For Monday we read an essay by JoAnn Wypijewski. After reading the essay, we had to create a summary of what we read. Below is a copy of my summary:
A Boy’s Life
On Oct.7, 1998, in Laramie, Wyoming, a 21 year old gay college student Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten, tied to a fence and left to die. He was found 18 hours later in an unconscious state, taken to a hospital , where he later died.
The story grabbed the media’s and the nation’s attention as a hate crime. The accused, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson tell that it was money and drugs, not hatred for gays that led them to murder that night. While the two claimed they only wanted to rob the victim and not murder him, they also used the gay panic defense. A defense used to explain unusual violence brought about by the sexual advances of a gay victim.
Both Henderson and McKinney came from troubled family backgrounds. McKinney admits that he had a serious methamphetamine habit by the time he was 18 years old.
The two made a plea bargain to avoid the death sentence. In turn, both received two consecutive life sentences.
It was easy to view the crime as a hate crime, the author believes it was more than that. She argues that it concerns masculinity. The accused and the victim were raised in a cowboy atmosphere. The bars and restaurants had cowboy names. Laramie was a community where a man’s man was a cowboy. The town was poor, most jobs paid less than $8 an hour and the jobs were tough and dirty. It was a town that was built on sex and the railroad. Drinking was done for pleasure and to make the pain less. The incidences of women being abused, by their male partners was very high.
The author suggest that the murder of Matthew Sheppard was not because he was gay, but because Henderson and McKinney were straight.
In class on Monday, we got into groups and read each others summaries and create a max of two sentence summary. For my groups summary we said, “Matthew Sheppard was a gay college student who was tied to a fence and was killed by two “rednecks.” This killing was not based on a hate crime, it was based on the image of cowboy (masculinity) in today’s social status.” In my opinion this two sentence summary hopefully covered the main idea that JoAnn was trying to say in her argumentative essay.
Then in today’s class we talked about the chronologicalevents that took place. Below is mine, it is pretty length:
JoAnn Wypijewski’s “A Boy’s Life”
Chronological Events Summary
Matthew Sheppard’s death was not a crucifixion-his hands were not outstretched, just tied to a pole. Sheppard’s face was beaten and head mangled by 18 blows from a gun.
The two encountered Morales and Herrera and started a fight.
McKinney and Henderson purchased a gun and smoked or snorted drugs for 5 days, prior to the murder.
The state had charged that the two should have known the victim was suffering from a physical and mental disability—he was gay and small. The judge threw it out.
McKinney was a wuss—he too was little thing-5 ft 6in and 145 lbs. George Markle(a room mate) describes him with tiny arm, chest and no definition in his body. But he tried to act big—he adopted the gangsta style of clothing and talking. Nicknamed Dopey for his big ears and drug use.
Also the author brought the wussitude concept in her essay to show that the murder was more then a hate-crime. The issue of being a man and acting like one could have played an important part in the murder. The town said to live and let live, but deep down they didn’t tolerate gays or anyone acting like sissy. The towns people had manual jobs where their hands got dirty and they ached.
Public defender Wyatt Skaggs asserts that neither of them came on to Sheppard.
According to Sheriff Detective Sgt. Rob De-Bree, McKinney’s confession stated that Sheppard did not make advances towards the two.
Kristen Price, McKinney’s girlfriend, told the press that they wanted to beat up Sheppard enough to teach him a lesson not to come on to straight people.
At the Albany County Detention Center, McKinney bragged about fag-bashing.
Writing a letter to an inmate’s wife- McKinney states that he became more outraged when Sheppard mouthed off to him and he began to struck more. He still insists his attitude towards homosexuals is not venomous and murder was unintentional.
McKinney’s mother dies from a botched surgery and he has a shrine to her in his house. He got a 100 grand settlement from the lawsuit. He never talked about his mother, but when high, he claimed he could see her in heaven.
His roommate Markle explains, after McKinney got the money, he also got a lot of friends. He bought cars and smashed them, dope and became an instant figure in the town. He was engaged for a short time-until the girl moved on.
He loved his son, and nothing else, the author is told. Interiorally there life is unexplained. Exteriorally, according to an doping buddy McKinney was a geek when not high.
Jones, a strong, built guy, said McKinney always wanted to be bigger and badder and tougher. He picked fights, knowing his friends would honor the code and step in to help him.
Media image if McKinney and Henderson has them with dirty hands, opposite the clean hands of Sheppard. Living in trailer parks always meant trash and failure, even though the two of them did not live in trailers all their lives.
The two were roofers earning less than $8 an hr., manual laborers with dirty hands at the end of a 8-10 hr day. They hurt all the time.
McKinney squandered his money and listed $0 as his assests when applying for public defender. There was skepticism from his acquaintances about the poverty—McKinney made money selling drugs.
McKinney threatens Markle in the Mini-Mart about an unpaid debt.
Interviewing Elam Timothy-he states that if he doesn’t tell anyone he is a fag- he won’t get beat up. Keeps to himself and goes to safe places for fags.
Laramie was founded on sex and the railroad. It portrays a cowboy image-a man’s man. The people are all tight lipped about homosexuality.
Rev. Phelps protests at the county courthouse, and declares God hates fags and cites the Bible and wants the government to execute the homosexuals.
The Angels counter Phelps at the protest, they are homosexuals.
University newspaper has Kristen Allen saying the Phelps has no right quoting the Bible and onlookers expressed disgust and call for tolerance.
UW president Dubois, states that the university has a anti-discrimination policy, but as 1999 sexual orientation was still not included in the university’s Equal Employment and Affirmative Action Statement. Nor does it appear in the student’s admission policy. It means the public school curriculum does not say teachers must avoid planning curriculum promoting perversion, homosexuality, contraception, promiscuity, and abortion as healthy lifestyle choices, policy in Lincoln County Wyoming-but it also does not include homosexuality among vocabulary terms for sex-education, only in terms of sexual transmitted disease. It means family members of gays and lesbians encourage them to stay in the closet, they don’t want to know. It is okay to be gay, the public claims, but don’t be outward with it. Fred Dahl, straight head of UWSurvey Research Center, accepts the outrage over Sheppard’s death, but tells a graduate student, Shannon Bell, that her project to poll the residents about their attitude toward homosexuality might amount to harassment of straight people, “one good rodeo season and Wyoming will be back to normal”.
A graduate class discussion after Sheppard’s death was of tolerance, and challenged a woman who said she abhorred violence, bit homosexuality was immoral.
John Scagliotti says masks are no longer protective. If you are gay you can not hide because straight people watch TV and they see how people hide. This has also changed the straight culture, the little things you do make you question whether you are straight or gay. You are straight but you really wonder if you are.
At the Harvest Foursquare Church they did a remake if the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The narrator claimed Jesus was a man’s man, he did not cry out in pain, and he could take any man in the church if he was there.
The town was surrounded by a cowboy theme, names of bars and restaurants depicting cowboys. The university’s symbol is a rodeo rider, their sports teams, Cowboys and Cowgirls .The cowboy cult appears to be natural to the men of Laramie. They may grow up on a ranch but get a degree in engineering, forsaking the land but not the culture.
A UW professor of American Studies, Frieda Knobloch, detailed the state’s history as a continual longing to be what it is not, a factory town like the east, and advancement of the Wild West as a tourist attraction would be complete. In 1939 the Dept. of Commerce and Industry was lobbying manufacturing investors and again urging the locals to put on 10 gal hats for the guests.
The locals resented the intrusion of the outsiders, the press, invading their town. Tony Lopez, a lawyer, politely reminded the author that she is an uninvited guest.
The small ranches have school buses on their land that the owner drives to make extra money. They cannot survive on just cattle. Their profit margin is very tight according to Brett Moline, University Agriculture Cooperative educator. Without a lot of money to live on, and carrying a lot of debt, the only way to survive is to sell the land to out of state developers.
Wyoming has the lowest population density in the country. The state has no income tax, no helmet law, no gun law, no open container law, children did not have to go to school until age 7, and Laramie police rather wrestle a suspect then draw a gun.
Mike Ernst, Laramie police officer, says this is the last frontier. The government and the university are the biggest employers. There are big houses being built and on the other side there are houses with no running water. Except for the cement and sawmill, there is no manufacturing and the jobs pay less than $8 an hr.
McKinney and Henderson were roofers, working 8-12 hrs a day. Banging and hammering all day was painful and they hurt all over, according to Brent Jones. You take advil and go to sleep, or you drink to make the pain go away. Officer Ernst says if you take the alcohol away, Laramie would not need ¾ of the police force. The daily blotter is full of DUI and domestic disturbance calls. Before Sheppard’s death several young girls were found raped and killed, no one called them hate crimes. Law enforcement simply forgot the other murders.
In Albany County, there is high incidence of abuse against women. Some show up to the SAFE shelter being abused by the same man that abused the several women before her. The abuse, sexual assault, battering, stalking is almost always caused by a man.
The men are sent to the ADAM program for education, the projects director, Ed Majors, he can only address the behavior of the men not their deep issues. The men’s primary emotion is fear and hurt, and then it comes out in the only way the men know how, crooked anger.
There was no trial for Henderson and he was sent to state penitentiary, the word around town originating from a prison guard, was that the inmates held a lottery for his services.
Judy Sheppard told Vanity Fair, that there a people that have no souls are just born bad. Henderson was born to a young troubled, alcoholic mother. In 1999 she was found raped and stabbed on the side of the road, the story never counted for much in the town.
Henderson told an old girlfriend that he did not like his place in the town, he did not like the way people talked about his mother. The thing about this town is who you are set in stone; it is not easy to remake yourself.
Shaundrafell in love with Henderson, and later dumped him. Most of the guys in high school thought he was a little too good. He played soccer, pumped gas, fiddled with a Corvair, helped with his sick grandfather, who never complained. When the grandfather died, Henderson took hard.
Brent remembers Henderson as a kind of an asshole. Henderson’s grandmother raised him until the age of 5, he went back to his mother and got abused and watched his mother being abused by the boyfriend.
According to Joe Lemus, Henderson was a follower, but at work he was a leader. Both boys were described as nice and friendly, and they tailed fag, wussy, sissy, like every other boy in school does, everybody does it.
Lemus says in the events leading to the murder, Henderson was down about a girl and McKinney was excited about the new gun, working 10 hr shifts and drinking. Skaggs claims that meth could have been used before that night and still feel the effect of it. The two were never tested for drugs. A former user claims nothing hurts anymore and you do what you set out to do and then you realize you have been awake for days. Wyoming’s eight graders use meth at a higher rate the 12th graders anywhere else. Drug users say meth is everywhere. McKinney got angrier when Sheppard mouthed off to him, a crank user said he almost wasted some one just because he said hi—you get paranoid.
Impressions of Sheppard are also very different; he mixed drugs and alcohol, arrogant, pompous, a bright kid, generous. Good tipper, lousy tipper, ect.
McKinney’s father claims that the news has taken this and blown it all out of proportion-murder happens. High school students were asked to list the best thing about being a boy or a girl. The boys listed no breasts, no period, no pregnancy, and the year book listed its number two pet peeve as skinny wimps who complain about jocks.
Since Sheppard’s death there is talk of hate-crime laws, but according to Rita Addessa, they will have no impact on addressing the causes.
After going threw this chronological event summary, the author put a lot of thought into her paper. When reading other people’s summaries in class and going through the chronological event summary in class, in my opinion this argumentative paper was arguing gay vs straight and hate crimes vs murder.
In conclusion, this was a really great reading that gave me a lot of insite into how a proper arguementative paper is done. What I liked about this paper was how JoAnn tied every single detail that she found in her research to the paper and the murder of the Matthew Sheppard. What did you like about the essay that JoAnn wrote? What did you think of my summary and chronological event summary? Tell what yours is (summary and chronological evern summary) or what do you think i missed in my summaries.
