Yes I wrote the article for FHM... ask away...

You also have to understand in the 90s, especially for teachers who had been around since the 70s/80s bullying was seen as very different than it is today. The more mild stuff was seen asa normal part of being a teenager for the most part. I don't agree with that of course but I'm younger and I did my social work masters within the last 5-6 years, so different time.

I'd say Mr. D is good at his job. JeffCo has schools specifically for teens who are struggling and troubled, they did back then and still do. Unfortunately with that many kids people slip through the cracks.

My brother was more like that quit wrestling after freshman year and was more into computers and stuff. Very quiet. But my sister, who was popular and active in school life as the varsity poms captain, hee alcoholism started after the shooting so her senior year she was dri ming heavily before classes even but she kept it so quiet people didnt notice. Everyone struggled after the shooting so anything off was explained by that. Its hard.

Teachers now are much more trained to see those kids before they slip through the cracks, though it still happens. Mr. D could have stayed stuck I'm his ways and say nothing was wrong here Columbine is amazing and not changing but he didn't. He chose to stand up and say he was far from perfect and he wanted to learn and grow to make Columbine a better place and he did.

This is much better - no abuse or wild accusations just a civilised exchange of reasoned opinions from either side of the arguement. Nobody is necessarily right or wrong as they come at things from different experiences and angles. Sensible discussion and even arguement is surely the best way to cast light on a dark, divisive and difficult subject.

Everytime I read about Columbine's toxic culture and that it could have contributed to cause the massacre, I ask myself why Eric and/or Dylan didn't just change school, but maybe this thought is too simplistic.
Here we have the same class for all the school years, with the same classmates and almost all of
the same teachers;  every high school have a specific field of study, like scientific or artistic.
When I was in high school, a friend of mine from another class sadly was pretty bullied from her teachers, and after the first two years, she simply changed school and so did some other kids I knew: this school have the reputation of hellish place.
I didn't have big problems with my class (just a little in the beginning), and plus, my classmates and my teachers helped me a lot during a very bad period, when I almost failed the year due to several health and familiar issues; I will never thank all of them enough for their frienship and kindness.
I can relate to the story at Columbine of Millennialrebelette: everything is different from person to person.

My_mondays wrote:

Piersh wrote:

 
From there it’s a short drive up Pierce Street until a menacing, low rise, sandstone building looms into view. Columbine High School has few windows and looks like a prison without a fence (later Brooks’ girlfriend tells us that it was in fact designed by an architect who used to build prisons).es in the head.

I know that somehow this was written for the shock value, but so I'm not the only one who has always thought that Columbine School has something uncomfortable, so big, massive and strange...but maybe I'm influenced by what happened in there. For sure this school has a bizarre structure (no offense for who has loved to study and just be in it), and if really was build from a prisons architect...oh, well.

I can't believe I forgot this before, but I remember the prison architect rumors specifically, but nit just at Columbine. I knew people at a handful of different schools in JeffCo, Littleton, Aurora, Centennial, all southern suburbs of Denver, and it seems at the schools built in the 70s they all seem to have a minor rumor about the prison style. However at Columbine it wasn't mentioned very much.

The school where I heard the most about this was a school some of my older cousins and some of my coworkers at the Red Robin I switched to in Aurora from Littleton right before my mom died and after we sold the house and moved into a small apartment across from the newish giant CU Health Sciences now University Hospital complex on Colfax, anyway they all went to a school named Smoky Hill High School in Aurora, Colorado.

It opened the same year as Columbine and has also been remodeled since like Columbine. It looks way more prison like than Columbine except Columbine's ugly grey color on the original part is worse than the red bricks Smoky has. Anyway apparently inside Smoky has small classroom blocks, centered around a department office. Before the first remodel that was the entire school. There weren't any windows wider than about 6-8" and the part that faces the main road, has a big barbed wire area at the school itself and then next door is a district bus depot with more barbed wire. Inside the walls are white washed brick and plain grey concrete apparently .

My cousin says they have a great auto program thus the barb wire. It is a far more diverse school than Columbine. But my cousin says he was told because of the violent domestic terrorism that occurred during the early 70s like from the Weather Underground, the Sianese (sp?) Liberation Army who kidnapped Pattie Hearst, etc. communities were afraid and schools built during this time were built by firms who also built Colorado prisons. I don't kniw if any of that is true, or if it's just some dramatic license to explain the crappy institutional look of architecture from the very late 60s into the 70s, resulting in prisonesque giant, flat, plain, brick/concrete buildings with very few if any windows added to the teenage feeling of school being a prison.

I could see people thinking that about Columbine before the '95 remodel, and while I haven't been inside my cousin and coworkers old school Smoky Hill, I have driven by back when I was in high school and I thought it was a prison until I saw the school sign. This is actually they put actual windows in, so facing the main road is a big two story brick building, only a small part of the building had the "windows" that were super narrow tiny slits that couldn't be opened and all looked covered up with blinds or something, almost half the building is just two stories of brick without any of the depressing creepy fake windows at all. Plus there's a huge area covered by barbed wire fence in the middle of the building with torn up black fabric covering a lot of it, though you can see dumpsters and other junk, then there's a big district bus depot right beside surroubded by barb wire with no grass or trees at all only gravel. The sidewalk was all falling apart and stuff.

It made me feel about about Columbine's design for sure! I've always wondered if the rumor of 70s built schools being designed by prison architects or purposely designed like prisons themselves (Ove heard both) is just a Colorado thing. Never heard it in Utah or Hawai'i. I also never was able to find out whether there was any truth to it or not. Maybe its just meant to be a rumor at these schools for as long as they're still standing and running lol.

My_mondays wrote:

Everytime I read about Columbine's toxic culture and that it could have contributed to cause the massacre, I ask myself why Eric and/or Dylan didn't just change school, but maybe this thought is too simplistic.

It seems to me a lot of the idea that they hated every single day at Columbine, is the incorrect quote during the library massacre, "This is for the last four years", which, if we believe Bree (most do on everything else), it was "This is for last year" - and they planned the massacre for a year, not four years, so that makes sense.

Of course Dylan also says "You've been giving us shit for years" on the Basement Tapes, but they're trying to come up with reasons to be angry, others have noted Dylan is playing it up for Eric, and he talks about daycare and  stuff even before Columbine High. So, I think it's literally just that first, false quote that makes people go 'boo hoo they hated that toxic environment every day was hell.' With that interpretation, I think your question is reasonable. The same goes for "oh my god they just had to wait a few weeks to graduate and they were away from that awful place".

However, I suspect (and of course cannot prove) that they wanted to attack something first, then later settled on the school. Eric talks a lot about wishing he could take down all of Denver and says they need to decide what's going to be 'ground zero' for their pipe bombs, etc. It's certainly possible to choose the school because e. g. ease of access, the number of victims, and the symbolism, rather than serious grievances.

cakeman wrote:

My_mondays wrote:

Everytime I read about Columbine's toxic culture and that it could have contributed to cause the massacre, I ask myself why Eric and/or Dylan didn't just change school, but maybe this thought is too simplistic.

It seems to me a lot of the idea that they hated every single day at Columbine, is the incorrect quote during the library massacre, "This is for the last four years", which, if we believe Bree (most do on everything else), it was "This is for last year" - and they planned the massacre for a year, not four years, so that makes sense.

Of course Dylan also says "You've been giving us shit for years" on the Basement Tapes, but they're trying to come up with reasons to be angry, others have noted Dylan is playing it up for Eric, and he talks about daycare and  stuff even before Columbine High. So, I think it's literally just that first, false quote that makes people go 'boo hoo they hated that toxic environment every day was hell.' With that interpretation, I think your question is reasonable. The same goes for "oh my god they just had to wait a few weeks to graduate and they were away from that awful place".

However, I suspect (and of course cannot prove) that they wanted to attack something first, then later settled on the school. Eric talks a lot about wishing he could take down all of Denver and says they need to decide what's going to be 'ground zero' for their pipe bombs, etc. It's certainly possible to choose the school because e. g. ease of access, the number of victims, and the symbolism, rather than serious grievances.

Sue Klebold and possibly Judy Brown are the only ones who said Dylan was playing it up for Eric, and they are obviously biased.

cakeman wrote:

Of course Dylan also says "You've been giving us shit for years" on the Basement Tapes, but they're trying to come up with reasons to be angry, others have noted Dylan is playing it up for Eric, and he talks about daycare and  stuff even before Columbine High. So, I think it's literally just that first, false quote that makes people go 'boo hoo they hated that toxic environment every day was hell.' With that interpretation, I think your question is reasonable.  The same goes for "oh my god they just had to wait a few weeks to graduate and they were away from that awful place".

Not that I think something happened to them every single day all throughout high school, but there are indicators that they were unhappy with the school for more than just their junior year.
The windshield incident occurred in early 1997 (February, I think but too lazy to check) and at that time Brooks told his parents/ school officials about the "missions" that Eric, Dylan, and Zach were doing. Since Eric mentions Brooks telling on him, the missions occurred both before and after the windshield incident, which would have been their sophomore year.
In his Mission Logs, Eric says they target anyone who "pisses us off" and "we have many enemies in our school." He also talks about one mission being "an attack on people who shot Vodka's bike." He doesn't outright say they were other Columbine students, I would assume, at least, that they were kids of their own age.
This time frame coincides with reports that they both started acting differently, dressing differently around the second year of high school. This in and of itself doesn't indicate they were unhappy with high school, but coupled with the "enemies" statement suggests something may have been going on at that time.
From Dylan's journal in March of 1997, he writes of "the asshole in Gym class, how he worries me." Whether or not his talk of being an outcast and people "conspiring against" him had anything to do with bullying, only Dylan knows.

They were in school for 3 yrs with Rocky and his group of friends, whom most believe did the majority of the abuse to the Columbine student body. We don't have direct evidence that Eric or Dylan were targeted by any of them or when, but I suspect that those few who were interviewed, who had graduated the year before and whose names were redacted, that admitted to bullying Eric, specifically, in gym were part of Rocky's group. I know at least one was a football player.
I don't think it's too far of a leap, given these things to suspect (though we can't prove) that their unhappiness with Columbine began before junior year.

Ligeya wrote:

cakeman wrote:

My_mondays wrote:

Everytime I read about Columbine's toxic culture and that it could have contributed to cause the massacre, I ask myself why Eric and/or Dylan didn't just change school, but maybe this thought is too simplistic.

It seems to me a lot of the idea that they hated every single day at Columbine, is the incorrect quote during the library massacre, "This is for the last four years", which, if we believe Bree (most do on everything else), it was "This is for last year" - and they planned the massacre for a year, not four years, so that makes sense.

Of course Dylan also says "You've been giving us shit for years" on the Basement Tapes, but they're trying to come up with reasons to be angry, others have noted Dylan is playing it up for Eric, and he talks about daycare and  stuff even before Columbine High. So, I think it's literally just that first, false quote that makes people go 'boo hoo they hated that toxic environment every day was hell.' With that interpretation, I think your question is reasonable.  The same goes for "oh my god they just had to wait a few weeks to graduate and they were away from that awful place".

However, I suspect (and of course cannot prove) that they wanted to attack something first, then later settled on the school. Eric talks a lot about wishing he could take down all of Denver and says they need to decide what's going to be 'ground zero' for their pipe bombs, etc. It's certainly possible to choose the school because e. g. ease of access, the number of victims, and the symbolism, rather than serious grievances.

Sue Klebold and possibly Judy Brown are the only ones who said Dylan was playing it up for Eric, and they are obviously biased.

Perhaps, but it's another thing to consider. I haven't seen the tapes obviously. Though I can't much trust the transcript by that measure either (in fact there are multiple versions). Can also say they knew him and I didn't. But there is Eric's yearbook, for one instance where it seems like Dylan doing things that appeal to Eric for several pages. Could still be an open question whether it's to recruit him for his own NBK suicide murder fantasy, or to follow the vengeful leader, or whether those are the wrong options.

thelmar wrote:

cakeman wrote:

Of course Dylan also says "You've been giving us shit for years" on the Basement Tapes, but they're trying to come up with reasons to be angry, others have noted Dylan is playing it up for Eric, and he talks about daycare and  stuff even before Columbine High. So, I think it's literally just that first, false quote that makes people go 'boo hoo they hated that toxic environment every day was hell.' With that interpretation, I think your question is reasonable.  The same goes for "oh my god they just had to wait a few weeks to graduate and they were away from that awful place".

Not that I think something happened to them every single day all throughout high school, but there are indicators that they were unhappy with the school for more than just their junior year.
The windshield incident occurred in early 1997 (February, I think but too lazy to check) and at that time Brooks told his parents/ school officials about the "missions" that Eric, Dylan, and Zach were doing. Since Eric mentions Brooks telling on him, the missions occurred both before and after the windshield incident, which would have been their sophomore year.
In his Mission Logs, Eric says they target anyone who "pisses us off" and "we have many enemies in our school." He also talks about one mission being "an attack on people who shot Vodka's bike." He doesn't outright say they were other Columbine students, I would assume, at least, that they were kids of their own age.
This time frame coincides with reports that they both started acting differently, dressing differently around the second year of high school. This in and of itself doesn't indicate they were unhappy with high school, but coupled with the "enemies" statement suggests something may have been going on at that time.
From Dylan's journal in March of 1997, he writes of "the asshole in Gym class, how he worries me." Whether or not his talk of being an outcast and people "conspiring against" him had anything to do with bullying, only Dylan knows.

They were in school for 3 yrs with Rocky and his group of friends, whom most believe did the majority of the abuse to the Columbine student body. We don't have direct evidence that Eric or Dylan were targeted by any of them or when, but I suspect that those few who were interviewed, who had graduated the year before and whose names were redacted, that admitted to bullying Eric, specifically, in gym were part of Rocky's group. I know at least one was a football player.
I don't think it's too far of a leap, given these things to suspect (though we can't prove) that their unhappiness with Columbine began before junior year.  

I'm aware of the rebel missions and their journals. Problems with other students and hatred with the high school as an institution seem to me quite separate things. The claim was not there were no assholes in gym class. In fact those who I meant to parody usually include the administration and the rest, so this reply surprised me at first. One should also note: graduated the year before, as in were seniors when they were juniors, as in when they started planning the massacre, for when they would be seniors.

cakeman wrote:

I'm aware of the rebel missions and their journals. Problems with other students and hatred with the high school as an institution seem to me quite separate things.

How so? From what we know it seems that both hated the school because of what they perceived as favoritism of treatment for certain members of the student body; and those certain members were usually the jocks that gave everyone (not just Eric and Dylan) the most trouble. It doesn't seem that you could separate the two as perception of one grew out of perception of the other.
You might argue that Eric also railed against society putting kids in school to make good little workers for the future, so everyone thinks and acts alike, but this wasn't his sole means of hatred toward the "institution" and there's no evidence Dylan cared about this philosophy at all.

cakeman wrote:

One should also note: graduated the year before, as in were seniors when they were juniors, as in when they started planning the massacre, for when they would be seniors.

Yes, the redacted statements I mentioned were part of the class of 1998, likely interviewed because they were on the Class of '98 Should've Died list. My point was not these particular students and what abuse they threw at Eric or Dylan during gym the year before. But the fact that these students, who had admitted to bullying, and their group of friends who were also bullies, were present in Columbine for 3 out of the 4 years that Eric and Dylan were present. Their being assholes to other students probably didn't start when they became Class of 98 seniors, they were probably assholes through the majority of high school.

The fact that they were the main group of bullies for the majority of time Harris and Klebold were at Columbine and the fact that Eric and Dylan, from the written evidence we have, were expressing hatred of the school and its students at least as far back as their sophomore year suggests that their perceptions of the school and students were shaped further back than just their junior year ("this last year") of high school. And was possibly shaped by this particular group of bullies.
If they were just referring to being bullied their junior year, as you suggest, and since they began plotting NBK some time between February and April of 1998, then that means that they would have decided based upon only roughly 6- 8 months (minus weekends and school breaks it's roughly 150 days actually in school) that they were going to die and take hundreds of kids with them. Not saying this couldn't happen because I do think they had some mental health issues going on, but it seems extreme to me even for Eric and Dylan and all the harm they caused.

thelmar wrote:

cakeman wrote:

I'm aware of the rebel missions and their journals. Problems with other students and hatred with the high school as an institution seem to me quite separate things.

How so? From what we know it seems that both hated the school because of what they perceived as favoritism of treatment for certain members of the student body; and those certain members were usually the jocks that gave everyone (not just Eric and Dylan) the most trouble. It doesn't seem that you could separate the two as perception of one grew out of perception of the other.
You might argue that Eric also railed against society putting kids in school to make good little workers for the future, so everyone thinks and acts alike, but this wasn't his sole means of hatred toward the "institution" and there's no evidence Dylan cared about this philosophy at all.

I'm not sure that isn't a just so story. We don't know what they perceived as favoritism of treatment. Favoritism of fate to the jocks in Dylan's journal perhaps. Of course one could hate the school because of the people there; but hating some people there is not the same thing as hating the school. My claim was pretty modest. Just don't think Dylan hating one guy is gym class is evidence for hating the whole school.

And yes, there is Eric talking about how school is to conform to a bell schedule and make it so you don't sit around the room or whatever, but that is presumably after they decided to attack the school. Also there is Eric specifically saying not to blame the administration.

Quote :

cakeman wrote:

One should also note: graduated the year before, as in were seniors when they were juniors, as in when they started planning the massacre, for when they would be seniors.

Yes, the redacted statements I mentioned were part of the class of 1998, likely interviewed because they were on the Class of '98 Should've Died list. My point was not these particular students and what abuse they threw at Eric or Dylan during gym the year before. But the fact that these students, who had admitted to bullying, and their group of friends who were also bullies, were present in Columbine for 3 out of the 4 years that Eric and Dylan were present. Their being assholes to other students probably didn't start when they became Class of 98 seniors, they were probably assholes through the majority of high school.

The fact that they were the main group of bullies for the majority of time Harris and Klebold were at Columbine and the fact that Eric and Dylan, from the written evidence we have, were expressing hatred of the school and its students at least as far back as their sophomore year suggests that their perceptions of the school and students were shaped further back than just their junior year ("this last year") of high school. And was possibly shaped by this particular group of bullies.
If they were just referring to being bullied their junior year, as you suggest, and since they began plotting NBK some time between February and April of 1998, then that means that they would have decided based upon only roughly 6- 8 months (minus weekends and school breaks it's roughly 150 days actually in school) that they were going to die and take hundreds of kids with them. Not saying this couldn't happen because I do think they had some mental health issues going on, but it seems extreme to me even for Eric and Dylan and all the harm they caused.

It seems on any account they decided that after the van arrest on January 30 and by the end of April 1998. I'm not at all confident  bullying was such a motive, but if it was, it seems to me it has to be born of junior year. You probably know more about Rocky and the like than I do, but I would suggest it is more often seniors who bully underclassmen more than juniors bully sophomores or something like that.  Also of their actions during the massacre, which often seem to me more important than stories relayed after and affected by it, that quote in the library seems particular salient to the case, and for better or worse just seems to me portrayed incorrectly.

Here is a post from Randy, which speaks for itself on the significance of that (likely incorrect) four years quote to the bullying narrative:

"I worked with Peter Langman for a long time. I got him contacts, gave him information and talked with him. He wrote his book and ignored just about everything we told him. He had an agenda. I was very disappointed.

Again, I strongly recommend reading Lonnie Athens, James Gilligan, Garbarino, deBecker and others. In those books you can learn the causes behind school shootings.

When you read them you will see it, you will feel it. They hold the truths to the reasons for school shootings.

If you kick a dog around long enough, it will fight back. Columbine was an abusive school. “This is for what you have put us through for four years.”

There are reasons. Learn them. Learn them for yourselves."

Hi Reznor. You said:

Reznor wrote:

The article was featured in the September 2004 issue

I have this issue and there is no Columbine article inside. Where did you hear it was in this issue? I'm wondering because I can't find it in the entirety of 2004 issues at all, nor 2003, nor 2005.

Does anyone have this issue of FHM who can verify where it really came from?