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On May eighteenth, twenty sixteen, the day before he was
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last seen, Logan came into the kitchen and told his
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grandmother he would be away for the weekend. He seemed,
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as she recalled, nervous and purposeful, kind of on a mission.
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Sometime in the week before his disappearance, Logan sent a
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text message to a young woman he had met on
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a dating app. The text read, I hope to survive
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this week. Hi Cassie, Hi Caitlin. Hi creepy people, O you.
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This is PNW Hans and Homicides, where we chat about
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true crime, the paranormal, and h things spooky in the
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Pacific Northwest.
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Or the PNW if you're nasty.
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We also do a little tarot reading at the end
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of every episode for a little bit of deeper insight
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into our topic.
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So much insight is gathered.
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All right, I'm going to dive in. Not far from
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the state's capital, just outside of Olympia is Tomwater, Washington.
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It has that suburban small town feeling with nearby access
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to larger cities as well as natural beauty. It's kind
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of the perfect in between. It's you know, it's got
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a little you're close enough to.
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Everything yeah, I don't know if I've ever been there,
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have you.
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I know, I've driven through there.
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I feel like I've seen like a sign for it,
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because the name sounds familiar, you know.
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Yeah, I feel like in a way it kind of
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has a similar vibe to where we grew up in Hillsborough,
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because it's like a lot of people kind of drive
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through the area heading to the coast. Maybe, but uh, yeah,
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I wouldn't say that it's necessarily a destination. But it's
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also like, oh, the proximity to like Portland and Vancouver,
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you know, but it's a more suburban area. So okay,
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if it's completely different and you're super familiar with both
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tom Water and Hillsborough, feel free to correct us. In
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a predominantly white community like Tomwater. Logan Shndelman stood Out
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born June twenty seventh, nineteen ninety six, to a multi
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racial mother who was African American and Caucasian named Tanna.
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His father, a Saudi Arabian man who wasn't in the
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picture and had left the United States prior to his birth. Oh,
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I know, kind of sad, I mean, really sad. It's yeah,
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I only say I guess kind of said because in
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a way. It's like maybe he never really knew exactly
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what he was missing in terms of, you know, the
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paternal relationship. But it's really sad. I take it all back.
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Yeah, I know a lot of people go through that too.
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Yeah. Logan was raised from infancy by his maternal grandmother,
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Virginia Ginny Gabo, who was white. After separating from Hannah's father,
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Ginny cut off the African American side of Logan's family,
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he was effectively completely disconnected from all of his non
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white relatives.
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Damn. Yeah, that's like kind of important, you know.
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I think so it's a pretty big part of your
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identity as a person.
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Yeah, I mean, unless they're all like total pieces of shit,
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you know.
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But right, obviously you have to do like what's healthiest
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for you, like as a person, and you can't you know,
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be concerned about you know, that aspect of it. But yeah,
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it just I don't know, it just feels sad.
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Yeah. Also not saying they're total pieces of shit, just
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to be clear, I don't know, I'm just saying as
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a maybe possibility.
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Right exactly. Yeah, I mean it's so hard to know,
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and even if you have a little bit of information,
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about you know, why they were not a part of
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his life. It's like situations like that are just so nuanced.
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I wouldn't feel comfortable like making a call like they're good, bad,
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you know whatever. Right, there's a lot of gray.
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Yeah.
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Though his grandmother has provided conflicting accounts about Logan's feelings,
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she has notably described him as having an identity crisis
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as a teenager struggling to understand his place in a
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world where he felt caught between multiple racial and cultural identities.
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And I can't speak to that personally, I feel like
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it's kind of important to acknowledge that, like as to
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non as two white people who like don't have any
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idea what that experience is. I still feel like I
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can there's a little bit of like I can sort
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of start to grasp at like the enormity of like
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what that is. I can't like fully empathize, but I
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realized that's really significant.
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You can have compassion for how hard that is?
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Yeah, absolutely, no, exactly, That's that's kind of the perfect
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way to put it. I don't have to, you know,
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necessarily have experienced that for myself to be able to,
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you know, have compassion for someone, but for most of
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his adolescence, that struggle remained beneath the surface, which, as
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we all know, is super healthy. You know, shove it
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down exactly, don't don't talk about it, don't address it,
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you know, which I.
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Feel like that's what a lot of men are just
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expected to do, you know.
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Yes, yeah, I think a lot of people of color
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from a variety of kind of cultural and ethnic backgrounds
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are sort of like, you know, they can be anti
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therapy or you know, obviously those things are changing over
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time for the population all over the world, but you know,
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I think there's there's still so much stigma for sure.
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At Tumwater High School, Logan was a star athlete who
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played defensive back on the football team, helping the team
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reach two state championships. I don't know what any of
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that means. I'm given to understand. That's uh, that's good
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sports thing.
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That's okay. I think I blacked out when you said
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it because I didn't hear it.
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Yeah, so so he played the foosball. Yeah, go sports.
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He was popular, funny, known for his willingness to help
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anyone who needed it. His great aunt Mary Ware said simply,
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I don't know anybody that did not Like Logan, he
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was also beneath a popular exterior, a sensitive and introspective
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young man who loved music and wrote poetry.
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Oh, I know that you can be sportsy and have
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that other like creative side.
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Yeah, I think you know, it's pretty rare that you
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come across anybody in life that's truly like a one
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dimensional character, right, But yeah, I think it's that specifically,
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someone who's really like playing, you know, contact sports and
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also write their own poetry. I feel like that's kind
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of a unique combo.
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I love that.
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I know. It wasn't just that he saved all of
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his good natured studiousness for school days either. He helped
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his great uncle Mike wear with farm chorers without even
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being asked, which is pretty sweet. What a kid. I know,
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he said, I'd have him mowing the fields or cleaning
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the barns. He was always ready and willing. Something happened
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at a party near the end of Logan's senior year
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at Tumwater High School that changed everything and left him
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feeling isolated, even perhaps betrayed. I mean almost certainly betrayed.
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I feel as though it would be hard to imagine
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a world in which he did not feel betrayed, and
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I think some of the statements that he made following
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this incident highlight that he very much felt betrayed. A
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girl made racist remarks directed at him, comments related to
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his Saudi heritage. It was characterized as a racial slur
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used jokingly, but it's unclear what specifically was said. It's
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also unclear if Logan knew this girl or was encountering
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her for the first time at this gathering. Which can
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you imagine going to a high school party. It's your
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senior year, and if you are meeting this person for
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the first time, they are using a racial slur about
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your paternal ethnic heritage and like you've never even met
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your father or his family. Oh my god, I just
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can't even imagine. It's like, obviously that would be so offensive,
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but it would just like pick at this wound of
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like I don't even know my dad.
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Yeah, I just I can imagine, though a lot of
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people do kind of know what that's like, like just
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getting yeah, racist remarks from random people who don't know
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them and just see what they want to see.
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And I don't know if it's any better if she did.
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Know him, right, Yeah, yeah.
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Person and it's like the flip side is you know
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this person and you know, maybe you don't understand their
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whole complex like backstory, but like you know this person
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and that's how you choose to speak to them. I
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mean that that feels like why would you do that?
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So there's really I don't feel like there's any good
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way for that to have played out. And there's truthfully
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just not a lot of information or details about it.
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I mean I can imagine like some of the things
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that may have been said, like things as have been
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thrown around Willy nilly, especially like was this after nine
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to eleven? Because I feel like Middle Eastern people were
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just no, it was post nine to eleven.
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It wasn't like in close proximity to that.
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It's still going on now, Like I just feel like
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people were totally more racist towards them after that.
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The thing that bothers me about it, there's so many
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things that bother me about it, but like what's really
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I feel like kind of adds this like extra layer
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of like how offensive it is. Is like they're picking
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at this sort of underlying part of his identity that
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is like so raw. You know, potentially he is someone
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that definitely presented as being like, you know, mixed race,
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but primarily he outwardly appeared like African Americans. So it's like,
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I don't know, it just feels like to me, you're
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just aimlessly racist. Yeah, you know, you're like, don't I
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don't know if that even makes sense. It just feels like,
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like what are you doing? I don't like, I mean,
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I really can't like make sense of it, and I
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don't want it to make sense. So I guess it's
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not going to and I just have to make my
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peace with that. But what has been made clear is
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that his friends did nothing to defend him. Logan was
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so upset that he called his grandmother to come pick
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him up from the party. Ginny said. She noted that
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is not normal, not normal for him to call me
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to come get him from someplace, and he told Ginny
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they weren't even there for me. I thought I had
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friends and I don't.
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Oh, that is so heartbreaking.
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It just makes me want to cry because a lot
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of people think, like, oh, just saying nothing isn't the
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same as like agreeing, but like you are, like, it's
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like you're complicit in it. Yeah, it's tacit compliance it's disgusting.
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I feel like sometimes young people just not as an
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excuse or anything for what they did, but they just
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kind of don't understand like the gravity of words that
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are said, especially if they're not ever going through anything
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like that, and they're just like, oh, like just blow
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it off. You know, we're at a party. Let's just
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have fun and not like create more confrontation. Is like,
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because I can remember times like when I was young
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where probably some things were said that I was just
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like didn't understand completely like what was going on, and
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I didn't like stick up for my friends. So I
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get it and also feel bad about it, and it's
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not really an excuse and it still sucks for the
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other person on the other side of it.
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Yeah, I feel like it's you know, it's probably not
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an unfamiliar experience for somebody to be like, whether it's
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like just at school day to day, or whether it's
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like a party something like extracurricular like this. I think
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a lot of us have seen or experienced, whether it
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was personal or we saw it happening to someone else.
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We've seen where people are like unkind or you know,
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something that verges on bullying. But like the fact that
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it was like such an obviously like racist thing is
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kind of like, yeah, I don't know. I think a
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lot of us would probably like to think that like
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we would have spoken up, but I don't know, I
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don't know.
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Teenage brains are dumb. Yeah.
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Well, and you know, I didn't necessarily see anything where
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it was like outwardly stated that, like people were drinking
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or you know, consuming any other adult substances. But I
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would think at at a high school party, very possible.
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It may not have even been like the whole group,
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but there may have been people there, you know, that did.
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And I feel like that can kind of change, especially
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with your young uh still still forming mind, kind of
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how you respond to something. I hate to even throw
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that in there at this point, and you know you'll
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see why later because I just why are people suck? Honestly,
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just I you know, just don't.
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Suck please, suck less, please, and thank you most it's