Ten years has passed since that day when two students and their arsenal executed a ferocious attack on classmates at a Littleton, Colorado high school, but its imprint on the local community and broader national consciousness coldly reverberates. What occurred on that Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School, in the small, unincorporated Jefferson County township, is ignominiously enshrined in the pantheon of American evil, infamy, and, indeed, irrationality.
Thus a decade later we are still frightened by it and flummoxed as to why it happened, resolved to get to bottom of just what motivated these boys to commit such a vicious act on their peers. We feel stranded without the comfort of sensible or logical explanations. When Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold embarked on that cold-blooded killing spree, massacring a dozen students and a teacher, in addition to wounding 24 more, before committing suicide, they went to their graves answerable for the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history.
But much of what we know or think we know about the sadistic spree comes from early news reports, long since filtered and diffused through hearsay, rumor, and the channels of pop culture: two misfits in black trench coats were taking vengeance against school bullies. Now, in Columbine: A True Story, longtime Rocky Mountain News reporter Jeff Kass — an investigative journalist who has been covering the story since the day it transpired — explores the mystery of how Harris and Klebold could have carried out such heinousness without others knowing even the very least about it. Perhaps not surprisingly, this is the third book released to coincide the 10 year anniversary, two of which are by journalists who have been studying the story for the past decade, and the other written from a psychologist’s perspective.
Predicated on inside research and exclusive information, it is hard to imagine any future projects superseding Kass’s moreforcible nonfiction narrative, in terms of its depth of study, breadth of knowledge, or creepy, eerie, grim application. In Columbine: A True Story, Kass focuses primarily on the murderers' psychological and social evolution — or utter maladjustment, really — and the battle to get government records relevant to the shooting made public. The book is crammed with passages from hard-fought copies of Klebold's college admissions essays and a federal deposition from Robert Kriegshauser, the Jefferson County diversion counselor who supervised the boys after they were arrested for breaking into a van. (Previously undisclosed, this lawsuit was filed against the company that manufactured the psychiatric drug taken by Harris. Kriegshauser has never spoken publicly.)
Article comments
1 - John Byrnes
Research has determined that from the Moment of Commitment (the point when a student pulls their weapon) to the Moment of Completion (when the last round is fired) is only 5 seconds. If it is the intent of a school district to react to this violence, they will do so over the wounded and/or slain bodies of students, teachers and administrators.
Educational institutions clearly want safe and secure schools. Administrators are perennially queried by parents about the safety of their schools. The commonplace answers, intended to reassure anxious parents, focus on the school resource officers and emergency procedures. While useful, these less than adequate efforts do not begin to provide a definitive answer to preventing school violence, nor do they make a school safe and secure.
Traditionally school districts have relied upon the mental health community or local police to keep schools safe, yet one of the key shortcomings has been the lack of a system that involves teachers, administrators, parents and students in the identification and communication process. Recently, colleges, universities and community colleges are forming Behavioral Intervention Teams with representatives from all these constituencies. Higher Education has changed their safety/security policies, procedures, or surveillance systems, yet K-12 have yet to incorporate Behavioral Intervention Teams. K-12 schools continue spending excessive amounts of money to put in place many of the physical security options. Sadly, they are reactionary only and do little to prevent aggression because they are designed exclusively to react to existing conflict, threat and violence. These schools reflect a national blindspot, which prefers hardening targets through enhanced security versus preventing violence with efforts directed at aggressors. Security gets all the focus and money, but this only makes us feel safe, rather than to actually make us safer.
Some law enforcement agencies use profiling as a means to identify an aggressor. According to the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education's report on Targeted Violence in Schools, there is a significant difference between "profiling" and identifying and measuring emerging aggression; "The use of profiles is not effective either for identifying students who may pose a risk for targeted violence at school or - once a student has been identified - for assessing the risk that a particular student may pose for school-based targeted violence." It continues; "An inquiry should focus instead on a student's behaviors and communications to determine if the student appears to be planning or preparing for an attack." We can and must assess objective, culturally neutral, identifiable criteria of emerging aggression.
For a comprehensive look at the problem and its solution.
2 - starviego
You are still being lied to. Big time. If you want to find out what really happened at Columbine I suggest you read what the eyewitnesses had to say.