Caught in the WAVE

Seventeen-year-old Cliff Riggins is a self-described theater freak who wears black nail polish, listens to Godsmack and has experimented with Wicca, a neopagan religion involving witchcraft. At West Mecklenburg High School, located just off Billy Graham Parkway on the outskirts of Charlotte, North Carolina, these are not activities that get him chosen to head up the pep rallies. That duty is usually reserved for a crowd known around school as the "preps," who wear a lot of Abercrombie & Fitch and all seem to work at the county pool in the summer. Although Riggins has found a groove for himself at West Meck by spending lots of time in the theater department, he's frank about the fact that he's never really fit in. "I guess I've always liked to color outside the lines," he says.

While Riggins is used to getting weird looks in the halls, he never expected that his unusual tastes would make him a target of criminal suspicion. After the Columbine shootings, when the perpetrators identified themselves as members of an outsider group called the Trench Coat Mafia, he was pulled aside and confronted by teachers about his tendency to dress in black and occasionally wear a long coat. "FBI agents wear trench coats!" says Riggins, who has never been in a fistfight. "Maybe I don't look like everyone else, but it's not like I'm gonna go shoot up the school."

A new school-safety initiative launched at West Meck this fall means there is no end of aggravation in sight for students like Riggins. The WAVE, which stands for Working Against Violence Everywhere, is a corporate-sponsored program that features a toll-free number students can call anonymously to report classmates they deem dangerous. To help identify potential offenders, the WAVE, which is run by the global security giant Pinkerton's Inc., distributes brightly colored pamphlets outlining the "Early Warning Signs." Behaviors listed include "social withdrawal," being "easily angered by minor things" and experiencing "excessive feelings of rejection." The program enjoys the support of North Carolina's Democratic Governor, Jim Hunt, and is being introduced statewide in public middle and high schools.

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