GOP Congressman Tells Students They’re To Blame For Classmate’s Suicide, Makes Anti-Gay Comments

A Republican U.S. Congressman invited to speak to high school students blamed them for their classmates suicide just five days earlier.

Rep. Don Young, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, was invited to speak to students at a Wasilla, Alaska high school yesterday. After one hour, Wasilla Principal Amy Spargo abruptly ended the meeting.

Just five days before, Wasilla High School students lost a classmate to suicide. But the 81-year old Congressman who has served since 1973 saw fit to blame his audience for their classmate’s death.

A teacher, Carla Swick, asked Rep. Young to tell students what his office is doing to combat Alaska’s high rates of suicide and domestic violence. Alaska Dispatch News reports “Young started talking about suicide, mentioning the role played by alcohol and depression, several witnesses said.”

But then, witnesses say, Young said suicide shows a lack of support from friends and family.

That comment stunned students and staff still mourning the loss of a student who died Thursday, staffers say.

“When I heard ‘a lack of support from family’ and I heard ‘a lack of support from friends,’ I felt the oxygen go out of the room, but I gasped as well,” Spargo said. “It just isn’t true in these situations. It’s just such a hurtful thing to say.” 

Both Spargo and Swick say a friend of the victim, moved by emotion, shouted at Young, “He had friends. He had support.” 

“The kid said, ‘It’s depression — you know, a mental illness,’ ” Spargo recalled. As she remembers, Young replied, “ ‘Well, what, do you just go to the doctor and get diagnosed with suicide?’ ”

At some point during the exchange, several school staffers say, the congressman also used either the words “—hole” or “smartass.”

“We really spend a lot of time at our school talking about how we treat each other,” Principal Spargo said. “We just don’t talk to people that way.”

Spurge also says Rep. Young chastised her for the student who shouted at him. “That boy needs to learn some respect,” she says she was told.

Of course, same-sex marriage was a topic on the students’ minds. 

Wasilla junior Zachary Grier “was excited to see Young in person,” ADN reports, after watching his debate with his Democratic opponent, Forrest Dunbar, “and reading media coverage of the event, which included Dunbar’s contention that Young told him not to touch him and saying, ‘The last guy who touched me ended up on the ground dead,’ after the younger man brushed his arm.”

Grier asked Rep. Young about same-sex marriage. “I asked why is it so bad in your eyes?” Grier said. 

As Spargo described it, Young answered, “You can’t have marriage with two men. What do you get with two bulls?”

Witnesses say Young then said something about a lot of “bullshazzle” or some word resembling the more familiar obscenity.

Fortunately, in less than two weeks, Wasilla voters will get to decide who “needs to learn some respect.”

 

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