Due to the increasing trend of criminal activity in American schools, some public school districts are responding by launching a counter offensive that pays students for telling on classmates who violate school rules, and poses drugs or weapons.Reminiscent of the junior spy league in George Orwell's 1984, the Houston County school board in central Georgia has become the state's first school district to enroll in the national Student Crime Stoppers program. The program that was conceived over ten years ago provides students an opportunity to earn money while snitching on their classmates. The cash-in for alerting school officials about firearms is $500.00. Students get $100 for exposing classmates involved in vandalism, theft or drugs. Another 650-student school in Georgia uses money from candy and soda sales to pay $10 for information about campus thefts, $25 or $50 for tips on drugs, and $100 for leads on gun possession or other felonies. In a similar program at Cherryville High School in rural Gaston County, N.C., Principal Stephen Huffstetler claims that the program "has really worked well". He implemented the program over two years ago, and says, "This year, we've given out $1,100", adding a comment about the "the mini crime stoppers" by saying, "for $100 they'll turn their mothers in."Russ Skiba, a professor of educational psychology at Indiana University in Bloomington explains the idealism behind such programs by saying "There's a balance here between creating a society of snitches and creating a sense of community responsibility." It's scary to see the mentality of small town paranoia put into practice by bribing youngsters to tell on one another, and I personally can't see how they avoid greedy little Ebenezer Scrooges from making up leads in order to cash in on the fogies. I'd also like to add that I'm no psychologist, but I can predict that if programs such as these were to be implemented in metropolitan cities like Miami, the violent crime ratio would definitely be on the rise due to retaliation.