help students learn and grow," he rightly noted. What he didn't say is just how difficult that task is, given how intricately woven bullying is into the daily life of most public high schools. By high school, the bully is harder to identify than his target. Pink hair or a pierced nose does not give himher away.

To the contrary, he comes not from the ranks of nonconformists, but from a school's majority culture. In Littleton, it was the athletes who had harassed Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris for their taste in music and clothes. In San-tee, it was the dominant preppie crowd that froze out the skate-boarding gunman. By adolescence, the bully is a master of subtle terrorism. The overt playground confrontations of elementary school give way to the whispered epithet on his way to his seat, the simple shove into a row of lockers as he passes in the hall, the overturned soda can as he stands in the cafeteria line.

Too often, even when school authorities concede that harassment happens, they claim to be powerless to stop it because the perpetrators are too clever to get caught, the victims too intimidated to complain, and the witnesses too scared to talk, lest they be targeted themselves. Shouldn't we be spending as much energy remaking that culture as we are devising punishments for those victimized by it? There are those who will argue that there have always been bullies and that what does not kill you makes you stronger. For every adult who counts his high school years as the best of his life, there are two who identify with the words of a correspondent to the committee organizing my husband's 30th high school reunion: "It is hard for me to imagine the circumstances under which I would want to travel across the country to reconnect with an experience that was so overwhelmingly negative in the first place." Of course, high school has always been a merciless hierarchy, with rank and status assigned throughout the long climb from freshman to senior year, from junior varsity to varsity team, from remedial to honors course. But just as the larger culture has coarsened with time, the bullying we remember pales next to the abuse too many of our children are forced to endure. Last fall, my daughter's fourth-grade class was asked to answer true or false when shown some statements about bullying.

She rejected as false the assertions that: Bullying is just teasing; Some people deserve to be bullied; and Only boys are bullies. She was stumped, though, by these two statements: Bullies wiUgo away if you ignore them and People who are bullied might hurt for a while, but they'll get over it. She circled true and false. "Sometimes," she wrote in small letters. In the 1990 Census, 2 2 .41 llllll ioil people identified themselves as Hispanic In the 2000 Census, that figure jumped to 35 .3 lllill 1011.

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 i 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 i 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 i 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Art on the MBTA I For 13 years, rapist avoids serving term By Kathleen Burge GLOBE CORRESPONDENT WORCESTER It was 1985 when James J. Kelly was charged with raping a female relative in the front seat of his Lincoln Continental, parked in a cemetery near her grandparents' graves. Two years later, a Worcester jury convicted Kelly, and the following spring a judge sentenced him to 10 years in prison. But then, the system came to a screeching halt Thirteen years later, Kelly has never served a day in prison, and the woman he raped says prosecutors have repeatedly pressured her to agree to allow him to remain free on probation. Tve never seen anything like this in my life," said a prosecutor from another county who reviewed the case.

"I cant think of an instance where someone has been convicted of rape and had his sentence stayed." Time, hazy memories, and missing files make it difficult to sort through the details of Kelly's case. But lawyers say several players allowed him to avoid prison: a judge who issued a highly unusual ruling allowing him to stay free as his motion for a new trial was being decided; and Worcester County prosecutors who apparently didn't challenge that ruling and didnt bring the case for- mm. Yes, it returning in campaign to install new works By Raphael Lewis GLOBE STAFF When the MBTA began commissioning artwork in the late 1960s, it was a radical notion. Not only would the transit authority continue to move people physically from point to point, it would try to move riders emotionally and spiritually as well Ten years later, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority was viewed as a pioneer, and today most transit agencies in the United States boast sizable art collections. -But if the became the locomotive that drove the region's public art scene for decades on end, the train never arrived in the 1990s.

Acclaimed works such as Paul Matisse's 'Kendall Band" and Susumu Shingu's "Gift of the Wind," among dozens of others, began to fall apart from neglect, as graffiti, pigeon droppings, and exposure took their toU. And with mounting money concerns, the MBTA all but forgot the purchase of new acquisitions. Now, at long last, the cultural drought appears to be over. Under the I orifc ii i i iiiiii n.i i GLOBE STAFF PHOTO JANET KNOTT Joe White, who manages the MBTA Art Program, with some of the sculptures outside the Davis Square stop in Somerville. guidance of Joseph White, a sculptural painter who manages the MBTA Art Program, the has begun a five-year campaign to bolster the authority's art collection and, in the process, restore the Ts status as one of the region's preeminent patrons of public artwork.

Fueled by $1 J2 million in federal grant funds, the campaign plans to bring $90,000 worth of original works of sculpture, murals, and folk art to each of the Ts 10 new and redesigned transit stations by the end of 2003. The money has also funded an ambitious project to restore 21 of the 72 pieces that constitute the Ts permanent collection. Eileen McNamara's e-mail address is mcnamaraglobe.com.