Adriana Kuch: 2008 - 2023

Making Sense of a New Jersey Girl's Tragic Death

Kuch family handout

Adriana Kuch was a fourteen-year-old resident of Berkeley Township, New Jersey. Her short life was not entirely devoid of positive highlights. That is unremarkable. What is remarkable is that, according to her neighbors, she saved their child from drowning in their swimming pool. She also helped children with special needs. She loved animals and had ambitions of becoming a tattoo artist.

Friends called her Age; family called her Sissy. Unfortunately, she committed suicide on February 3.

The fundamental reasons for her decision are disputed. According to reports, her mother also committed suicide. Triantafillos Parlapanides, the former superintendent of her school district, Central Regional School District, asserted that she took her life due to family and other personal issues. At least one close friend of hers says those issues did not exist. (Parlapanides resigned on February 11.) Her family, more plausibly, maintains that the bullying and assault she suffered at Central Regional High School in Bayville were the catalyst for her decision. The appalling February 1 attack was recorded on video and shared on social media, leading to taunts and sardonic mockery. The four accused girls were originally given mere ten-day suspensions by the school; they have since been criminally charged.

The New York Post has published a series of articles, including this one by Desheania Andrews and Steve Janoski, on Kuch and her high school, quoting former teachers and students who insist that bullying and fighting has been rampant for years. One former teacher, Daniel Keiser, recently posted to Facebook: “There were days where I would break up three fights before homeroom even started. As a teacher there and a parent there who dealt with intense bullying, we would often plead with administration to get things under control, and only one of them ever tried. They were notorious for brushing things under the carpet.” Another student says she was attacked in January 2022; she sued the school in October. Her assault was also reportedly recorded on video and shared online. Her attorney states, “They didn’t call the police, they didn’t take it seriously, apparently, and sure enough these girls came through on their promise and assaulted my client.” There are more harrowing allegations at the Post. The publication’s continuous use of the term “beatdown”, part of crude, modish argot, betrays their tabloid reputation, but they deserve credit for their thorough coverage of this heartrending story.

Adriana lived in a broad community of note and importance, in general and to me personally. Bayville is a census-designated place inside Berkeley Township, named after Sir John Berkeley, cofounder of the colony of New Jersey. It includes Island Beach State Park. The township is in Ocean County, one of four counties (and the second northernmost) generally considered to comprise the New Jersey shore. It is the largest county in the state in terms of land area, and it is home to much of the Pine Barrens as well as Long Beach Island, Six Flags Great Adventure (the largest seasonal theme park in the world), and Seaside Heights of MTV Jersey Shore infamy. In fact, Seaside Heights is also part of the Central Regional School District. While one may not suspect it from some of the facts highlighted in this and preceding paragraphs, Ocean County can not only be a fun place but one of elation and enlightenment. I am unfamiliar with Berkeley Township but have fond memories of many other locations in the area. My paternal grandparents spent their final years in nearby Toms River, and I still have relatives in the area. I worked at Six Flags Great Adventure for much of last year. Despite the reputation of the area and the state (not helped by the likes of Snooki and company), I find it endearing, which is one reason that the unnecessary, avoidable death of young Adriana Kuch, whom I did not have the privilege to know, is more personally affecting to me than other, similar tragic teenage suicides. It is unfortunate that no one was able to save Adriana like Adriana was able to save eight-year-old Luciana Gattuso in August. (Another interesting aside: Brad Delp, lead vocalist of the band Boston who committed suicide in 2007, also reportedly saved the life of a child. Perhaps it is more than a coincidence and, like heroes in a Victor Hugo novel, those inclined to that kind of courageous action struggle against other forces and challenges to a degree beyond the norm.)

Reprehensible bullying, and its unprecedented, constant social media attention, is said to have been the catalyst for this tragedy. Was there another, more fundamental, cause of Adriana Kuch’s death?

Public schools have been targets of criticism from many in recent years. Even before the upheavals of the reaction to covid, people of all viewpoints and walks of life have been removing their children from them. Ideological indoctrination is a problem, but many sense that there is a deeper problem: They not only do not adequately educate students but they even cripple their capacity to learn, even attacking the mind at root. Arguably, they are no longer even public. They are not designed by the public or even open to the public. (I could not visit my former schools in Pennsylvania even when I was briefly a resident and taxpayer in the area again.) In my view, Objectivists and fellow travelers are the most perspicacious in their criticisms of what have become non-public government schools. One Los Angeles blogger with the handle Colonel Hogan calls them government children’s prisons. Professor C. Bradley Thompson, in interviews and in his convincing essay “Our Killing Schools”, argues that modern, Progressive-influenced education, with its emphasis on feelings over reason and the group over the individual, is manufacturing the horrific mass shooters of recent decades. Thompson focuses on the boys who become shooters, but there are many ways to kill vulnerable young people, pedagogical, psychological, and otherwise. The locked down institutions are microcosms of the broader culture, where many criminals go unpunished while feckless security theater in airports and elsewhere reassures a myopic public (made that way in part by schools) that society is more or less functioning.

Was Adriana Kuch the latest victim of our killing schools?

She was certainly the victim of the culture that spawned them, which means, unfortunately, this will not be an isolated incident.

While her avoidable, somewhat predictable death will not turn out to be unrepeatable, Adriana Olivia Kuch was a sui generis individual who made the world a better place during her brief time here.

Special thanks to my friend and mentor Scott Holleran for bringing this to my attention and for his editorial insight. I highly recommend his Substack, Autonomia. (link corrected)