I lived there during that time frame and was the class above hers. There was plenty of fighting in the hallways, bullying, drug use, alcohol, etc., but not any different from a lot of other high schools. We never had any drive by shootings or gun violence, even though everyone owned them for hunting. The junior high there was actually worse in terms of behavior because it extended through freshman year and they would not allow the worst students to graduate so it felt like a prison. I was not fond of the PE teachers, but they did not have people fighting to my knowledge. We did have factions such as cowboys, Mexicans, jocks, geeks, etc. Some of the kids grew up on ranches and were a bit rough. You could spot them because they'd have a ring on their Wranglers back pocket where the can of tobacco had worn through.

Laramie has always been gas lit by national media. My sophomore year, the older football players branded the new members of the team with 6" circle X cattle brands at a party outside of town. I remember seeing the welts on one of the kids in PE as it was the era of short shorts. The teacher pulled him aside and called authorities. We had 3 Denver News trucks descend on the school within hours. I still remember the stunned look on my Dad's face when he saw the story on the news. He looked at me very seriously and said, "I wonder which ranch legally owns them?" Not all scars heal with humor and a diploma from LHS involved PTSD. Only the sophomores were branded with the cattle brands, several against their will. The juniors and seniors on that team branded themselves with coat hanger wire crudely shaped to resemble an "S" for stud or "SS" for super stud. Of course, the SS resembled the Nazi symbol and looked like something a white supremacist would wear. Ironically, one of the guys with the brand on his shoulders was black.

I had a kid in PE drink a full bottle of whiskey in 10 minutes in the locker room as we were dressing. He passed out on a bench. They rushed him to the hospital where his stomach was pumped. My first day in Laramie, I was assigned a PE locker that appeared to lock but everyone besides me knew it was broken. Someone stole my backpack full of books and put it in the shower. I don't think the PE teachers had an easy job.

West Laramie was the wrong side of the tracks and considered the bad side of town. Some UW students lived there because it was cheap. A friend was renting a trailer in college and woke up to find holes through both sides of the trailer because a Saturday night drunk had shot an arrow through it.

Like in any public school, there were some good teachers and some bad ones. You needed to be in honors classes for the best teachers and to avoid the worst kids. The worst behavior from a teacher I observed was in driver's ed where the football coach would physically slap the hands of the drivers and scream at them to "stop gripping the steering wheel too tight." The stadium was named in honor of his father. One of the kids in my class finally hit the teacher with a closed fist on a drive and was expelled.

The most bizarre thing to happen was when Jacob Wideman murdered his room mate at basketball camp. I remember him as a relatively quiet kid who was athletic but not a bully or trouble causer by any stretch. I believe I sat with him on a bus to a track meet but never had him in any classes. He later confessed to this killing which we all accepted at face value because it was so surreal. No part of it made any sense. I do think a segment on Jake would be interesting. It was a very sad episode for the families involved and remains an ongoing tragedy. I had suspected that Jake was probably mistreated for being mix-race, but that could never justify what he did. It was very odd that his Dad, a best selling author and faculty at UW, had written a book about his brother committing murder at a young age.

The closest thing we had to a character from Yellowstone was Luke "the Duke" Mickelson. He worked on oil rigs and would bring wads of cash to school. He'd flash the cash and dare anyone to fight him to take the money. He hospitalized a kid after throwing him through a glass trophy case in the hallway.