Image provided by: Clackamas Community College; Oregon City, OR
About The Clackamas print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1989-2019 | View Entire Issue (April 19, 2000)
Bittersweet memories. Columbine HS one-year e anniversary Celebrations & Remembrances Tomorrow, April 20, marks the one-year anniversary of the Columbine Highi School shootings that chattered a community and grabbed the attention of a nation. This is a look back at the events and stories that took place as well as progress that has been made to deter school violence. State of Colorado Remembrance Thursday, April 20, 2000 11:20 a.m. - State Capitol > Governor Bill Owens leads statewide remembrance of the tragedy andfor the victims on the steps of the Capitol. Statewide moment of silence at 11:21 a.m. Columbine High School Student and Staff Assembly Thursday, April 20, 2000 9:30 a.m. - CHS Gymnasium Private gathering of students and staff for remembrances and personal reflections. Community Remembrance Thursday, April 20, 2000 12:30 p.m. - Clement Park Amphitheater A "thankyou” to the world from Columbine students and staff. Candlelight Vigil Service Thursday, April 20 2000 9:30 p.m. - Clement Park Amphitheater A candlelight vigil service to remember and hope. Kip Kinkel With the anniversary of' the Columbine shootings, Oregonians are reminded of the Thurston High School shootings. Kinkel was sentenced to 111 years in prison without the> possibility of parole for four counts of murder and 26 counts of attempted murder. He was 15 years old at the time of the shootings. A Time to Hope Activities Thursday, April 20, 2000 1:45 p.m. - Clement Park and CHS A variety of activities - music and recreational -for, students and community residents. CHS events are private and closed to the media and public. Parents, students exhibit different perceptions A year after Columbine, parents and teenagers hold strikingly differ ent views on the problem of youth violence across America. According to a new poll by Time and the Discovery Channel in con junction with the National Campaign Against Youth Violence, fewer teens feel very safe from violence in schools today (33%) compared to shortly after the Columbine killings a year ago (42% in a similar poll). But more parents believe that teens feel safe in school today (45%) than felt that way last year (27%). Nearly a third of teens say they have witnessed a violent situation at school, while only 8% of parents think that’s the case. About half of teens in the poll say they have been insulted or threatened in the past year, but only 22% of parents believe their kids have experienced that type of situa tion. V- ? While eight in 10 parents say they have talked with their kids about ways to protect themselves from violence, only six in 10 kids remem ber having such conversations. And while about half of parents wish they: could talk more with their kids about this subject, only 18% of teens want more such talks. One reason may be that most par ents encourage kids to stand up for themselves, while most kids are wor ried about the possible violent con sequences. Two-thirds of parents be lieve it is nearly impossible for teens to walk away from an angry con frontation without being teased, but I only 37% of teens agree. Both parents and teens believe that youth violence has increased in recent years, even though school- related violent deaths have been in decline. Extensive news coverage of school shootings may account for this misperception. School violence in one year's time April 28,1999 Taber, Alberta, Canada 1 student killed, 1 wounded at W. R. Myers High School in first fatal high school shooting in Canada in 20 years. The suspect, a 14-year-old boy, had been unhappy at Myers and dropped out in order to begin home schooling. , May 20,1999 Conyers, Ga. 6 students injured at Heritage High School by 15-year-old T. J. Solomon, who was reportedly depressed after breaking up with his girlfriend. Nov. 19,1999 Deming, N.M. 1 seventh-grader, Araceli Tena, fatally shot at Deming Middle School by Victor Cordova Jr., age 13. The boy, a dual citizen living in Mexico and commuting to the school, was struggling with depression after the death of his mother. His victim was apparently targeted at random. Dec. 6,1999 Fort Gibson, Okla. 4 students wounded and 1 severely bruised in the chaos as a 13-year-old boy opened fire with a 9mm semiautomatic handgun at Fort Gibson Middle School. Feb.29,2000 Mt. Morris Township, Mich. 1 6-year-old girl, Kayla Rolland, fatally wounded at Buell Elementary School near Flint, Mich. Assailant identified as a 6-year-old boy who lived in a crack house. A 19-year-old man was charged with involuntary manslaughter for allowing the boy easy access to the .32-caliber handgun used in the shooting. A Note for Rachel Scott The following essay was written by Roger Rosenblatt and published in Time Magazine last May, 10. It was written to one of the victims of Columbine High School—17-year old Rachel Scott. Your friends were shown on tele vision, writing goodbye messages on the white casket provided for you. I hope you will not mind if a stranger writes a message of his own. Of course, this is a literary device (as a young writer, you will recognize it as such), a way of doing an essay on the thoughts your death evokes. But this is also for you alone, Rachel, dead at 17, yet ineradicable because of the photograph of your bright and witty face, now sadly familiar to the coun try, and because of the loving and ad miring testimonies of your family. Your dad said in an interview last week that while there were many le gal and legislative questions to be an swered in the aftermath of the Col umbine High School murders, these did not touch “the deep issues of the heart.” He was referring specifically to the forgiveness that he, your mother and stepfather were dredging up for Dylan and Eric; and he may also have been thinking about the two boys’ deep issues of the heart, real ized out of a terrible darkness, and about the nightmares of your school mates who survived—all deep issues, reachable with great pain and diffi culty. But the deep issue I want to touch upon has to do with me and my col leagues—journalists who, for all our recurrent, usually unattractive dis plays of know-it-all confidence, oc casionally come upon a story such as yours and recognize our helplessness before it. Most honest journalists will admit that they never really under stand the events they attempt to or ganize and clarify, and that more of ten than not it makes a “better story,” one that comes closer to the truth, to swim around in the mystery of things. I, who have lived more than three times your years, have rarely under stood the occurrences and the people in the world that I have pretended to give order to. Yet I write sentences that end in periods. An odd word, sen tence, don’t you think? It means an authoritative decision, a judgment (one is sentenced in a courtroom), as well as a definite part of the language. Y et anybody who writes one knows that in reality sentences roll on and come to no conclusions; typically, they are questions disguised as answers, even cries for help. So, Rachel, when I write, “This is what I want to tell you,” please read, “This is what I want to ask”: Where do we, who ply our trade in this maga zine and elsewhere, find the knowl edge of die unknowable? How do we learn to trust the unknowable as news—-those deep issues of the heart? The problem belongs both to us and to those we hope to serve. Jour nalists are pretty good at unearth ing the undeep issues. Give us a presidential scandal, even a war, and we can do a fair j ob of explain ing the explicable. But give us the killings at Columbine, and in an effort to cover the possibilities we will miss what people are thinking in their secret chambers—thinking, feeling— about their own 1 oves and hatreds, about the necessity of attentiveness to others, about their own children: about you, Rachel. I have never believed that life is re vealed in its cataclysmic moments, its “wake-up calls,” but rather in repose, when people go about the quieter busi ness of being who they are. Journal ists tend to turn to where the noise is. One of the things your death be queaths is a reminder to look where the noise is not. One can tell far more interesting things about a crowd at a picnic than a mob in the streets, or about someone like you when you were writing poems and performing in school plays, or just dreaming without a sound, than when murder made you a “national symbol.” Your other bequest may be more useful still—to journalists and every one else. No life ends on a period, no matter how long it is lived. But your abbreviated life makes one especially aware of how much there is to the unknowable and untidy. In their pri vate hours, y°ur parents will imag ine you as a wife, a mother, an ac tress in the movies or at the village playhouse. For myself, I see you married—as my own daughter was married a year ago—in a church cer- emotfy the antipode of the one you were the center of last week. The deeper unknowable, though, is who you were before the guns locked you into a sentence. The only question that ever ought to matter to my colleagues and our customers is the one we do not ask except in ret rospect, after the guns or the scan dal: Who are we all in silence—at a table in the cafeteria, at a table in the library? What can journalists tell oth ers about the mind we all share, the innocent mind and the murderous? That is the real news of your death. That is the news I want to remember next week, when Kosovo is over or not over, and CONGRESS DE BATES GUN CONTROL, and Al Hirt’s trumpet is no longer heard. I would like to have remembered it before Tuesday, April 20, when the news of the day supposedly brought you to light. Rachel, you were always in the light.
