Haunted By Columbine

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Cullen is still persistent on the fact bullying played no role in what happened. Savage still gets chills on how calmly Dylan answered his question, what are you doing?  

"Just killing people"

Was it not John Savage who asked that?

You're correct Radioactive, I changed it.

What's even worse about Cullen and his views are how many people accept it and that his views and everything else in his book is accurate. It's a shame that many people are gonna have such a misconception about Columbine.

If any of us were in CHS being shot at and seeing our friends die horrible deaths I doubt I'd ever get over it

nice find though I'll add it to my archive

Marco1211 wrote:

What's even worse about Cullen and his views are how many people accept it and that his views and everything else in his book is accurate. It's a shame that many people are gonna have such a misconception about Columbine.

Yes.

Any asshole can come along and say, "I know everything there is to know about Columbine! I'm right and everyone else is wrong!" But folks don't have to swallow his bullshit the way they do.

LPorter101 wrote:

Marco1211 wrote:

What's even worse about Cullen and his views are how many people accept it and that his views and everything else in his book is accurate. It's a shame that many people are gonna have such a misconception about Columbine.

Yes.

Any asshole can come along and say, "I know everything there is to know about Columbine! I'm right and everyone else is wrong!" But folks don't have to swallow his bullshit the way they do.

I'm not even surprised. The masses will believe literally anything put infront of them.

eli27 wrote:

LPorter101 wrote:

Marco1211 wrote:

What's even worse about Cullen and his views are how many people accept it and that his views and everything else in his book is accurate. It's a shame that many people are gonna have such a misconception about Columbine.

Yes.

Any asshole can come along and say, "I know everything there is to know about Columbine! I'm right and everyone else is wrong!" But folks don't have to swallow his bullshit the way they do.

I'm not even surprised. The masses will believe literally anything put infront of them.

Newtown conspiracy nuts case in point.

The problem Dave Cullen had was that he thought there was a distinction between persons who are alienated and bullied and the psychopathic. It's entirely possible to be both.

On top of that he threw in the spin of, "EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT COLUMBINE IS WRONG!!!11!!" It was a cheap shot to sell books, and looking at it now it was plain irresponsible. In the first ten pages, he paints Dylan as a misunderstood gentle giant, and Eric as a scheming, overly confident suave lady's man.

I hope someone else comes up with a better narrative on this story that is more accurate.

Well, everything most people knew at that time about the columbine shooting was wrong. I think its hard to argue otherwise given the media reports.

What really annoys me is DiLaurentis still says '12 kids and 1 teacher died in my watch'' and he goes on to say that they were all his kids! Umm how about Eric and Dylan? Do they not count even if they committed this crime? It clearly shows how much they were rejected by the whole school!

The principal had a very obvious and admitted bias towards the athletic students. There were a lot of press that picked up on it too, but the story changed when the nation started singling out the alienated, goth and intellectual kids as possible mass shooters. There was even a story on slashdot that gave numerous cases of kids being profiled as shooter due to an interest in DOOM or wearing a trench coat even. After that, the enemy was violent media.

There are even reports today(and recently on this forum) that demonstrate how bad CHS still is to this day.

The initial reaction was stupid to the extreme and teh following reaction "No tolerance policy" was equally dumb.

Lots of average kids or kids from troubled homes got in serious trouble with the shcool or were expelled because of very minor issues - being Matrix fans, dressing black, being known Manson fans, being known V:tM players, having any sort of interest in true crime, being goths etc.

Frankly, it just made it easier for potential schooters. Imagine there's a 0 tolerance policy and some kid in your class is dicking around and says probably jokingly: "I hate teacher XYZ, guy should be shot!" or "This schools blows, or rather should blow up".
In this situation, how many kids will report him knowing he'll get expelled from school for something which in 99.5% cases was not a serious threat?
Yea, exactly.

Also a case of: "I don't like kid XYZ, so I'm gonna lie that he made threats against the schools. He dresses in black so nobody will believe him, he'll get expelled and we'll be rid of him".

Zero tolerance never works. A better approach would be to have teachers and staff who are more engaged, and have better training to spot the true problems and warning signs.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a Muslim student in Texas who was handcuffed for bringing in a clock that he had taken apart, and reassembled in a suitcase. Suffice to say, it sort of looked like a bomb.

There are many details to the story, but the short version is that his creation sparked a panic response from one of the teachers and he was taken to the office and put in handcuffs. There is a picture of him in a NASA t shirt with handcuffs on, and I find it truly saddening. But, it was all due to zero tolerance protocols.

I find it ironic that America is one of the top ten most violent countries in the world, but we have all of these bizarre school policies that don't change anything. We all panic when there is a mass shooting, but everyone neglects the fact that Chicago and Michigan have that many murders in one weekend sometimes. Everyone wants to regulate scary black assault rifles, but no one want to fund gun buy back programs in the inner cities that actually lead to less gun crime.

A big source of the problem is the media. But, it doesn't change the fact that we're just kind of violent as a whole.

Do you realize how much damage we do when we say it was because of bullying? We turn all kids who are bullied into potential suspects. We make their lives worse.

Eric literally says more about slow drivers and people who mispronounce words than he does about bullies. The shooters did not kill bullies, attack bullies, or single out bullies. They let the one kid with the white hat go. Tell me again how they targeted bullies.

lasttrain wrote:

Do you realize how much damage we do when we say it was because of bullying?  We turn all kids who are bullied into potential suspects. We make their lives worse.

Eric literally says more about slow drivers and people who mispronounce words than he does about bullies.  The shooters did not kill bullies, attack bullies, or single out bullies.  They let the one kid with the white hat go.  Tell me again how they targeted bullies.

Lasttrain, I don't know whether this was reply to me, since I never said it was all because of bullying. However I would say Bullying played a massive part in this event, as much as mental health, anxiety, hatred, jealousy ect.
A kid who is bullied all his way through the high school, won't say he/she loved the school- even if he/she was bullied by 1/3 population of the school. They will say they hate the whole god damn school! Been there, done that.. Thank god I survived without taking such harsh actions.

It's times like this I wish Gustopoet was here : )

Regardless of whether or not they were bullied, they still identified themselves as alienated kids. Their own friends even noted that they became more withdrawn and antisocial throughout the last part of their junior year, and up until the shooting.

Schools will always identify the outcasts as trouble makers and potential suspects. The kids in the TCM complained about it frequently. If they retaliated, they were the ones who got in trouble, not the "jocks".

Also, I don't think Eric would jot down all of the times he was picked on, or made to feel inferior or intimidated. His writings tend to lean more towards revenge fantasies and ranting.

They were also quoted a couple of times in the library stating that what they were doing was for revenge

"Everyone with a white hat stand up!"

"This is for all the shit you've given us for the last four years!"

They went to the library for a reason.

They asked kids with white hats to stand up for a reason.

One of the kids even took off his white hat and hid it under his shirt. This was all done for a reason.

I don't think bullying was the sole cause of the shooting. I don't think it was even a majority cause. But, it was still a contributing factor. Ignoring it, and buying the crap that Dave Cullen is selling does just as much disservice to those who died that day, and the surviving outcasts who still got to be oppressed by the jock culture there.

Radaddio, you say that you think bullying wasn't major cause for this event, yet you say before it was a revenge? What else would have been the cause for a revenge?
Apart from the fact that they bounced of one another and Eric was very arrogant and MR know it all better than anybody else. As far as we know his writings could all be for show. Have you never had a diary where you were ranting and another one for every day routine?
like I said I can relate a lot with Dylan mainly. I went through the phase when I started to dress in black clothes/gothic music/heavy make up just so I push the others away, so I withdrew myself from the whole 'normal' community of the school because I have felt like that was the best way to describe myself.. Actually to this day I much rather be more withdrawn.

You make a lot of good points.

I do think that revenge played a part. However, there were other circumstances that also led to the shooting. It's normal to be angry, even enraged, for a time and then move on. Eric(mostly) and Dylan planned for the better part of a year. They developed completely new skill sets and exploits to circumvent laws and regulations. The also documented everything very well, with the intent of leaving a manifesto behind and creating a legacy of their actions. These actions speak more towards psychopathy and obsessive behavior. There were more than a few very experienced mental health professional who agreed with that very diagnosis also.

TL;DR 1: Yes, bullying played a part but their ailing mental health and isolation finished the job.

I can see Eric maybe keeping a main diary, and a more intimate one for the darker stuff. I never kept one, so I can't really use personal experience as a reference. All I can say is that if something happened that was embarrassing or hurtful, I don't think I would wish to relive it by writing it down.

Lastly, I can relate to withdrawing from the mainstream as well. I think they also did that, and it was a major contributing factor to the shooting. They began to create a feedback loop that only intensified whatever feelings of isolation and dislike they might have had.

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I think a lot of the reason they plotted for so long was they were in the environment they hated and resented with a passion for so long.The idea was born out of their pain and rage and sadly as time went on they convinced themselves and each other that doing this was justified and worth dying for.

I definitely believe bullying played a role, but wasn't the sole cause as so much went into causing this perfect storm. A lot of Eric's journal was full of a false persons of him being a badass with his "Reb" persona so it's very possible he kept out a majority of these instances where he was bullied.