EDITORIAL – High school offers snitches cash for info

It’s one of those universal truths of growing up — nobody likes a snitch. We have all sorts… It’s one of those universal truths of growing up — nobody likes a snitch. We have all sorts of interesting, occasionally zoological names for them: tattletale, narc, stool pigeon, rat, fink, rat-fink, etc. Whistleblowers — those that bust big evil corporations — get a special place as a subspecies of snitch because, as much as people don’t like snitches, we like the rich even less.

So what if your high school paid you to rat out your friends? That’s exactly what Model High School in Rome, Ga., is doing. As an incentive for students to report one another’s criminal activities, Model now offers up to $100 for information on theft, drugs or guns.

Now, we can all remember those halcyon days of slightly lower education — specifically that nobody can keep a secret in high school. If people are going to tell on their friends for cash, then those kids are going to have to reinvest that money in protection, because, playground as it may be, snitches get stitches.

Model plans to pay for its new program with money raised through candy and soda sales — and aren’t those supposed to be bad for kids, anyway? Rather than funding a money-for-information program, the school should reinvest that money into preventing crime in the first place.

The school’s mathematically inclined should start calculating exactly how many chocolate bars it takes to fund a witness protection program, since, if the plan is effective, the kids who do tell for money are probably going to need it.

Incentive programs work best in an open society, one that can provide protection for its informants and guarantee anonymity. Within the limited hallways of a high school though, such opportunities aren’t available. It might seem a bit over the top to compare high school snitches to mafia-level stoolies, but in a high school that’s begun offering money for information on students bringing guns to school, such a comparison isn’t entirely inapt.

Moreover, what kind of kids will snitch for the money who wouldn’t otherwise? Kids who’re genuinely interested in safety will tell if they see a gun, but perhaps not for smaller, harmless violations. Those who snitch for the money, and wouldn’t otherwise, are the kind who’re going to exacerbate the already fractious nature of high school society.

And it’ll be ridiculously easy to hustle the system. Planting drugs — each reported infraction worth between $25 and $50 — in someone’s locker seems like an easier way to make a quick buck than does flipping burgers.

It’s an indicator of the sad state of our society that we start appealing to kids’ greed, and not their sense of civic duty, at younger and younger ages.

High school shapes the type of citizens people become. We hope that the Model high school students become model citizens — ba da bing! — and not kids willing to exploit a stupid system for money. And if students must snitch for some fast cash, we hope those who do won’t consider coming to Pitt, because, if you can’t tell, we really don’t like snitches.