Columbine+Paper

Columbine Shootings: A Look on The Inside  “I’m never going to get rid of the sights and sounds that were there.”, Vince DiManna, a Denver SWAT Team Member stated. April 20th 1999 in Columbine Colorado was the most horrific school shooting to happen in the United States. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are infamous for their massive school shooting and suicide. Klebold was the second child of Thomas and Susan Klebold. He was incredibly shy and had a few close friends other than Eric Harris. When friends described him words were a “nice, normal teenager.”(Criminal Mind). This simple description could not be any farther off. Klebold had a notebook and he wrote about having a killing spree and said “the lonely man strikes with absolute rage.” His partner Eric Harris was the son of Wayne and Kathy Harris. He was involved in the school video productions and had some friends. Harris also preferred to be alone along with Klebold. There is a video recording of Eric and Dylan the morning of the shooting, “despite the good natured jabs and animated conversation, Eric remains mostly taciturn and somber throughout the tape, and at one point announces, “I hate everybody.” (Criminal Mind).  This traumatic experience will never fade in the hearts of the US, but still reminds us of how someone can seem to be normal and within a couple minutes see that same person killing 15 and injuring 23 others. It is intriguing to look at all the information on these two individuals. They both had a couple of friends, but they spent most time with each other. I am taking a look into the psychological discipline of this subject because I want to know how the brain interacts with violence. This event impacted our society and caused psychologist to look into how the brain and violent activity interact, how people feel toward gun control, and how the parents of victims have coped with the aftermath of the Columbine Shootings, but are we better at preventing any other events from happening again?  There are many reasons as to why someone could willingly take a life. The difficulty is trying to understand why that person would want to. It could be from the way they were treated at home or school to the way their brain was functioning. In the article “Ideas about the Development of Violent Behavior”, Debra Niehoff and Richard Rhodes discuss the brain and how complex it is. When we behave a certain way our brain makes note and we can initially alter the way it works. Harris and Klebold both kept journals and they would talk about wanting to get a gun so they could commit suicide. These two teenage boys were not okay. There were many signs that they two of them were unhappy and full of anger. One had even stated that it was fun to be schizophrenic. Harris even wrote a short story for class that was violent. Harris and Klebold were caught breaking into a car and were arrested. They had to do community service which in turn made them go to anger management classes. One of them stated that they think mental health treatment is “nice. It helps me realize things.”(Criminal Minds). Eric was even on antidepressants which were supposed to help him. Klebold and Harris’ state of mind was that of a disturbed kid. They were constantly angry, but they liked it. They had thoughts of suicide and killing everyone they thought was unfit and considered it to be fun. Harris had a website saying things along the lines of “DEAD PEOPLE DON’T ARGUE”, something like this should have been a cry for help amongst his family. One the other hand if a person is in such a state of mind that killing and being killed is okay, then how did they get the shotguns and rifles so easily?  People do not feel safe and thy want more restrictions on the way guns are acquired. After the Columbine shootings people were shaken up about the availability of guns to citizens. Soon after this there were plans to make new policies for more gun control. Having a traumatic event happen at your school or near you does not only affect your school or your community, it affects the country at some point. When school shootings became more prominent across the country, the different states involved started putting more restrictions on guns in hopes to reduce violence with firearms. Gary Kleck, a Professor at Florida State University, stated in his article “Ironically, exploitation of school shootings for the advocacy of irrelevant gun controls may have obscured the genuine merits of various gun control measures for reducing “ordinary” gun violence.” Is it worse that someone with schizophrenia was able to get ahold of shotguns and rifles than someone without a mental illness. With such big events happening in our society it would seem easy to go along with any gun controls that are presented. Whichever the ball rolls with the gun control issues, I am sure that the victims’ parents would appreciate the effort made to reduce the risk of another person going through the same thing they had too.  Imagining how the parents felt after being told their children’s school was being shot at by two crazed teenage boys. Many of the parents “struggled to make sense of the tragedy.” (Mears). Mears conducted experiments and interviews with other parents to go through the tragedy and the years that followed. She eventually started going through the crisis response and trauma care and soon after she was the one giving comfort to those other families. Usually a person is in shock after such a traumatic event and Mears seemed to be able to function with little or no help from others. Comfort is a big part of getting through something and the way she helped other families probably encouraged them to help others also. This event reminds of a tragedy that occurred at my school in Junior High. We lost a classmate in a car crash. The whole school was a wreck. The principle brought in counselors for students. Some students made t-shirts with his face and his sister, who was also lost that night on the way to his older sister’s graduation. He was never forgotten the rest of our years in school. At our graduation, when his name came across the microphone the auditorium fell silent and our class cheered in his honor. With the help from our teachers and each other we got through the loss and pain. Just like this those families will get through this tragedy. No matter the extent of the event the community will make it through.  Columbine was a horrific event along with any other school related shooting. This event cast a shadow over gun control and how fast our emergency services are. Along with forever changing Littleton, Colorado it changed the United States. It impacted us by showing how some teens could really use help and that everyone needs to watch for signs that show violent behavior. Hopefully this impact will not be a constant reminder of the ones who were lost but one of happiness that we overcame it. Since Columbine our society has tried to prevent more attacks from happening, but nothing is ever a sure thing. Just like Klebold and Harris who were said to never have been bullied but still felt a need to slaughter everyone, some people do not show any signs of violence. While some people do not show signs and appear to be okay, but never judge a book by its cover.

Safer Since Columbine? The Columbine shootings took place 13 years ago on April 20, and still to this day students and faculty all over the United States face the aftermath. After the Columbine Shootings, fear crossed all over the United States that it might happen again and our country’s schools are not safe. To avoid any further shooting tragedies to Columbine High School or any other schools, faculty and board members and many others came up with “better” plans and safety precautions in schools. The plans include faculty having yearly training in crisis response and threat assessment, better evacuation points, and punishing students for any negative behavior or actions (Pascopella). These new safety precautions and plans that are supposed to help avoid further shootings are making students and faculties feel uncomfortable at school, forcing budget cuts, and ignoring other factors like bullying and cliques that need much more attention. Students in high school or any type of school are young and are going to make a few mistakes in their high school career. After the Columbine Shootings, the new rules and regulations enforced at schools across America made students not even want to go to school anymore. Safety should be a main priority for schools, but taking extreme action on all schools across America over the Columbine incident can negatively affect students as well as faculty. People are so worried about the same thing happening after a big crisis instead of being prepared for whatever is coming next. Over planning and over exaggerations tends to take over, including these safety rules and regulations. In the Associated Press’ article, it explains how students are getting into major trouble for minor problems since Columbine Shootings that are negatively effecting how they look at school in general. For example, if a student continuously got into trouble for little mistakes at school, he is going to have a negative attitude towards school and possibly even drop out. If major punishment was given to students for something minor that any student might slip up and do, it makes the students scared to make the same mistakes and sometimes not even want to go to school. These students should feel safe going to school, but not as if they are in prison. With new safety plans, more money is taken and more budget cuts are made for each school. Many schools across the states already struggle with money and are forced to make all kinds of budget cuts in order to keep the school intact. Adding new safety plans require more money to be taken that could be used for other things like new equipment, desks, and material teacher’s need including markers and other materials for these students. More money should also go to other things such as anti-bullying program and church programs at their schools to help encourage students that they are all good enough in this world. In Pascopella’s article, Cynthia Stevenson discussed these new safety plans are very expensive and each of the schools have one of these plans that differ, which can make it even more expensive. This new safety plan requires budget cuts, until something else is highly needed for the schools and then the safety plans money will have to cut and it can just decrease in time anyways. Safety procedures could just continuously stay up-to-date and maybe include cheaper ways like teachers communicating through texting. Spending a lot of money on these programs could be easily avoided, yet still make the school safe from events like the Columbine Shootings. Along with the unsafe feelings students and faculty get, new safety plans are also blinding other factors like anti-bully programs and other programs that can help students not feel so alone in the world. Instead of trying to control dangerous situations, why not try to avoid them overall. In Pascopella’s article, it does mention anti-bullying programs being in effect, but their main concern is the safety programs to keep things under control. To keep things under control, the safety programs make sure all teachers have yearly training on safety and punish any student going against school rules. These programs may not be able to stop the catastrophes, but they can stop a lot of them from occurring by changing the way the students are feeling and thinking. In Taylor, Vranish, Martin, Bucy and Saunders’ article called “Schools are safer since Columbine”, it discusses that students’ technology and off-school behavior needing to be monitored more to avoid more disasters like Columbine Shootings. Cyber bullying occurs all the time, leaving students feeling unwanted and alone in the world that can drive them to commit suicide or take action like Dylan and Eric did. Off-school negative behavior occurs all the time for some students as well, including bullying and negative reassurance of not being good enough for friends or life itself by other students/peers. Having safety plans may help, but it doesn’t take away the feelings and urges students have to commit such a crime. Due to the Columbine Shootings, it can also give students ideas and urges to do the same thing. Students should be monitored for signs and encouraged to be good to their peers through programs like an anti-bullying program, and not just know how to be prepared for when these situations could happen. One mistake does not always mean it is going to keep happening. Just because Dylan and Eric got as far as they did, does not make it the same case for all schools and all situations. From this criminology perspective, the focus narrows out other major actions that should have been taken to help avoid these types of situations and avoid going overboard with security. Changing safety plans will not seem to make such a difference. It can negatively affect America including students and faculties who feel uncomfortable at school, the forced budget cuts due to the new safety plans high expenses, and obliviousness of the other actions that should have been taken after Columbine shootings that focuses on the students feelings and not just stopping the students who feel they need to take actions like Dylan and Eric did.

Alicia White & Emily McGahee