Columbine

[Bugman]

This is a brief excerpt from Wiki.


The Columbine High School massacre occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine in unincorporated Jefferson County, Colorado, United States, near Denver and Littleton. Two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12 students and a teacher, as well as wounding 23 others, before committing suicide. It is the fourth-deadliest school massacre in United States history, after the 1927 Bath School disaster, 2007 Virginia Tech massacre and the 1966 University of Texas massacre, and the deadliest for an American high school.

The massacre provoked debate regarding gun control laws, the availability of firearms in the United States, and gun violence involving youths. Much discussion also centered on the nature of high school cliques, subcultures and bullying, as well as the role of violent movies and video games in American society. The shooting also resulted in an increased emphasis on school security, and a moral panic aimed at goth culture, social outcasts, the gun culture, the use of pharmaceutical anti-depressants by teenagers, violent films and music, teenage internet use,[1] and violent video games.[2][3]

The entire article is here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre

 

[Strider]

I was a senior in high school when that happened. Unfortunately, the administrators in my school didn't exactly take the right lessons from it and for a few weeks engaged in something of a witch hunt against anyone who wore black.

 

[Sanhael]

I had been out of school since the end of the previous school year, but while in school I was known to hang out with the goth kids, wear black, et cetera. The local authorities actually checked up on me (they called my house, and spoke with my parents) in response to "warnings" they had received, right after Columbine happened, from my high school, regarding comments I had supposedly made to people... some of them going back to my freshman year, and all of them either completely fictional or taken vastly out of context.

For example... I once threatened to beat up a guy who was dating a good friend of mine, after finding out he'd been abusing her. Yes, I was jealous, and yes, I wanted to date her myself, but I kept that fact to myself for nearly three years and stayed a completely platonic friend. When she started coming to school with bruises, I don't believe that someone who didn't have a crush on her would have been out of place to be angry.

The story of me threatening the guy (specifically, I threatened to knock him down a stairwell if he didn't keep his hands off of her) was inflated into some account of me making a list of all of her ex-boyfriends and planning to "hunt them down," or some such thing. Fortunately, enough people (students and faculty) stood up for me that nothing came of this, and it was eventually shown to be a hoax that was perpetrated by one of the other students and seized upon by the school administration.

I'm still awaiting an apology from the superintendent 😉

 

[lemoncake]

I was a senior in high school too, and was home sick the day it happened. I was glued to the television. I was freaking out the next day at school because the principal made this giant announcement that anyone who mentioned shootings, violence, or if anyone found anything suspicious such as lists or drawings would be expelled or have charges filled against them. Our school had had a lot of those "death lists" going around. I had just been accepted into the district art show for a photograph collage that I made that depicted a crime scene. You didn't really know what had happened in the picture, you just knew the person in it was dead with a chalk outline around him. I had made the piece weeks ago and my teacher fought for me to keep it in the show. He said that artists have a way of picking up on what's going at a time in history, sometimes even before things happen. We both felt that it was relevant. But I seriously thought that I was going to get kicked out of school. I did get some nasty comments from people, but the piece won a prize and a lot of people liked it. I still have it, and every time I look at it, I can't help but think about Columbine and what a scary time it was to be in school.

 

[Adam]

It's hard to believe that it's already been 10 years since this happened. I was a bit shy of my 21st birthday when this happened. I felt so bad for the families of the victims, seeing them being interviewed on television and seeing the visible pain in their eyes. There was this one boy that lost his older sister... I think her name was Rachel Scott? He was experiencing such grief and you could see it in his face. It is hard for me to fathom how two young men could be filled with so much hate... actually planning and executing a massacre like that. The principal of the school actually stayed on and says he thinks about it every single day, despite the fact that they are trying to move on.

 

[Capnmad]

This was just a few days before finals my senior year in college, and three weeks after my best friend had killed himself, so I was already burnt-out emotionally when I watched what was going on. Just like the world was on fire in those days. I'd just started a strange paranormal story set in Denver, Colorado (because the Rockies were an important element), and the events in Columbine just served to make it stranger. Ultimately, never did anything with the sprawling, weird story, but it helped shore up a handful of ideas I'd explore later.

I remember developing a bit of a morbid fascination with the event, as it was the first time I could remember tribute pages springing up after a tragedy. Lots of information available straight from students who attended there, a handful of "Trenchcoat Mafia" wannabes all over the place, a mournful tribute song composed by a music student who attended there, and then, there was regular coverage of every subsequent school shooting.

Perhaps most interesting was the plan, however unlikely for these two kids to accomplish, to hijack a plane from Denver International and crash it into a building in NYC. At the time, such an act was considered unthinkable and unfeasible by domestic intelligence agencies. They would have only two and a half years to enjoy this conceit.

 

[milagros317]

It's amazing that it's ten years already. It changed the way high schools view their own students.

 

[vladtickleman22]

I was shocked when i heard it's been 10 years. I was only 17, so the incident hit really hard for me. Especially since there were guys who wore trenchcoats at my school. Even though they were actually really cool and popularish. Out of respect for what happen, they stopped wearing their trenchcoats for something like a month.

 

[cabalist]

Apparently there was a lot of popular "mythology" surrounding the case, including both the Trench Coat Mafia story and the stories about "bullying", according to an article I ran across at the CNN site about the author of a book about the incident.

Debunking the myths of Columbine, 10 years later

Otherwise, I can't say I've ever bothered looking into it much beyond the superficial headlines at the time, which was long past my own high school and college days.

 

[Eriksmasque]

I can't believe its been 10 years either. It feels like only a few years ago I was watching the news as this was happening. I don't know what is worse the fact that this happend, or the amount of people that look up to these two morons as heros. ( anyway, getting off the soap box. LOL )

For an interesting read about this from a first hand perspective, read Brooks Brown's book :" No Easy ANswers, Truth about death at Columbine" Very engageing .

 

[Goodieluver]

I was a soph that year

Suddenly my friends and I were looked at weirder for a month after cuz we stayed after school to play magic the gathering and wore pantera or rush shirts.

 

[xionking]

It was the first time where a community saw first hand the absolute consequences of long-term bullying. For Harris and Klebold, there was finally a shift of power, and they enjoyed every second of it.

-Xionking

 

[Goodieluver]

It was the first time where a community saw first hand the absolute consequences of long-term bullying. For Harris and Klebold, there was finally a shift of power, and they enjoyed every second of it.

-Xionking

Yes and it led to people becoming overprotective of their children.

Kids get bullied, it happens all the time

Christ, look at the psychological abuse most girls give each other which more often than not leads to bulimia and other harmful states.

Hell, some kid in Illinois i wanna say who was in the grades somewhere between K and 3 got sent home cuz he pointed a chicken finger at someone like a gun!

Peer abuse is a fact of life and happens in kids to adults. The answer to solving is is to attack the source, let kids evolve from it. Not remove it from schools and pretend it wont happen. If a kid is fucked up to do abuse to an "extreme" level in a school, why wouldn't he do it outside school where miss teacher can't protect you anymore. Hell i was considered at times the "fat weird" kid and i went to private school. I took some licks and I gave them back. Made me who I was and if we couldn't settle a battle of wits in the classroom then we settled them behind the rectory.

 

[xionking]

Yes and it led to people becoming overprotective of their children.

Kids get bullied, it happens all the time

Christ, look at the psychological abuse most girls give each other which more often than not leads to bulimia and other harmful states.

Hell, some kid in Illinois i wanna say who was in the grades somewhere between K and 3 got sent home cuz he pointed a chicken finger at someone like a gun!

Peer abuse is a fact of line and happens in kids to adults. The answer to solving is is to attack the source, let kids evolve from it. Not remove it from schools and pretend it wont happen. If a kid is fucked up to do abuse to an "extreme" level in a school, why wouldn't he do it outside school where miss teacher can't protect you anymore. Hell i was considered at times the "fat weird" kid and i went to private school. I took some licks and I gave them back. Made me who I was and if we couldn't settle a battle of wits in the classroom then we settled them behind the rectory.

You aren't wrong. However, at this particular school, Harris and Klebold were constantly bullied by not three or four people, or just one clique in particular, it was an entire year level. In one particular interview I watched with a kid named somebody Brown (who was initially friends with Harris), he explained how they were at the bottom of the food chain, and other students did whatever they could to remind them of this.

Columbine itself did very little to tackle bullying, did nothing at all like "attack the source", the bullying continued (jocks throwing shit in a cup at them is just one fine example) and as a consequence, look what happened. It's easy to say that peer abuse is a fact of life, and if that's so, than the heavy consequences as a result of this bullying are also a fact of life.

If you had to settle something behind the rectory, would you have had to settle it against one person, two people, or the entire group of jocks?

-Xionking

 

[Perduabo]

Amazing is been 10 years already.

I was just entering high school around that time, and I must say that certain people were viewed with a little more scrutiny than others around that period.

Shame really about the cause of the whole mess, but kids get bullied all the time. Everyone has had their fair share of it at on point or another. Pity those two couldn't have talked about their issues with someone instead of carrying out the horrible events of that day.

 

[Goodieluver]

You aren't wrong. However, at this particular school, Harris and Klebold were constantly bullied by not three or four people, or just one clique in particular, it was an entire year level. In one particular interview I watched with a kid named somebody Brown (who was initially friends with Harris), he explained how they were at the bottom of the food chain, and other students did whatever they could to remind them of this.

Columbine itself did very little to tackle bullying, did nothing at all like "attack the source", the bullying continued (jocks throwing shit in a cup at them is just one fine example) and as a consequence, look what happened. It's easy to say that peer abuse is a fact of life, and if that's so, than the heavy consequences as a result of this bullying are also a fact of life.

If you had to settle something behind the rectory, would you have had to settle it against one person, two people, or the entire group of jocks?

-Xionking

Im a dumb fool and thankfully rarely I had to deal with scrums of more than 1 person.

 

[Goodieluver]

Amazing is been 10 years already.

I was just entering high school around that time, and I must say that certain people were viewed with a little more scrutiny than others around that period.

Shame really about the cause of the whole mess, but kids get bullied all the time. Everyone has had their fair share of it at on point or another. Pity those two couldn't have talked about their issues with someone instead of carrying out the horrible events of that day.

Amen

Marlyn Manson said it best(in the ONLY respectable part in Bowling for Columbine)
"I wouldn't say a single word to them, I would listen to them"


(sadly it has some Moore crap)
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/90xJVOUuV-I&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/90xJVOUuV-I&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

 

[Perduabo]

Amen

Marlyn Manson said it best(in the ONLY respectable part in Bowling for Columbine)
"I wouldn't say a single word to them, I would listen to them"


(sadly it has some Moore crap)
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/90xJVOUuV-I&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/90xJVOUuV-I&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Well I happen to like Bowling For Columbine (and Michael Moore, but that's another story altogether.) Just wanted to give props for posting that Marylin Manson clip. Completely forgot he said that. So true.

 

[Goodieluver]

Well I happen to like Bowling For Columbine (and Michael Moore, but that's another story altogether.) Just wanted to give props for posting that Marylin Manson clip. Completely forgot he said that. So true.

Yeah arguing the movie is reserved for the P\R section

But Manson puts it aptly, you dont tell them what to feel or what to do. You need to listen to what they need.

Problem now is teachers\parents are too quick to act at a minor thing.

I mean hell, my nephew got a note sent home cuz he pushed a kid and it was treated like a serious life taking offense(he just turned 8)

 

[xionking]

Im a dumb fool and thankfully rarely I had to deal with scrums of more than 1 person.

Well, i'm glad to hear that, Dude. It's sad that some scrums like to hang out in packs, sharing 1/5th of a personality each.

Manson tells it truthfully.

Disposable Teens.

-Xionking