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THE COLUMBINE TRAGEDY
COUNTERING THE HYSTERIA
BY BARBARA DORITY
Columbine High school is an open, attractive, sprawling
campus in the middle of a relatively safe suburban enclave in
Littleton, Colorado.The school was a showplace when it opened,
distinguishing itself in academics, music, drama, and athletics.
Thus it wes an unlikely setting for a tragedy of the magnitude
that took place April 20, 1999, when witnesses say at least two
students —18 year old Eric Hams and 17 year old Dylan Klebold
— killed thirteen people and wunded twenty-three others before
shooting themselves.
Fellow students later said the group Hams and Klebold
belonged to, self-proclaimed the Trench Coat Mafia, had been a
target of derision for at least four years Members were picked
on, harassed and excluded — "always on the outside looking in."
Most of the time, the members appeared to like it that way As
many cliques of young people do, the members played up their
differentness. They wore army gear, black trench coats, and
Nazi symbols. They spoke German to each other and were quite
vocal about their fascination with Hitler and World War 2.
Membership in such groups is just one of a remarkable
assortment of 'explanations' and assignments of blame that
panicked overreaction to this tragedy has produced, accompa
nied by an onslaught of repressive 'solutions" allegedly designed
to prevent recurrences. We are witnessing the institution of
a myriad of alarming civil liberties violations, most aimed at
obstructing the basic rights of young people - an already heavily
restricted group of U.S. citizens.
This is a classic scenario: particularly shocking
incidents of violence, especially those involving young people,
lead to mass hysteria and are invariably used to justify repres
sive government intervention. Fred Medway, psychology
professor at the University of South Carolina, says, "People
feel much more comfortable overreacting than underreacting
It makes them feel they've done something to prevent a poten
tially negative thing from happening."
It is in the midst of just such frightening and dangerous
times that this tendency must be most forcefully resisted. A
few reality checks can be the first step in countering panic and
assisting us in putting the situation into a realistic perspective:
-According to information from the National School
Safety Center, killings are the exception, not the rule, at schools
across the U.S., and suburban and rural schools remain safer
than their inner-city counterparts.
-The number of violent deaths in both urban and subur
ban neighborhoods has dropped dramatically since 1992 More
than 95% of children are never involved in a violent crime
-Not one of the mass school shootings of the past two
and a half years has occurred in an inner-city area, and nearly
all victims have been white
-A 1998 report by the U.S. Department of Justice and
Education says children have more chance of getting killed by
lightning than suffering a violent death on campus — which boils
down to less than one chance in a million.
-The current generation of teenagers is less likely to
use drugs, more sexually conservative, and less likely to be
caught up in school violence than the one of twenty years ago
-It's not unusual for young males, especially students
at large suburban schools, to make videos of shootings and
robberies in video-production classes (as Hams and Klebold
are said to have done); in fact, nearly half do
-In a recent survey of 900 fourth through eighth grade
students, almost half said their favorite video games involve
simulated violence
-High-profile school violence isn’t new Similar incidents
have occurred at least as early as the 1950s
But despite all these facts, we’re being told that the pn-
mary cause of the Columbine and similar tragedies is violence
on network television and in cartoons, comic books, music, and
movies As usual Hollywood is to blame Next in line are vanous
"violent" games, especially "killing” video games and "violent"
toys.
And, of course, we must not forget that wildly dangerous
and insidious corrupter of American youth the Internet — vtfiere
Harris and Klebold are said to have gotten their bomb-making
knowledge It must be noted, however, that such terrorist know
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how, complete with illustrated instructions for making bombs, is
also frequently available in military manuals at surplus stores, as
well as in numerous mail-order civilian manuals, which are avail
able through some public libraries. Are proponents of censoring
this information advocating that we somehow locate, remove,
and destroy all these sources?
Alexander Coxbum addresses a closely related aspect
of public reaction in The Nation's May 17 issue:
"Commentators have fastened onto the fact that one
of the youths had a personal Web site 'espousing an addled
philosophy of violence.' Those were the words of the New York
Times' (editorial team, the same people) who espoused an
addled philosophy of violence a few days earlier vtfien they
suggested that NATO intensify the bombing of Serbia. Perhaps
...it wasn’t a personal Web site the kid had in his computer but
nytimes.com "
I'm not, of course, insinuating that the war in Yugoslavia
caused the Columbine tragedy or any other instances of domes
tic crime I am, however, appalled at the hypocrisy of those who
blame such incidents on the media and popular culture while
simultaneously ignoring violence perpetrated by our own gov
ernment.
They ignore, too, that the institution most adept at
putting guns in the hands of youngsters (many of them troubled)
and training them to kill their fellow human beings is, of course,
the U.S. military — which also insists on the right to accept teen
agers at an age younger than most other nations. It is amazing
that those who are now blaming media violence for the Colum
bine tragedy - President Clinton among them — can completely
exclude sanctioned, even glorified violence of this magnitude
from their analysis. Yet, clearly they can and do fail to realize
that, in order to maintain consistency and credibility, they must
equally condemn all violence. This incredible feat of dissociation
by government officials and the American public is so complete
that no one noticed the appalling irony when the Air Force sent
F-16s over the funerals for those killed in Littleton.
In reality, and contrary to thousands of news sources,
absolutely no causal link has been established between simu
lated violence in media and actual real-life violence. Just one
example of how the media blatantly misrepresents this issue can
be found in an Associated Press story that appeared a few days
after the Littleton incident. It was picked up by most major news
papers under various versions of the headline 'Scores of Studies
Link Media & Youth Violence'. The story opens by referring to a
bill in Congress to require the U.S. Surgeon General to conduct
a comprehensive study of the effects of media violence on
American youths, then immediately goes on to state that "the
evidence already exists." Finally, five paragraphs into the story,
we read that "a few scholars object to this research, saying the
links do not prove cause and effect."
Among those who object is Jonathan Freedman, profes
sor of psychology at the University of Toronto. He points out that
correlative links could come from many factors, including the
likelihood that children who watch a lot of violent television are
often those least supervised by responsible adults. Freedman
tries repeatedly to make the simple point most researchers
recognize: that correlations don't establish causal links.
Harvard psychiatrist James Gilligan, vtfio spent years
interviewing murderers in Massachusetts, has concluded,
"Nothing stimulates violence as powerfully as the experience
of being shamed and humiliated."
Still, one after another, Congressional representatives
continue to pronounce that simulated violence produced by
Hollywood is to blame for violence in our society. They then
threatened government intervention to curb violence in movies,
video games, and music if this is not done "voluntarily." Repub
lican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah and Democratic Senator
Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut have likened the content of
popular entertainment to a vice industry, claiming that, like
tobacco, it requires special attention on public-safety grounds
The April 28 edition of 20/20 presented a particularly
shameless and sensationalistic feature about a "violent move
ment" spreading across America to which Harris and Klebold
supposedly belonged The followers of this new movement,
Sam Donaldson grimly reported, called themselves "Goths."
This feature then proceeded to demonize and place blame for
violence on the Gothic American subculture Parents were told
that "warning signs" include being "attracted to a very strange
group of people and listening to very alternative music." Diane
Sawyer then haphazardly lumped together music groups with
very little in common. As was the case with many of the music
groups that various news sources connected with the Columbine
suspects, most of them don't even fit the Goth mold. In fact, the
boys themselves didn't fit any known Goth mold. Neither did
their lifestyles.
And never mind that the modem Goth lifestyle dates
back to the 1970s. "What they're thinking," warned the Denver
Police Department's Steve Rickard in the 20/20 report, "is totally
irrelevant to a normal person's thoughts." What does this say
about the many thousands of young professionals who grew up
listening to Goth music, who solved video games like Doom and
Quake years ago, and who once participated in the grandfather
of all supposedly mind-warping games, Dungeons & Dragons?
If 20/20 is to be believed, most of us are surrounded by ticking
time bombs.
The obvious appeal of "very alternative" music, like
many other forms of pop music, is that it gives voice to feelings
of loneliness or anger shared by many young people and usually
serves as an outlet for these feelings. Out-of-the-mainstream
lifestyles, complete with music, provide a vital form of release.
Many other seemingly anti-social behaviors are part of the rebel
lion we've come to accept as a normal and healthy part of the
maturation process. Usually kids outgrow its self-destructive
and counterproductive aspects. Similarly, although many video
games do feature virtual guns and camage, for all but a tiny
percentage of young people they serve as a means of blowing
off steam, certainly not as a blueprint for actual killing.
On the front page of my May 2 newspaper was an
8X10 inch color photograph of four police officers in the main
foyer of a local high school. Some are seen talking to students,
others are standing guard, and so on. Certainly I've no problem
with students meeting and relating to police officers.But students
becoming used to seeing police constantly monitoring their nor
mal daily activities? How will this experience affect their percep
tions and expectations of privacy? Many are so frightened they
welcome this police presence, but what are the implications of
creating citizens who feel safe only when directly watched over
and protected by law enforcement personnel?
We're also instituting SWAT training in schools; install
ing metal detectors; conducting random locker searches (these
have been mandated for all schools in the Seattle, Washington,
school district, along with metal-detector checks in classrooms
and at sports events); supplying teachers with walkie-talkies;
banning black clothing, symbols of any kind, and any type
of trench coat; mandating school uniforms; searching students'
backpacks, purses, and such; banning the production of "grue
some" videos in school video classes; and conducting "lock
down drills."
One proposed 'solution" to the school violence problem
that is enjoying a surge of support is the concept of prosecuting
parents for teenagers' crimes (which does not seem particularly
ridiculous when in most states, until now any 18 year old could
purchase a gun-show pistol immediately). Twenty-three states
have extended some form of legal sanctions against parents
whose children commit crimes, although rarely are these enfor
ced. Thirteen states now have laws making parents criminally
responsible for failing to supervise delinquent children — but,
again, rarely are such charges brought. Five states have adopted
laws threatening parents with fines or imprisonment for negligent
parenting, although some have been struck down by the courts.
All these simplistic solutions avoid confronting the much
more difficult problems affecting children, like reducing poverty,
improving child-rearing skills, and funding child-care services.
Bruce Shapiro, writing in the May 17 Nation, states that "only a
broadly conceived community safety net — derided as bleeding-
heart social work by those now rushing to blame the culture —
can catch some children as they fall."
Finally, there is one particular aspect of the American
public's reaction to this tragedy that cries out for rational evalu
ation by freethinkers, as it is rooted in the irrationality of religion.
We are subjected to pronouncements that the cause of Colum
bine and other violent episodes in schools is "Godless parenting"
and "America's spiritual drift." Syndicated columnist Donna Britt
actually wrote, "Kids grounded in God often have more spiritual
weapons with which to fight darkness." The beliefs of Christian
kids, she maintains, "get media attention only when the awful
ness is done in His name."
When I opened my newspaper on April 27 to the head
line 'Deaths Seen Through The Prism of Christianity', I felt a
chill. "How much worse can it get?" I asked myself. I discovered
that several of the murdered students were eulogized at funerals
and memorial services as 'Christian martyrs'. Friends and family
were quoted expressing how glad they were that these "strong
Christians" had the privilege of dying for their belief in Jesus
Christ. This is almost incomprehensible.
Unflinchingly facing reality has never been more critical.
There is no evidence that Christians or those who believed in
God were selectively murdered. The Reverend Barry Palser,
minister at the church of one of these Christian martyrs, was
quoted as saying, "Inside that school library, they knew what
they were doing. They knew what they were going after. That's
what Hitler did." What planet are we on here? If these murderers
had been adherents of Hitler's doctrines they would have embra
ced Christianity and murdered only Jews, atheists, and others
outside their faith.
Christians are certainly free to comfort themselves with
the fantasy that some of these youngsters were "Christians who
died for their beliefs" and to "thank God" they got to go out as
"martyrs." But it's just another delusion to avoid dealing with the
simple truth: twelve beautiful young people and their teacher
were in the wrong place at the wrong time, died tragically and
needlessly, and are gone forever.
The even less appealing truth is that we don't know why
the murderers did what they did. We don't know why other inci
dents of school violence have occurred. We don't know if any
one incident is meaningfully related to any other, or which inci
dents, if any, are related to vtfiich of a variety of factors in our
society Nor do we know how to prevent future incidents. We
certainly can and should continue sincere efforts to team as
much as we can, but we're a long way from any definitive
answers As we await further information from law enforcement
officials, it is our task — indeed our duty as citizens — to resist
panicked responses and stand in opposition to such tragedies
being used to rationalize draconian violations of young peoples'
civil liberties
Barbara Dority is president of Humanists of Washington,
executive director of the Washington Coalition Against Censor
ship, and cochair of the Northwest Feminist Anti-Censorship
Task Force She wrote this article for The Humanist