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Illinois School Board Journal
May-June 1999
Violence in Colorado--Could it happen here
By Jessica C. Billings
After a 1997-98 school year that featured mass murders at schools in eight communities, school leaders waited tensely for the 1998-99 school year. Fall and winter passed without major incident. But all along, in a suburb of Denver, two high school boys (perhaps with the help of other students) were plotting what would become the worst school bloodbath of all.
As this magazine was going to press, the nation was once again shocked and grieving, this time for 14 children and a teacher killed in a schoolhouse massacre in Littleton, Colorado. Another 28 were wounded. In Littleton itself, parents wept for lost children and students cried for their fallen friends.
And, copycat crimes were erupting all over the nation. A week after the killings, schools in at least four Illinois communities closed for the day after receiving threats of violence. Black trench coats, like those sported by the killers, were flying off the racks of clothing stores.
When the first news flashes came - that 14 students and a teacher had been gunned down in a high school and several others injured - it was hard to imagine how the story could be worse. But it did get worse. Stories from survivors painted a picture of cold-blooded killers who giggled and whooped as they gunned down their classmates. "There was a girl crouched beneath a desk in the library, and the guy came over and said, 'peekaboo,' and shot her in the neck. They were hooting and hollering and getting a big joy out of this," a boy told the Denver Post. Then police started finding bombs - and were still finding them the next day, some 50 of them. The school was booby-trapped so thoroughly that investigators believed that some of the bombs must have been placed beforehand - and that perhaps the two killers had help.
Finally, the news emerged that the killers had hoped to do far more damage than they did. Sheriff John Stone told the Denver Post that the killers wanted to kill at least 500 classmates, murder people in the neighborhood and, if they survived, "hijack an airplane and crash it into a major city."
The bloodbath was planned - carefully and cold-bloodedly planned, over the course of a year - and carried out on Adolph Hitler's birthday by 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold.
Why?
Around the nation, everyone from the President on down was asking: Why?
Writing in the Denver Post, Elyse J. Singleton suggests that the question isn't specific enough. "We should ask not just why, but why were teenagers allowed to stockpile weapons? Why would parents allow children to soak their young lives in hatred? Why in a place of learning were there so many unintelligent presumptions? And above all, why were two grandly violent, mean and twisted boys tolerated at school and cultivated at home?"
Why didn't anybody notice that two teenagers were stockpiling guns and making bombs - when at least one of them apparently left guns and bomb-making materials in plain sight in his room? Harris had been arrested before, for stealing electronic equipment from a van. He completed a sentence that included a one-year diversion program, an anger-management class and a legal issues class, as well as 45 hours of community service. He had been rejected by the Marines. The two boys wore swastikas and shouted "Heil, Hitler" when they scored a strike in their early morning bowling class. They wrote "creepy" poems (in the words of several classmates) about violence and they made videos featuring computer simulated violence.
Said one of their classmates, of the days before the shootings, "You would see them sort of marching down the hall together with their berets, dark glasses, their boots and their makeup . . . . They would make those sharp military turns and knock into anyone in their way. To me, I thought it was a big sign of trouble."
In their huge suburban high school of nearly 2,000 students, the warning signs that seem glaring in retrospect went unnoticed. Singleton ponders that the crime "prompts me to close my eyes and try to imagine the same surly group, only this time I envision them as black or Hispanic. There is no way on earth they, like the so-called Trench Coat Mafia, would not have been considered a gang. Teachers and students wouldn't have dismissed them as quirky individualists, unpleasant but harmless. In fact, dismissal would have taken place only in the form of their darker-skinned tails being dismissed right off that upscale suburban campus."
Theories
For the past two years, since schoolhouse shootings have become part of American culture, researchers and commentators have been speculating and theorizing about the causes. From the mass of verbiage, at least four reasons have emerged why the anger and angst suffered by generations of adolescents are now erupting in bloodbaths.
Parental rights is a hot issue among some groups, who lobby against and fight any legislative effort to reduce the property rights parents now enjoy in their children. Parental responsibility, on the other hand, is a concept rarely addressed. Increasing interest in laws that would hold parents responsible for their children's criminal behavior might motivate some parents to find time to keep an eye on their kids.
In 1998, Harris had a fight with his friend, Brooks Brown. Brown's father told the Chicago Tribune that Harris threatened his son's life, and that he had heard the boys were making pipe bombs. "We heard they were making pipe bombs, and we made several complaints to the police, and we took it seriously. But the police didn't seem to." Police reported that Ed Harris kept his firepower in plain sight in his room. At press time, Harris' parents had refused to talk to Littleton police unless they received immunity from prosecution, which police would not grant.
In the media feeding frenzy immediately following the event, news reporters lacking personal information focused on the fact that the boys lived in expensive houses and apparently had plenty of everything money could buy. They are a graphic illustration that money can't replace parenting.
Along with violence, hate is in style. News media pay professional haters high salaries to spew their venom through the airwaves and in print. Groups that call themselves religious spout hatred and discrimination.
Aside from keeping them shut away from life, there is no way that children can be shielded from images of hatred and violence - but parents could, if they took the time, talk about violence with their children. They could limit television and monitor what is watched. They could spend time with their children and teach them sound values - including basic decency.
Some schools are tackling the issue. Asked about the shootings by the Chicago Tribune, David Eblen, superintendent of Downers Grove Community High School District 99, said the Downers Grove schools have "done a lot with the issue of civility - that we need to return to a higher level of civility. Tolerance, diversity, respect for different people. We need to appreciate that and not belittle others."
Internet discussions of the Littleton violence make the reader wish adults could be required to go back to school and learn civility. Even the National Public Radio site (www.npr.org), which attracts more intelligent, thoughtful responses than most Internet talk sites, a week after the shootings, had degenerated into name-calling and blame-placing. Most such forums are the verbal equivalent of a shoot-out, in which writers try to outdo one another in coming up with the most offensive, crushing retorts possible.
When adults can not hold a civil discussion, how will children learn to do so?
In addition to support, Net-surfers can find instructions for creating bombs and other weapons.
It took this writer exactly 14 minutes to collect detailed instructions and diagrams for making half a dozen kinds of bombs. Example: "Napalm: You almost have to have been living in a cave not to have heard of how to make this stuff but in case you were I'm gonna cover it anyway. What you need is lots of Styrofoam and some gasoline, lighter fluid . . ."
The search also uncovered several sites where you can order books and instructions for any kind of mayhem you might have in mind, as well as a "chemical revenge" site where you can order vomiting fluid, sneezing powder, and other such nasty items (along with the mocking disclaimer that such products should never be used on another person without permission). But you don't have to seek out the underground sites to find such information. Amazon.com, the huge on-line bookseller, provides a whole list of helpful titles, such as Ragnar's Guide to Home and Recreational Use of High Explosives and Guerrilla's Arsenal : Advanced Techniques for Making Explosives and Time-Delay Bombs. Reviews by readers criticize the books as not being specific enough or not providing instructions for the "really good" explosives.
While Congress frets over online nudity and sex, and software manufacturers create electronic baby sitters that screen pornography, a wide variety of sites offer information that could destroy a city.
Once again, there is no easy answer. It's not practical, and would not be desirable, to keep children off the Internet. The day is approaching - far more rapidly than would have been believed even a couple of years ago - when the Internet will be as necessary for participating in American life as the telephone is now.
Parents must pay attention. They must know where their child is going on the Net.
As well as the children killed in Littleton on April 21, every one of the 13 students and teachers murdered and the 41 injured in last year's massacres, were killed and wounded with guns. Every day, 13 children are murdered by guns in accidents and deliberate shootings.
In Colorado, it is illegal for a person under 18 to own a handgun, but there are no restrictions on ownership of long guns (three of which Harris and Klebold used in their rampage). And, there is no law against selling or giving a long gun to someone under 18. The Colorado legislature, after the shootings, shelved bills that would have loosened the already-loose concealed weapons laws.
The National Rifle Association cut back its planned three-day conference in Denver to one day. The mayor of Denver had asked the group to cancel altogether and offered to refund its money, but the NRA refused - and held its meeting surrounded by ten thousand demonstrators carrying signs that said "SHAME on the NRA."
Clearly, the shootings have reopened the gun rights debate in a big way. Those who favor stronger controls on guns, as well as those who want no controls on guns, will be lobbying Congress and state legislatures. Unfortunately, at this point the debate seems to be developing along the same old emotionally charged 'us versus them' lines that have led to nothing but acrimony in the past.
More information, as well as help and support for those who want to cut off children's access to guns can be found at http://www.handguncontrol.org/. For gun advocacy information, go to http://www.nra.org/.
Security
Faced with so many factors outside their control, what can schools do?
Around the nation, schools are implementing security measures and crisis plans. Schools are walking a difficult line. Students have First Amendment rights that apply at school, and that make it difficult for school leaders to regulate speech, dress or other actions, as the courts repeatedly have made clear. "Zero tolerance" policies have failed to prevent violence. Preventive measures such as metal detectors, dogs and armed guards undoubtedly prevent some violence (although there's no way to measure violence that doesn't happen).
One of the primary defenses against school violence is to pay attention to students and heed warning signs. This common-sense defense is difficult in the kind of mega-school that Harris and Klebold attended - although in this case, the warning signs seem pretty obvious in retrospect.
Shouting "Heil Hitler" in physical education class, as well as some other signals in the Littleton case, seem in retrospect fairly blatant - and, indeed, after the shootings, commentators were speculating that lawsuits would probably follow the shock and grief of Littleton parents. But in many cases, warning signs that are glaring after the fact often are easy to miss before something happens. Child development experts agree that isolation, alienation, and antisocial behavior such as lying and stealing (even in very young children) can be signs of a dangerously disturbed child or adolescent. Torturing or mistreating animals also is an early warning sign - researchers have found powerful correlation between mistreatment of animals and later antisocial behavior.
While psychologists and other observers debate the causes and possible cures for eruptions of murderous rage in children, school leaders around the nation are working to keep their schools as safe as possible. No amount of hardware and security can prevent all school violence. In Jonesboro, Arkansas last March, youngsters killed five and injured ten after a false fire alarm sent students and teachers outside the school. In Littleton, however, the two killers managed to hide numerous pipe bombs in the school before the event, and to enter the school with at least four guns on the day of the shooting.
A wealth of advice and information for school officials is found on a Web site sponsored by the National School Boards Association and the National Association of Attorneys General, at http://www.keepschoolssafe.org/