a decade ago at Columbine High School
Today, Monday 20 April 2009, marks ten years' passing since the fateful day in 1999 when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold gunned down 13 of their fellow students and one teacher before taking their own lives at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Expectedly, the news media is addressing the decade which has passed with a lot of musing and commentary, some of it useful and a lot in my opinon not useful at all. Expectedly, a couple journalists and a psychologist have written books which have recently been published on "what" happened that day at Columbine, claiming to get into the heads of Harris and Klebold and to offer new insight into the horror that changed how we look at school violence forever.
A slew of recent articles in USA Today have focused on Columbine and have claimed, as have these books, to offer new data and important new findings on the shooters. While I have not read the books in full yet, what I've gathered via reviews of these and the articles in USA Today and elsewhere is not comforting nor encouraging. The "new" data which these authors claim to have is mostly in fact information that was first made public in 2002 or 2003. In January of 2003, I became very interested in Columbine and started doing my own research. Most of what I did was via information availible to the general public at the time and it provided the same "data" these writers are now claiming as new and unique.
One of the books (I will not name them: if you are that interested you can find them on amazon.com but my initial impression is they're not worth my time) claims that Harris and Klebold were in fact not the victims of bullying. That is complete and utter rot. Nothing in the world excuses Harris and Klebold from murdering, however they were in fact victims of bullying and attacks from other students. The way they were treated was never in full addressed by school authorities before or after the murders. Certainly, ample warning signs were availible to school officials and law enforcement and none were really taken seriously. The Governor's Report on Columbine in fact notes the level of bullying against Harris and Klebold just as it also notes that they scared and bullied other students themselves. The web of violence and threats was endemic at Columbine and was a growing mountian of which the apex was the murders. It was not the only moment of violence or evil in the puzzle however.
Bullies are a tale as old as time, yes, but bullying and hazing at schools has become worse within our generation. If we wish it to be better for our kids' generation, we start here and now in not tolerating bullies. I remember a girl at my high school, Buchholz High in Gainesville, Florida, who was taunted and tormented by bullies simply because she was short, chubby, and a bit odd. She died in 2005, from my understanding probably by her own hand. If she died via suicide, while we cannot directly blame those who bullied her, we can see the roots of her demise in their efforts. Most of her bullies were not thugs who are in prison now or dealing drugs on a streetcorner, but instead idiotic preppy girls whose own insecurity prompted them to torment someone less popular than themselves. May God have mercy on them, and may their own kids not be the victims of the abuse they promoted. May karma forgive them and they, clueless and hapless creatures that they probably still are, go on their way in their trite suburban lives.
We also cannot allow students to be profiled or targeted by well-meaning but clueless authorities as possible threats due to their wearing of trench coats, or their piercings or the fact they're pagan or they listen to Rammstein . . . we cannot allow the terror of Columbine to lead us to fear and hate kids who are a little different from the rest. Many of those kids are my friends, many have gone on to do great things and none have blown up a school. The next Eric Harris of the world may just be the star football player for all you know, because if you look at Harris himself, at the REAL information, he wasn't a trench coat-wearing goth misfit at all but a cunning, egocentric, bright kid who had a very twisted view of life. Dylan Klebold was a good student and was slated to start at a good university in the Fall of 1999. The problem was, the media didn't want to say "Eric and Dylan were ordinary kids who were a little different, bullied by their peers, and in rage and anger lashed out in a most horrible way". We want the enemy to always be "the other". Society doesn't want to confront such deep and grave truths, yet me must.
Those of you how have school-aged kids in your life, take a moment to talk with then each day, see how they're doing. Care. That's the first thing we can all do. And not only parents and teachers, but kids who are your cousins, the kids on the soccer team you coach, the kid next door. Make sure they're ok.
As for Columbine, I pray for all 15 who lost their lives that day ten years ago.
A slew of recent articles in USA Today have focused on Columbine and have claimed, as have these books, to offer new data and important new findings on the shooters. While I have not read the books in full yet, what I've gathered via reviews of these and the articles in USA Today and elsewhere is not comforting nor encouraging. The "new" data which these authors claim to have is mostly in fact information that was first made public in 2002 or 2003. In January of 2003, I became very interested in Columbine and started doing my own research. Most of what I did was via information availible to the general public at the time and it provided the same "data" these writers are now claiming as new and unique.
One of the books (I will not name them: if you are that interested you can find them on amazon.com but my initial impression is they're not worth my time) claims that Harris and Klebold were in fact not the victims of bullying. That is complete and utter rot. Nothing in the world excuses Harris and Klebold from murdering, however they were in fact victims of bullying and attacks from other students. The way they were treated was never in full addressed by school authorities before or after the murders. Certainly, ample warning signs were availible to school officials and law enforcement and none were really taken seriously. The Governor's Report on Columbine in fact notes the level of bullying against Harris and Klebold just as it also notes that they scared and bullied other students themselves. The web of violence and threats was endemic at Columbine and was a growing mountian of which the apex was the murders. It was not the only moment of violence or evil in the puzzle however.
Bullies are a tale as old as time, yes, but bullying and hazing at schools has become worse within our generation. If we wish it to be better for our kids' generation, we start here and now in not tolerating bullies. I remember a girl at my high school, Buchholz High in Gainesville, Florida, who was taunted and tormented by bullies simply because she was short, chubby, and a bit odd. She died in 2005, from my understanding probably by her own hand. If she died via suicide, while we cannot directly blame those who bullied her, we can see the roots of her demise in their efforts. Most of her bullies were not thugs who are in prison now or dealing drugs on a streetcorner, but instead idiotic preppy girls whose own insecurity prompted them to torment someone less popular than themselves. May God have mercy on them, and may their own kids not be the victims of the abuse they promoted. May karma forgive them and they, clueless and hapless creatures that they probably still are, go on their way in their trite suburban lives.
We also cannot allow students to be profiled or targeted by well-meaning but clueless authorities as possible threats due to their wearing of trench coats, or their piercings or the fact they're pagan or they listen to Rammstein . . . we cannot allow the terror of Columbine to lead us to fear and hate kids who are a little different from the rest. Many of those kids are my friends, many have gone on to do great things and none have blown up a school. The next Eric Harris of the world may just be the star football player for all you know, because if you look at Harris himself, at the REAL information, he wasn't a trench coat-wearing goth misfit at all but a cunning, egocentric, bright kid who had a very twisted view of life. Dylan Klebold was a good student and was slated to start at a good university in the Fall of 1999. The problem was, the media didn't want to say "Eric and Dylan were ordinary kids who were a little different, bullied by their peers, and in rage and anger lashed out in a most horrible way". We want the enemy to always be "the other". Society doesn't want to confront such deep and grave truths, yet me must.
Those of you how have school-aged kids in your life, take a moment to talk with then each day, see how they're doing. Care. That's the first thing we can all do. And not only parents and teachers, but kids who are your cousins, the kids on the soccer team you coach, the kid next door. Make sure they're ok.
As for Columbine, I pray for all 15 who lost their lives that day ten years ago.