Course focuses on nature of women's violence

A 17-year-old girl slashes the neck and face of a female classmate with a broken bottle. Five girls are sent to the hospital after being splattered with human feces and hit with baseball bats in a hazing ritual performed by senior members of the "in" crowd. A 9-year-old girl stabs her 11-year-old playmate after a disagreement over a pink rubber ball.\nSugar and spice and everything nice? Hardly. Angry and violent and a little bit crazy? Maybe.\nThat's the question students are trying to answer in professor Veronica Herrera's criminal justice class P427: Girls, Violence and Antisocial Behavior.\n"This is a very understudied population," said Herrera, a fourth-year assistant professor. "Even in the criminal-justice population, when we think of crime, we think of boys and men. ... But the fact remains that girls are violent. They always have been." \nHerrera, who has a doctorate in developmental psychology, created the class during her first year at IU and offers it every spring semester. She said demand has been high from the beginning, but recent events have sparked an increased interest.\n"It's definitely an issue that needs to be addressed, but I think the media has sensationalized a few high-profile cases that are not the norm," Herrera said. She referred to incidents such as the recent beating of a 13-year-old girl by her classmates that was videotaped and uploaded to YouTube. \n"Both boys and girls engage in that type of behavior, but because girls are doing it, it's like, 'Oh my God,'" she said.\nHerrera said the class focuses on the extent and nature of girls' violence, including the risk factors that specifically affect young females. \n"I'm really interested in looking at risks to stop future problems and then focusing on how these risks play out in a girl's life," she said. "Delinquency is just one aspect in a lot of issues that these girls have, which include mental-health problems, substance-abuse problems and family issues."\nIU alumna Lesley Varvares, who took the class last spring, said it enabled her to help some of her friends who have teenage daughters. \n"I can talk to my friends about their kids," she said. "I can say, 'I don't know exactly what's wrong, but based on what I've studied, here's what might be affecting them. Here's how we can help.'"\nThe curriculum includes a trip to the Indianapolis Women's Prison, which houses juvenile offenders. Students get a tour of the facility and also a chance to speak with inmates about their incarceration. \nVarvares remembered speaking with inmates about their lives before they were arrested. She said the inmates were just like everyone else. \n"I had similar feelings (as some of the inmates), but I handled them in a different way," she said. "We had more opportunities, I think. We had goals, and people expected things out of us. We had families that kept us out of trouble."\nHerrera said that's exactly what she hopes students will learn from the class. \n"I want my students to go away from this class seeing these girls as people and understanding they come with histories, and they've made decisions and choices based on that," she said. "These are not bad people, just bad choices"