Students Give Classmates Bad Name

The victim was beaten with a golf club, covered with gasoline and burned to death.

And it was all captured on videotape.

That led to calls from CNN and “USA Today.” And even television tabloid “Hard Copy” wanted to look at the tape.

But students at McNary High School are ready to go back to business as usual.

The victim was, after all, an opossum.

Seven students at the school - four of them football players - are facing the felony charge of aggravated animal abuse. Three of the football players were suspended from Friday night’s game.

But other students are growing weary of the matter.

“It’s not like we’re all opossum beaters here,” said Karla Junola, 16, a junior at McNary. “But we’re all getting generalized.”

Others think the story was overdone.

“I don’t think what they did was right, you know, but it was blown way out of proportion in the newspapers,” said junior Rolland Hayden, 16. “Newspeople - when they find something - blow it way up.”