Posted by Bruised at 1:52am Apr 21 '06Being that today is the seventh anniversary of Columbine (or at least it still is in California), I've been thinking about the shooting and how the event affected my life at the time and high schools today.
I was in the family room when one of my family members turned the television on. They wanted to watch a news story about a recent school shooting. At first it seemed that this was just another one of the long line of shootings. But it soon became evident that this one was different.
I was always on the counterculture side of the culture war debates. Homosexuality, drug legalization, teen curfews, you name it. As a result, I was horrified to see the way goths and freaks were treated as a result of the shooting. Before I knew it I was hearing about schools banning black trenchcoats. (Then what would all the goths wear? Would you expect them to go around naked?) Students were being sent to the principal's office just for being goths, and now there were computer programs being developed to find the students who were most likely to shoot up their schools.
In fact, any student who didn't fit into any one of the established cliques -- the outsiders -- was now being targeted by school faculty. Schools were also clamping down on teens who enjoyed Wicca, magick and Magic: The Gathering. Any panel on Columbine included now its token figure who believed that such video games as Doom and Quake were responsible for this shooting that left fourteen students and one teacher dead. Because Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold enjoyed these games, gamers became almost as targeted as goths. Jon Katz wrote an article about the backlash resulting from Columbine, and in it he mentioned the principal of one school advised the president of the Dungeons and Dragons club to see a psychologist.
Not only this, but high schools were now recommending measures to strengthen "security". Transparent backpacks became required in many places. William Strauss, the author of The Fourth Turning and Millennials Rising, even recommended that public high schools adopt uniforms. Great -- just what we need -- students being punished because they come to school in a pair of blue jeans and a striped T-shirt instead of a slacks, tie and dress shirt with the school insignia on it. These violations of civil liberties in the name of "security" were eerily prophetic of what people would call for two years later in the aftermath of September 11.
People were blaming parents and said they don't give their children enough discipline and structure today. Despite the fact that a 15-year-old can go to jail in some states for mouthing views that his parents refuse to let him express, there were adults out there who were claiming that parents and laws today are too lenient. People were calling for parents to be punished for the crimes of their children. I can't think of anything that goes more against the moral principles we all share than Person A being punished for the actions of Person B, but there you had it.
Of course, this event also gave funeamentalist and evangelical Christians a platform to promote their views. The black-trenchcoated, Viking-horn-wearing style of Harris and Klebold gave them leverage to make Wiccan/Satanist types look bad and make Christians look good. And who can forget the confusion and trouble that came about when Rachel Scott's brother Craig reported that Cassie Bernall had said "yes" when Eric and Dylan asked her whether she believed in God, and was then shot for it. The myth of Cassie Bernall was later discredited, but only after a book titled She Said Yes had been sent to the publishers and millions of Christians had already been misinformed. The truth didn't touch nearly as many people as the lie. On a day when fifteen people died, it's a shame that the "she said yes" myth didn't die along with them.
Some predicted that the tragedy would unite teens from all walks of life after people saw what the frictions between jocks and freaks could do. Some even predicted that high school subcultures would disappear. It seems almost unbelievable today, and very naïve in retrospect, that someone would make this prediction. Not only have cliques not vanished into the sand the last few years after 4/20/'99, but now we have a newly prominent one -- emo -- entering high schools and colleges today. Whether you believed Columbine would inspire the jocks, or the goths, or the skaters, or the hip-hoppers, or the preppies, or the rednecks, or the trendies, to give their culture up, none of the groups has said "I'll get with the program and disappear" because of this.
It has been a full seven years after the event. That is enough time for the bad effects of breaking a mirror to wear off, and enough time for every cell in your body to be replaced. Yet Columbine is still on my mind, and I still think of it when I get into culture wars with other people. Share your thoughts on this most deadly and most legendary of school shootings, and how it has affected your life.
I was in the family room when one of my family members turned the television on. They wanted to watch a news story about a recent school shooting. At first it seemed that this was just another one of the long line of shootings. But it soon became evident that this one was different.
I was always on the counterculture side of the culture war debates. Homosexuality, drug legalization, teen curfews, you name it. As a result, I was horrified to see the way goths and freaks were treated as a result of the shooting. Before I knew it I was hearing about schools banning black trenchcoats. (Then what would all the goths wear? Would you expect them to go around naked?) Students were being sent to the principal's office just for being goths, and now there were computer programs being developed to find the students who were most likely to shoot up their schools.
In fact, any student who didn't fit into any one of the established cliques -- the outsiders -- was now being targeted by school faculty. Schools were also clamping down on teens who enjoyed Wicca, magick and Magic: The Gathering. Any panel on Columbine included now its token figure who believed that such video games as Doom and Quake were responsible for this shooting that left fourteen students and one teacher dead. Because Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold enjoyed these games, gamers became almost as targeted as goths. Jon Katz wrote an article about the backlash resulting from Columbine, and in it he mentioned the principal of one school advised the president of the Dungeons and Dragons club to see a psychologist.
Not only this, but high schools were now recommending measures to strengthen "security". Transparent backpacks became required in many places. William Strauss, the author of The Fourth Turning and Millennials Rising, even recommended that public high schools adopt uniforms. Great -- just what we need -- students being punished because they come to school in a pair of blue jeans and a striped T-shirt instead of a slacks, tie and dress shirt with the school insignia on it. These violations of civil liberties in the name of "security" were eerily prophetic of what people would call for two years later in the aftermath of September 11.
People were blaming parents and said they don't give their children enough discipline and structure today. Despite the fact that a 15-year-old can go to jail in some states for mouthing views that his parents refuse to let him express, there were adults out there who were claiming that parents and laws today are too lenient. People were calling for parents to be punished for the crimes of their children. I can't think of anything that goes more against the moral principles we all share than Person A being punished for the actions of Person B, but there you had it.
Of course, this event also gave funeamentalist and evangelical Christians a platform to promote their views. The black-trenchcoated, Viking-horn-wearing style of Harris and Klebold gave them leverage to make Wiccan/Satanist types look bad and make Christians look good. And who can forget the confusion and trouble that came about when Rachel Scott's brother Craig reported that Cassie Bernall had said "yes" when Eric and Dylan asked her whether she believed in God, and was then shot for it. The myth of Cassie Bernall was later discredited, but only after a book titled She Said Yes had been sent to the publishers and millions of Christians had already been misinformed. The truth didn't touch nearly as many people as the lie. On a day when fifteen people died, it's a shame that the "she said yes" myth didn't die along with them.
Some predicted that the tragedy would unite teens from all walks of life after people saw what the frictions between jocks and freaks could do. Some even predicted that high school subcultures would disappear. It seems almost unbelievable today, and very naïve in retrospect, that someone would make this prediction. Not only have cliques not vanished into the sand the last few years after 4/20/'99, but now we have a newly prominent one -- emo -- entering high schools and colleges today. Whether you believed Columbine would inspire the jocks, or the goths, or the skaters, or the hip-hoppers, or the preppies, or the rednecks, or the trendies, to give their culture up, none of the groups has said "I'll get with the program and disappear" because of this.
It has been a full seven years after the event. That is enough time for the bad effects of breaking a mirror to wear off, and enough time for every cell in your body to be replaced. Yet Columbine is still on my mind, and I still think of it when I get into culture wars with other people. Share your thoughts on this most deadly and most legendary of school shootings, and how it has affected your life.