Frank DeAngelis?

Thoughts on him?

He should have been more aware of the bullying that was going on in the school and not let the jocks get away with everything.

I don't think Columbine was a worse school than every other. But let's face it, school is a miserable experience for many, many teenagers. DeAngelis doesn't appear willing to acknowledge that in his interview in The Columbine Killers. I agree with what CatherineM813 said, DeAngelis seems clueless.

There's a lot of debate right now about the whole "bullying" thing in schools. But I'd be interested to know what other people think the answer is? Do you think schools, as they are now, are a healthy place for your children?

I think they are so-so. I did get bullied A LOT in school and there wasn't anything much the school could do. Yes, they could move me to a different class, but, like most of the times that it did happen, they couldn't protect me from what happened outside of school be some people inside it.

Do you guys feel it was unfair of him not to allow any of Dylan and Eric's friends back to the school once it reopened? Like Chris, Nate and Brooks?

Yes!! I honestly don't believe they had anything to do with the shootings. But at least they got to graduate with their class. What a sad graduation that must have been though.

Jenn wrote:

Do you guys feel it was unfair of him not to allow any of Dylan and Eric's friends back to the school once it reopened? Like Chris, Nate and Brooks?

Yes. It is pretty much a further testament to the fact that people were/are lumped into categorizations they don't necessarily deserve within that school and community's "culture".

CatherineM813 wrote:

Yes!! I honestly don't believe they had anything to do with the shootings. But at least they got to graduate with their class. What a sad graduation that must have been though.

I entirely agree; it must have been a horribly sad graduation ceremony.

You bring up an excellent point about people being lumped into categories that aren't apart of the school and the community's culture even though it shouldn't be that way.

In the Basement Tapes, E/D discussed and predicted graudation would most likely be a very sad event with many people crying. I cant even begin to imagine how devastating it must have been on those four families who were looking forward to that day for years and it never came. And I know people might not agree but I do think Mr. DeAngelis should have mentioned Eric and Dylan's with Lauren and Isaiah. Even though they did a horrible thing they were still part of the Class of 99.

Jenn wrote:

Do you guys feel it was unfair of him not to allow any of Dylan and Eric's friends back to the school once it reopened? Like Chris, Nate and Brooks?

I don't think it was fair, but I think in the end it may have been the best thing for them. School would have been hell for them if they had gone back. Whether DeAngelis took that into consideration or not, who knows? He has always struck me as a very proud man who believes that appearances are everything, although that is purely based on media and public statements.

I really wish we would hear more from Chris, Nate and some of the others. Brooks has spoken pretty frequently. They don't even have to talk specifically about Eric and Dylan. I would be happy to hear about the treatment they received from the community and police after 4/20, how it's affected them personally even now, etc. Of course, if they did want to talk about Eric and Dylan, I'd gladly listen to that too.

tfsa47090 wrote:

Jenn wrote:

Do you guys feel it was unfair of him not to allow any of Dylan and Eric's friends back to the school once it reopened? Like Chris, Nate and Brooks?

Yes. It is pretty much a further testament to the fact that people were/are lumped into categorizations they don't necessarily deserve within that school and community's "culture".

CatherineM813 wrote:

Yes!! I honestly don't believe they had anything to do with the shootings. But at least they got to graduate with their class. What a sad graduation that must have been though.

I entirely agree; it must have been a horribly sad graduation ceremony.

This is off topic, but I've sent you a PM. Please let me know your decision, either way.

I hope this doesn't sound off topic, but I attended a thing called "Challenge Day." (it was really cheesy.) At Columbine in November, and I was paired with Mr.De and the topic was what are you thankful for. He kept talking about how much he loves Columbine and how proud he is that he runs it. I feel like he definitely made a lot of mistakes, and now he looks back on it and realizes how bad it really was, and at one point he said "I wish I could have been there for those students 14 years ago." He really has gotten Columbines shit together since the 90's though.

DeAngelis should have been a lot more aware that his school provided a toxic environment for all his students. Then again, I wonder how involved he really was in the everyday events at Columbine and how aware he was about everything that was going on. At my high school, we rarely saw our principal and solved everything with our teachers and guidance counsellors in case of trouble. I'm not sure if ours was ever aware of the weird environment surrounding the class I was in at the time, or of the huge extent of bullying that happened inbetween classes and during breaks. If DeAngelis distanced himself from the ins-and-outs at the school, too, then I can imagine that he wasn't there for his students the way he should've been.

DeAngelis is a liar. I don't trust him at all. I wonder what E/D thought of him. They never mention him.

-eulogy- wrote:

DeAngelis is a liar. I don't trust him at all. I wonder what E/D thought of him. They never mention him.

What makes you think that he's a liar? (not trying to be bitchy, but just wondering.)

Yeah. He can be a cool dude but sometimes he can be a douche.

I think he's a good person, but a gutless coward and out of touch school apparatchik as far as his tenure during that unfortunate period goes. I'm surprised he didn't get more heat from angry parents after the shooting. I mean, this was his school, this happened under his watch, there was a toxic environment that contributed to this tragedy. He gives these speeches about unity and healing after 4/20 which is bollocks in part considering the fact that some students committed suicide or became drug addicts after going through all that, and some repugnant alumni still breathe in this world completely guilt free while some really nice kids had their dreams and lives cut short. My 2 cents on this figure.

My opinion of him is not favorable. He is an outright liar on what happened that day. His description of events do not fit the evidence and he has given many interviews where he puts himself into a larger role that day. I do not care for that

As far as the books go, I'd say Cullen likes him way too much, Ralph Larkin is probably a bit smarmy about him ("unimpressive" was the word he used, I think) and Brooks Brown told what I suspect to be a whopper about him--that he walked up to DeAngelis at the graduation ceremony and accused him flat out of ignoring the culture of cruelty going on at the school, and told him off. I don't know if I dislike Brooks the way some people here do, but if I had to point to one thing he said that seems like an embellishment, it's that.

StinkyOldGrapes wrote:

I don't think Columbine was a worse school than every other. But let's face it, school is a miserable experience for many, many teenagers. DeAngelis doesn't appear willing to acknowledge that in his interview in The Columbine Killers. I agree with what CatherineM813 said, DeAngelis seems clueless.

There's a lot of debate right now about the whole "bullying" thing in schools. But I'd be interested to know what other people think the answer is? Do you think schools, as they are now, are a healthy place for your children?

good post.

Bullying is unfortunately a part of our society and especially in the case of young children and young adults. Along with many other disgusting facets in our world, bullying will not be going away.

Bullying also can have long lasting affects beyond what some people can understand.

It's embarrassing but I am well out of HS and feel the affects of what I went through now and in how I interact with people.

I can see how bullying can push some people to the edge, there can be a lot of 'little" things that build on a persons psyche.

Not a big fan of how he swept the accusations of bullying under the rug after the shooting. Put his fingers in his ears and la la la'd while heaps of students were complaining about the culture there. However, much respect for staying at the school for as long as he did. Seems like most of the student body over the years respected him, and having him there for another fifteen or so years after the event would have been great for their morale.

A few quotes from Regina Huerter's report:

• "In spring of 1998, Coach Lowry called a meeting of the football team. He said he had received a letter from the district - they weren't bringing enough people to the games to use the larger Jeffco stadium - so they were going to have to use Trail Blazer stadium. Coach Lowry stated that he wanted all team members to treat everyone with respect in order to increase attendance. It was reported that several students had gone to Lowry questioning why they should attend the games when members of the football team were harassing students."
  
  
• "There were several accounts of physical "assaults" involving shoving, pushing and throwing items. Other assaults of a more serious nature were also reported. Those involved being "thrown" or "slammed" against lockers and walls and body "twisters" (a form of pinching and twisting the skin). Other forms of bullying included cutting in line, and a variety of verbal insults. The verbal assaults were the most common and involved the use of derogatory terms (ie faggot)."
  
  
• "Finally, the victim told his parents he wanted out of school. At that point, the dad called the school board and that night remembers getting a call from Assistant Principal Pat Patrick. The next morning a meeting was held with Dad, his son, the AP, Principal and the bully. During this meeting they talked and resolved the issue. The solution given by Mr. DeAngelis was to have the two boys stay away from each other. Dad disagreed. He wanted the two to acknowledge each other and say hello as if they meant it. This was decided on. There were no further issues." (lazy principal)
  
  
• "A son reported to his father what he felt was extreme rough play in a PE class. The class was filled with a group of soccer players, who, according to the student, were ganging up on him. The son told his parents he didn't want to go back to school. After hearing this, Dad called the school and had a meeting with Coach Place (Dean of Students at the time), Brad Butts (counselor), and Peter Horvath. Pete Horvath (teacher of the class and also the soccer coach) said he would talk to the players and make sure it wouldn't happen again. From the parent's and student's perspective, nothing changed. They didn't hear back from Mr. Butts or anyone else."
  
  
• "Parents reported an incident where two weeks into the 1997-98 school year, their son, a senior, came home and said, "Dad, I'm not going back." He reported 4 or 5 football players shoving and pushing him, harassing him verbally and following him to his car. He was scared. Dad placed calls to Andy Lowry, Brad Butts, and Frank DeAngelis but no one answered their phone. Dad left messages for each person. The family didn't receive a call back until the end of October, about six weeks later, from Mr. Lowry. Dad was out of town at the time so Mom took the call. Mom reports that Mr. Lowry was very short and rude on the phone. The family immediately pulled their son out of Columbine and enrolled him in Heritage, where he did well. The son reports that, to this day, he won't cross over Pierce Street."
  

And from this excellent article written by a former student:

• "Have you watched that video with Eric Veik where jocks push Eric with an elbow strike while walking and Eric bites the bullet? I had a similar incident, too. I was a sophomore, and the girl was a senior, she beat me with her elbow while passing by with her friends."
  
  
• "In her first few weeks at Columbine, Sowder ditched class several times, resulting in a parent conference and restrictions imposed on her ability to leave campus during the day. But when she tried to complain to teachers about harassment by jocks, she was told, "Deal with it", she says."
  
  
• "One day last fall, Sowder was called to the dean's office after she was late to one class. "He asked me what I think about all day at school," Sowder says, "so I told him I thought about blowing up the school. The school made me that angry. He told me I was suspended for a day and called my mom." [...] So Melissa reacted to bullying, asked for help, made an open angry remark to a teacher - and immediately was put by DeAngelis and his staff into the list of those to be punished."" (Harris and Klebold were not the only ones wishing to blow up the school!!!!!!!!!)
  

DeAngelis was sued by students injured in the shooting (Castaldo and Ruegsegger), and he managed to escape thanks to "immunity" and the fact that "Colorado's common law imposes no duty to protect others from harm by third parties" (and other more complex legal issues)... He did not resign after the shooting and now he talks a lot about the aftermath of school shootings, never or rarely about what happened before and led to the shootings. According to him, his former students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were Nazis, and so maybe Melissa Sowder, and any question is settled.

I didn't find here a thread dedicated to DeAngelis' trials, but the first court decision seems to show that American society has no intention of putting an end to the massacre.

I've long said DeAngelis is just scum.
In our personal lives, we all have things we won't do. That's why nobody should buy his book.

DeAngelis... in my opinion he is too big for his damn boots. He also takes advantage of the spotlight this case gave him.

He is a sad little man who found himself in the middle of events too big for him to handle. I do not think is fair to blame him for the shooting.

Having said that, the witness testimony gives an impression that he failed to make CHS a safe and welcoming school where academic achievement is the main goal.
He did not create a culture of law and order. 98 jocks routinely picked on and attacked numerous kids and nobody put a stop to that. Various cliques formed and started all sorts of mayhem and violence in the halls and in the cafeteria and nobody stopped them. There was open antisemitism and racism: Isaiah suffered from racial slurs, jewish kids suffered from violence and humiliation, Eric was running around during bowling class shouting 'Heil Hitler' and nobody put a stop to that either.

So all in all, I do not feel like DeAngelis was evil. More like lazy and not caring enough about what happens under his watch. He is not to blame for the shooting, but he is to blame in a large part for making 90s CHS such an unfriendly, chaotic, intolerant and violent place.

Sabratha wrote:

More like lazy and not caring enough about what happens under his watch. He is not to blame for the shooting, but he is to blame in a large part for making 90s CHS such an unfriendly, chaotic, intolerant and violent place.

• "Some of the effect of bullying that have been observed are: (1) It is estimated that 160,000 children skip school every day because of fear of attack or intimidation by other students (2) Ninety percent of 4th through 8th graders report being victims of bullying. (3) 1 in 7 students in Grades K-12 is either a bully or a victim of bullying. Bullying statistics show that revenge is the strongest motivation for school shootings, and that harassment and bullying have been linked to 75% of school-shooting incidents. Eighty-seven percent of students said shootings are motivated by a desire to “get back at those who have hurt them”.
  
  According to studies by Yale University, victims of bullying are between 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide than non-victims. Suicide is the third leading cause of death for people aged 15-24 in the United States. A semi-annual survey on youth risk behavior by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in 2012 uncovered that approximately 1 in 6 high school students has seriously considered suicide, and 1 in 12 has attempted it. Furthermore, evidence indicates a strong association between bullying and suicide, as suggested by recent bullying-related suicide deaths." (Trauma experience of youngsters and Teens: A key issue in suicidal behavior among victims of bullying?)
  

The same institutions which reach those conclusions also produce that kind of speech:

• "So, if bullying doesn’t directly cause suicide, what do we know about how bullying and suicide are related?" (CDC)
  

But there is no doubt that in most of the cases where bullying and suicide are related, it is by a causal relation. And more, in some cases:

• "Rebecca Ann Sedwick (2000–2013), age 12, was an American middle school student who died of suicide by jumping from a concrete silo tower on September 9, 2013, due to bullying. Sedwick was a seventh grader at Crystal Lake Middle School in Lakeland, Florida. Sedwick was cyberbullied and bullied in person for one and a half years. Two girls, ages 14 and 12, encouraged others to fight Sedwick, and sent her electronic messages encouraging her to commit suicide. In November 2012, her mother Tricia said that, "she came home near tears every day"." (Wiki)
  
  
• "A 17-year-old student committed suicide after a bully said, "Why don't you go home and shoot yourself? No one would miss you," in front of other students and the teacher, the boy's parents claim in a federal lawsuit." (Eric Mohat's suicide)
  

So, the captain led his ship onto the rocks, but he is not to blame for his sunken ship, only Archimedes is? We can find the same reluctance to go through and reach the conclusions in Regina Huerter's report. This reluctance seems to be widely shared. But DeAngelis should be accountable for his deficiencies, like any other professional. No need to call him "evil".

Saint George wrote:

Sabratha wrote:

More like lazy and not caring enough about what happens under his watch. He is not to blame for the shooting, but he is to blame in a large part for making 90s CHS such an unfriendly, chaotic, intolerant and violent place.

• "Some of the effect of bullying that have been observed are: (1) It is estimated that 160,000 children skip school every day because of fear of attack or intimidation by other students (2) Ninety percent of 4th through 8th graders report being victims of bullying. (3) 1 in 7 students in Grades K-12 is either a bully or a victim of bullying. Bullying statistics show that revenge is the strongest motivation for school shootings, and that harassment and bullying have been linked to 75% of school-shooting incidents. Eighty-seven percent of students said shootings are motivated by a desire to “get back at those who have hurt them”.
  
  According to studies by Yale University, victims of bullying are between 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide than non-victims. Suicide is the third leading cause of death for people aged 15-24 in the United States. A semi-annual survey on youth risk behavior by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in 2012 uncovered that approximately 1 in 6 high school students has seriously considered suicide, and 1 in 12 has attempted it. Furthermore, evidence indicates a strong association between bullying and suicide, as suggested by recent bullying-related suicide deaths." (Trauma experience of youngsters and Teens: A key issue in suicidal behavior among victims of bullying?)
  

The same institutions which reach those conclusions also produce that kind of speech:

• "So, if bullying doesn’t directly cause suicide, what do we know about how bullying and suicide are related?" (CDC)
  

But there is no doubt that in most of the cases where bullying and suicide are related, it is by a causal relation. And more, in some cases:

• "Rebecca Ann Sedwick (2000–2013), age 12, was an American middle school student who died of suicide by jumping from a concrete silo tower on September 9, 2013, due to bullying. Sedwick was a seventh grader at Crystal Lake Middle School in Lakeland, Florida. Sedwick was cyberbullied and bullied in person for one and a half years. Two girls, ages 14 and 12, encouraged others to fight Sedwick, and sent her electronic messages encouraging her to commit suicide. In November 2012, her mother Tricia said that, "she came home near tears every day"." (Wiki)
  
  
• "A 17-year-old student committed suicide after a bully said, "Why don't you go home and shoot yourself? No one would miss you," in front of other students and the teacher, the boy's parents claim in a federal lawsuit." (Eric Mohat's suicide)
  

So, the captain led his ship onto the rocks, but he is not to blame for his sunken ship, only Archimedes is? We can find the same reluctance to go through and reach the conclusions in Regina Huerter's report. This reluctance seems to be widely shared. But DeAngelis should be accountable for his deficiencies, like any other professional. No need to call him "evil".

Well, I can answer following the ship metaphor:

I do not think he is to blame for the fact that a hurricane came from the blue and struck his ship.
He is to blame for the fact that the ship was already in poor condition and the crew were lazy, sloppy, undisciplined and unruly even before the hurricane struck. He could not have saved the ship from the hurricane, but the investigation that happened as a result of the hurricane exposed all the shortcomings of the way he ran the ship.


Speaking without the metaphor: He allowed a lot of racism, violence and bullying happen and it was a chronic thing, especially in 97/98. He did not press his staff and teachers to fix it. He was lax and lazy, so were his subordinates. It made CHS a shitty place to be a student. But CHS being a shitty place is not what caused Harris and Klebold to go on a killing spree.

It very well might have caused them to pick CHS as the scene of that spree, rather than say a theatre or a shopping mall. It might have contributed to Harris and Klebold seeing the world as a shitty place. But that was not the factor that distinguished them for all the other students who saw CHS as a world of shit.

Lots of teenagers become depressed and/or commit suicide. But mass murder requires something more than that to cause it.

Sabratha wrote:

It very well might have caused them to pick CHS as the scene of that spree, rather than say a theatre or a shopping mall. It  might have contributed to Harris and Klebold seeing the world as a shitty place. But that was not the factor that distinguished them for all the other students who saw CHS as a world of shit.

Lots of teenagers become depressed and/or commit suicide. But mass murder requires something more than that to cause it.

Lots of bullied teenagers commit suicide without taking any toll on the bullies, without a fight, they just suffer social pressure until death. Some of them take revenge: "Bullying statistics show that revenge is the strongest motivation for school shootings, and that harassment and bullying have been linked to 75% of school-shooting incidents. Eighty-seven percent of students said shootings are motivated by a desire to 'get back at those who have hurt them'." In the case of Papuan tribes, persecuted and cornered victims sometimes struggle in a last stand, most often the group elects a harmless child as a victim, but sometimes, when they pick an adult, they risk blows back and wounds... The structure of social violence against an individual, of all versus one, is neither new nor unknown. We have numerous examples of bullying at school, ritual harassment, lynching, sacrifice, they all share common aspects, common outcomes. The same with school shootings, most of the victims die without harming the bullies, but because of the widespread of fire arms in the US, sometimes the bullied strike back. When being violent, communities feel entitled, they find justifications (social violence is another social construct), they moralize and legalize their violence, and they don't think they arbitrary torture an innocent victim, they think they exercise "justice". It was noted by Ralph Larkin:

• "the predators perceived themselves as defending the moral order of the school. They perceived themselves as acting with the will of the majority of the students. The mere presence of the outcast students was judged to be a blot on the pristine nature of Columbine High School, which gave them the right to harass and humiliate them" (Comprehending Columbine)
  

But fire arms and automatic guns bring back all vs one violence to one vs one violence... And it's very disturbing: it reveals the violence of social violence, the ugliness of violence just in the absolute. If one hits one, everybody expect to see a hit back. When all hit one, nobody expect a hit back but it does not change the nature of violence. We think that being violent in group is not violence: most often we don't take any risk of being harmed, we are comfortable in the warmth of the herd, hiding there our individual responsibility, all together we construct justifications like defense of moral order, justice, and so on. We pile up our individual violences and make it a big nice irresistible and invulnerable social violence that we apply to an individual kid... We punch him to a pulp... But wait, for once, our victim came back with an automatic gun... That one didn't follow the rules, that psychopath, he didn't die silently like the previous ones, like Adriana Kuch, Sladjana Vidovic, Ty Smalley, Rebecca Sedwick, Tyler Long, Phoebe Prince, Eric Mohat and all the others!  What sickness drove him to defend himself?

You say that "mass murder requires something more than that to cause it", but torturing and pushing an innocent kid to suicide, what does it require? On August 6th, 1945, Thomas Ferebee dropped a nuclear bomb on the city of Hiroshima, killing in a second from 70,000 to 140,000 persons, what did it require? Was his mental health ever questioned?

The violence of a bullied kid coming back with an automatic gun to the bullies who pushed him to suicide is not different from the violence of the bullies: it is the same violence, there's absolutely no difference. The violence of the retaliating bullied is the perfect reflection of the bullies' violence. And this is what we don't want to understand.

Saint George wrote:

Lots of bullied teenagers commit suicide without taking any toll on the bullies, without a fight, they just suffer social pressure until death.

Very true.

Saint George wrote:

Some of them take revenge (...) sometimes the bullied strike back.

Sure, no argument there. But don't those bullied shooters go after the bullies trying to kill or wound them? I don't see the connection to Columbine here.

Saint George wrote:

On August 6th, 1945, Thomas Ferebee dropped a nuclear bomb on the city of Hiroshima, killing in a second from 70,000 to 140,000 persons, what did it require? Was his mental health ever questioned?

Interesting question, but it has nothing to do with columbine, Eric or Dylan. Let's first wrap up the columbine discussion here and we can have a separate thread about the psychology of warfare.

Saint George wrote:

The violence of a bullied kid coming back with an automatic gun to the bullies who pushed him to suicide is not different from the violence of the bullies: it is the same violence, there's absolutely no difference. The violence of the retaliating bullied is the perfect reflection of the bullies' violence.

Nether Eric nor Dylan on April 20th 1999 retaliated against bullies. Out of the 13 people they killed, 12 were not involved in bullying. The last one is a disputed case. I'll list it all below.

Saint George wrote:

What sickness drove him to defend himself?

He never did defend himself. That's the point.
Not only did he kill kids who did him no harm, he killed kids he didn't even know at all.

Saint George wrote:

You say that "mass murder requires something more than that to cause it"

Yes. Because mass murder means killing random people that you have no emotional connection to whatsoever (either negative nor positive). Psychologically, that is VERY different from killing your abuser, your child, your spouse, your bully etc.

Apples and Oranges.

Saint George wrote:

(...) but torturing and pushing an innocent kid to suicide, what does it require?

Apples and Oranges. Bullying and mass murder have very different mechanisms behind them.

I think you have an impression that I am trying to justify bullying or deny the destructive impact it has on victims. Nothining could be furtehr from the truth.

What I am saying is that Klebold or Harris did not aim their attack at bullies. They shot at everyone they coulkd see. Their motivation likewise was not a revenge on bullies, it was aimed much wider - at the regulated 'day-to-day' mundane society they lived in. I will prove this point at the end of this post with a quote from Eric.

Saint George wrote:

"Bullying statistics show that revenge is the strongest motivation for school shootings, and that harassment and bullying have been linked to 75% of school-shooting incidents. Eighty-seven percent of students said shootings are motivated by a desire to 'get back at those who have hurt them'."

First, I'd like to see the source and check what sort of data was there.
Cause at first glance, it seems that they use "school shooting incidents" to mean something quite different than what most of us here on the forums mean when we write "School shooting".

Again: I have to see the numbers and data first to be sure. But without said data, I will prroceed to make an educated guess - The 'school shooting indcidents' mentioned include cases of a kid brining the gun to shool, shooting to terorize, but not woulding anyone. Or instances of a kid bringing a gun to school and shooting one specific bully in the kneecap etc.

These things happen. But that was not what happened at Columbine. Columbine was a mass spree shooting and an even larger failed attempted at a bombing.

The majority of targets were people neither Eric nor Dylan knew well. Many they did not know at all (like the two special needs students they killed in the library)
The bombing attempt was aimed at killing most, if not all, the kids in the library. That was several hundred people, both genders from freshman to seniors. That alone means that Eric and Dylan weren't able to tell most of them from Jesus.

If Colmbine were to be a case of "revenge on bullies", then I would expect E&D to actually shoot and kill people who were actual buillies that they knew. Not to go after all those random kids they didn't even know at all.




Let's make a short detour and talk about the victims and their relation to E&D.

• Scott:
  

Of all the 13 kids killed, Eric and Dylan had a clear connection to just one: Rachel Scott was in the same theatre group where Dylan was the sound man for. It is unclear how well they kew each other. They were both smokers, so they prolly might have talked at the plays during smoke brakes etc. But she was half his size, not a jock. There's no evidence of her being someone who taunted or bullied even kids her own size, let alone some like Dylan.

• Savage and Todd:
  

During the whole of the shooting, Eric and Dylan were able to identify only two kids by name - John Savage and Evan Todd. And those were the two kids they decided not to shoot and kill. Evan had a white hat and was a jock by the way. Dylan cussed him out, aimed a gun at him and then decided not to shoot him.
At a minimum, this means that Todd was not a primary target, despite being a jock.

• Kechter and Shoels:
  

Among the 13 kids killed, only two were athletes: Kechter and Shoels.

Shoels was not part of the 'cool crowd' because he was black. There's conflicting testimony if Shoels ever had a previous altercation with Dylan or not. But at least that is something that we need to take into account as a possible motive. Neither Eric nor Dylan identified him by name during the shooting. It does seem like he clearly drew Dylan's attention more than the other kids in the library and that Dylan specifically made an effort to confront and kill him.
We can speculate if this was because Dylan recognized him as an athlete, or just because Shoels happened to be the only black kid there and stuck out like a sore thumb.

I tend to suspect it was the latter, because they threw a lot of racist N-word comments at him. They never called him by name or referred to him as an athlete nor in any way indicated that they knew him. Unlike they did with Todd and Savage.

Kechter was also an athlete, but he was 2 years younger than Eric and Dylan. He would have been just a freshman during the infamous 97/98 school year and thus very unlikely to be much of a bully to them. Moreover he also was not part of the 'cool crowd' because he was a straight-A student who was primarily focused on science with sports being a side hobby. There's no reports of either Eric or Dylan having any altercations with him ever. By all evidence, they wouldn't even know him by name.
I personally feel like Kechter and Craig got shot just because they had the bad luck of hiding under the same table with the only black kid there.

Last but not least, Kechter and Shoels were not among the first victims of the shooting. By all evidence, Eric and Dylan didn't even knew that they would find Kechter and Shoels in the library to begin. Even if they knew, they couldn't be sure they would still be there several minutes into the shooting.
All in all: Kechter and Sheols were not specially picked intended targets, they just happened to end up being cornered in the library with the rest of the kids.

So long story short:
Out of the 13 victims, Eric and Dylan knew only two. Of those two, only Shoels was an athlete and someone who might have had violent bully-like interactions with them before. He was among the last kids being killed, the attack did not start with him. The fact that E&D managed to find and corner him in the first place was just luck, not something they planned for orr expected to happen.



CONCLUSION:

E&D do not go and shoot bullies or jocks at the locker room. They start to shoot outside and anyone they see and then proceed to kill a bunch of random kids including mentally challenged kids, freshmen and girls they never met. And the bomb they planted would have been even more indiscriminate.

Does not sound like a revenge against bullies to me. Not at all.


Neither Eric nor Dylan mentions being bullied in his journal. They mention a lot of things they hate and types of people that make them mad, but bullies and bullying are not among those things.

Eric actually writes exactly why he hates everyone and why he will try to kill anyone and everyone. Then 20/4 comes around and he goes out trying to do just that.

So if he writes what he does and why, then behaves in exactly the manner he said he would... I think we should take him for his word. At least in that aspect.

Eric is a bad writer. Bad punctuation, bad grammar.. He goes into weird rabbitoles.. He puts his motivation in the middle of his journal between various side-rants, sex-fantasies, comments about his friends, marine-fantasies and general whining. But he does write down his motivation there. So where does he do it? Here in these passages:

"(...) ever wonder why we go to school? besides getting a so called education. its not to obvious to most of you stupid fucks but for these who think a little more and deeper you should realize it. its societies way of turning all the young people into good little robots and factory workers thats why we sit in desks in rows and go by bell schedules, to get prepared for the real world cause "thats what its like". well god damit no it isnt! one thing that seperates us from other animals is the fact that we can carry on actual thoughts. so why don't we? people go on day by day. routine shit.
(...) drop all your beliefs and views and ideas that have been burned into your head and try to think about why your here. but I bet most of you fuckers cant even think that deep, so that is why you must die. how dare you think that I and you are part of the same species when we are sooooooo different. you arent human you are a Robot. you dont take advantage of your capabilites given to you at birth. you just drop them and hop onto the boat and headdown the stream of life with all the other fuckers of your type. well god damit I wont be a part of it! I have thought to much, realized to much, found out to much, and I am to self aware to just stop what I am thinking and go back to society because what I do and think isnt "right" or "morally accepted" NO, NO, NO GOD FUCKING DAMIT NO!I will sooner die than betray my own thoughts."

Taken in isolation and distilled from the side-rants and sex-fantasies, this passage is crystal clear. Explains why he wants to kill any and all people he can. Explains why he wants to die at the end.

Eric in his journal explains exactly why he did what he did. I say we should take him for his word here.

Sabratha, thanks for your attentive reading and comments.

Sabratha wrote:

Saint George wrote:

On August 6th, 1945, Thomas Ferebee dropped a nuclear bomb on the city of Hiroshima, killing in a second from 70,000 to 140,000 persons, what did it require? Was his mental health ever questioned?

Interesting question, but it has nothing to do with columbine, Eric or Dylan. Let's first wrap up the columbine discussion here and we can have a separate thread about the psychology of warfare.

Violence is violence whatever the circumstances and that's why Carl von Clausewitz could reduce war to a duel, because war is ultimately as in its principle two primates punching and biting and strangling each other to death. In the case of bullying, it's a clan of primates at war against one primate and tearing him to pieces, like in Pentheus' case and in the sparagmos rite (dismemberment rite):

Sabratha wrote:

Saint George wrote:

The violence of a bullied kid coming back with an automatic gun to the bullies who pushed him to suicide is not different from the violence of the bullies: it is the same violence, there's absolutely no difference. The violence of the retaliating bullied is the perfect reflection of the bullies' violence.

Nether Eric nor Dylan on April 20th 1999 retaliated against bullies. Out of the 13 people they killed, 12 were not involved in bullying. The last one is a disputed case. I'll list it all below.

They were bullied, bullying is a social violence, and the bullied struck back at the society: they shot into the pile... and they didn't miss the pile by the way. You believe they had to take revenge individually, but it was not interpersonal conflict, it was social violence, all vs one, and they shot at the all.

Sabratha wrote:

Saint George wrote:

;]What sickness drove him to defend himself?

He never did defend himself. That's the point.
Not only did he kill kids who did him no harm, he killed kids he didn't even know at all.

Of course, as always in bullying, lynching, sacrifice, they don't all know the victim, but they all need a death, they all want or agree with a death. The same at war, who knows the soldiers of the enemy army? Do you think that in the lynching mobs, they all know the one they hunt and kill?

Sabratha wrote:

Saint George wrote:

You say that "mass murder requires something more than that to cause it"

Yes. Because mass murder means killing random people that you have no emotional connection to whatsoever (either negative nor positive). Psychologically, that is VERY different from killing your abuser, your child, your spouse, your bully etc.

Same as above: you add arguments in favor of my explanation. When the mass wants to murder an individual, the members of the mass don't have to be connected to the individual by a personal history, but the mass wants or agrees with the killing of the individual... And when the individual defends himself against the mass, he aims at the mass. You think E&D shot at random, but they didn't, they shot at the society as a mass which wanted or agreed with their bullying.

Sabratha wrote:

Bullying and mass murder have very different mechanisms behind them.

Good luck with proving your affirmation. I mean if you want to prove that bullying requires more "emotional connection" than other violences. Bullies are attracted by objective differences that have nothing to do with "emotional connection": they can spot a new victim at 100 yards if the victim walks with a limp. Lame people, redhead, stutterers... The bullies can spot a victim by ear, without even having to see him... And the bullied just aim wide when striking back and shoots into the pile.

Sabratha wrote:

What I am saying is that Klebold or Harris did not aim their attack at bullies. They shot at everyone they coulkd see. Their motivation likewise was not a revenge on bullies, it was aimed much wider - at the regulated 'day-to-day' mundane society they lived in.

You miss how bullying is a social phenomenon: an individual who is victim of bullying, lynching, ritual harassment, sacrifice, is a victim of the whole community. E&D aimed "wide" and they were right on target.

They would have missed if they killed that girl who talked to Klebold but who was threatened by a jock and called a "fag lover". That girl was a kind of Saint George :

• "Another student, a female, reported talking to Dylan Klebold her freshman year (1997-98). After their conversation was over, one of the notorious bullies slammed her against the lockers and called her a "fag lover." Many students were in the area but no adults. She did not report this to the administration. When I asked her why, she said that everyone told her "it wouldn't do any good because they wouldn't do anything about it."" (Huerter)
  

Bullying is social violence and it's dynamic: it tends towards unanimity, it begins as a social phenomenon and the more it worsen, the more social it becomes. At the climax, in harassment and bullying rituals, and lynchings, there are no more individuals, they all melted in the group, just like Emma Gonzalez lost her individual identity... only remains a chimera, an aggregate of all the cowardice, fears, hatred, and focused on the bullied.

Sabratha wrote:

Saint George wrote:

"Bullying statistics show that revenge is the strongest motivation for school shootings, and that harassment and bullying have been linked to 75% of school-shooting incidents. Eighty-seven percent of students said shootings are motivated by a desire to 'get back at those who have hurt them'."

First, I'd like to see the source and check what sort of data was there.

I already cited the source: Source

Sabratha wrote:

If Colmbine were to be a case of "revenge on bullies", then I would expect E&D to actually shoot and kill people who were actual buillies that they knew. Not to go after all those random kids they didn't even know at all.

As Columbine was a case of  "revenge on bullies",  E&D went after all those random kids they didn't even know at all.

As I already said, bullying didn't emerge in the US in the second half of the XXth century, it dates from the dawn of times. There are countless records of societies bullying children, women, outcasts, strangers, animals, and the structure is always the same.

Sabratha wrote:

Let's make a short detour and talk about the victims and their relation to E&D.

But it's meaningless, it's like asking if the toro bravo who escaped the arena knew or had to know the few Spaniards he gored...

Sabratha wrote:

Eric in his journal explains exactly why he did what he did. I say we should take him for his word here.

It's a social construct mirroring the social construct of the bullies who "perceived themselves as defending the moral order of the school" (Larkin). You can't take all what they say for granted. Many affirmations have to be translated like Marcel Proust translated the "I want not" of the humiliated as "I can not". By the way, it's a very ancient wisdom:

Quote :

A Fox one day spied a beautiful bunch of ripe grapes hanging from a vine trained along the branches of a tree. The grapes seemed ready to burst with juice, and the Fox's mouth watered as he gazed longingly at them.

The bunch hung from a high branch, and the Fox had to jump for it. The first time he jumped he missed it by a long way. So he walked off a short distance and took a running leap at it, only to fall short once more. Again and again he tried, but in vain.

Now he sat down and looked at the grapes in disgust.

"What a fool I am," he said. "Here I am wearing myself out to get a bunch of sour grapes that are not worth gaping for."

And off he walked very, very scornfully.

There are many who pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach.

wrote Phaedra in the 7th-6th century BC. And the tale was of probable Sumer origin. The humiliated is reluctant to speak about his humiliation, even to himself. Individuals like Cho Seung-Hui are extremely rare and they are the breeding ground of great writers.

Sabratha wrote:

But he does write down his motivation there. So where does he do it? Here in these passages:

[...]"I wont be a part of it!"[...]

Taken in isolation and distilled from the side-rants and sex-fantasies, this passage is crystal clear. Explains why he wants to kill any and all people he can. Explains why he wants to die at the end.

Eric in his journal explains exactly why he did what he did. I say we should take him for his word here.

There Eric is just talking like the fox of Phaedra, his "I wont be a part of it!" needs to be translated according to Phaedra's and Marcel Proust's* knowledge of humiliation... And the translation, you can read it under the pen of Cho Seung-Hui:

"Oh the happiness I could have had mingling among you hedonists, being counted as one of you"

Do you begin to understand?

I have immense pity for all the bullied (also for the bullies), but the tragedy of Cho Seung-Hui, it's different, it's truly the depths of waste and sadness. Really I'm so sad for Cho Seung-Hui, he could have been such a great writer.

So "I wont be a part of it!" is not the motivation, it is not, in any way. The motivation is "I want to be part of it but I can't be part of it" and because "They don't let me be part of it"... Only Cho Seung-Hui is truly "crystal clear" with his "Oh the happiness I could have had mingling among you hedonists, being counted as one of you". Eric on his side, was writing a construct, the same kind of construct among the jocks "who perceived themselves as defending the moral order of the school". The same with "I am to self aware to go back to society" which is another construct because anyway he was not accepted in society, he was not invited. Here you see how Cho Seung-Hui was well above the students of Columbine who were building fake differences and awkwardly trying to justify their violence, Cho Seung-Hui identified himself with his bullies... he was an inch close to mercy.



* And many others like Cervantes, Dostoyevsky, Mishima, Stendhal, Flaubert, Gombrowicz...

Saint George wrote:

I already cited the source

Thank you, I must have missed it previously.
However, I need to point out that the Pakistani document you linked to sucks (not you, just the authors of the document). Let me explain why:
When they make the claim "that harassment and bullying have been linked to 75% of school-shooting incidents", they refer to Danice K. Eaton's "Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance --- United States, 2009, Surveillance Summaries, June 4, 2010 / 59(SS05);1-142" as the source of that information in their footnote:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Unlucky for these Pakistanis, I found the whole of Eaton's report online here:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Spoiler alert! Eaton's report does not mention school shootings even once, let alone making some conneection to bullying.

The closest things that the Eaton's report mentions are:

• "Carried a Weapon on School Property" - quote: 'Nationwide, 5.6% of students had carried a weapon (e.g., a gun, knife, or club) on school property on at least 1 day during the 30 days before the survey' (...)
  
  
• Threatened or Injured with a Weapon on School Property - During the 12 months before the survey, 7.7% of students nationwide had been threatened or injured with a weapon (e.g., a gun, knife, or club) on school property one or more times (...)
  
• Bullied on School Property - Nationwide, 19.9% of students had been bullied on school property during the 12 months before the survey
  

That's it. No mentions of shootings or killings, nor a link between them and bullying. You can read the Eaton report yourself in the link. The Pakistanis have either messed up their sources and footnotes completely, or are deliberately lying in the hopes that nobody will go to their original cited sources and check them.

Unfortunately for them, I have done just that  

That is why peer-reviews are so darn important.

BTW: I'm not trying to bash you, I'm bashing the people behind the Pakistani article you cited. Please do not treat that personally.

Saint George wrote:

... Only Cho Seung-Hui is truly "crystal clear" with his "Oh the happiness I could have had mingling among you hedonists, being counted as one of you".

I would not mix Cho into this, as Cho had a serious developmental disorder and had psychotic episodes. He really was trapped and was not able to escape from that hell which was his own. Eric and Dylan were a totally different story.

Saint George wrote:

here Eric is just talking like the fox of Phaedra, his "I wont be a part of it!" needs to be translated according to Phaedra's and Marcel Proust's* knowledge of humiliation...
(...) You can't take all what they say for granted. Many affirmations have to be translated like Marcel Proust translated the "I want not" of the humiliated as "I can not".

I do not buy that sort of 'reverse psychology'. That road leads to conclusions like:

• The fact that they kill random kids instead of jocks and bullies is the best proof that they were taking revenge against bullies
  
• The fact that they kill themselves inside CHS weeks before graduation is the best proof that they were trying to get away from CHS.
  
• The fact that Eric wanted to join the marines who are infamous for institutionalized hazing and bullying of their members is is the best proof that he hated bullying.
  
• The fact that they never write about bullying is the best proof that bullying was the main reason behind the shooting.
  
• The fact that the bullies of 98 already graduated the year before is the best proof that E&D were taking revenge against them in 99.
  

I don't buy that. You are in a sense saying that the lack of evidence simply means that the evidence we have needs to be reinterpreted to change its meaning entirely, so that it again points to the same conclusion you wanted to reach.

I will rather just take the evidence as it is and see if it fits.

Eric's writings match perfectly his later actions during the shooting. He writes that he hates blacks and they kill a black kid. He writes that he hates 'retards', they kill mentally challenged students. He writes that he will sooner die than beetray his beliefs and be a "good little robot and factory worker (...) hopping onto the boat and down the stream of life with all the other fuckers", then he kills himself.

I do not believe Eric because I trust him. I believe Eric, because he backs up his words with his actions. The facts match what he writes.

Saint George wrote:

Do you begin to understand?

I have immense pity for all the bullied (also for the bullies), but the tragedy of Cho Seung-Hui, it's different, it's truly the depths of waste and sadness.

I do begin to understand. I feel like you have had some sort of personal experiences that made you sensitive to the plight of the bullied. But I think that makes you project bullying as an experience and a motive onto Eric and Dylan, even if their actions and words do not support that conclusion.

Wanting revenge is a logical, sane and often healthy reaction to bullying. But that is not what Eric and Dylan did.

They make the attack a year after Hoffschneider and the bullies of 98 had graduated. They make the attack just weeks before their own graduation, when they would be free of CHS and all its BS forever. They kill mentally handicapped kids that were in no way part of any "lynch mob" and did neither approve of, participate in, nor really even understand the process of bullying in CHS.

Last but not least: Both E&D express peculiar reasons behind their attack. Dylan is mystical and vague, so people and argue and interpret him all day. But Eric is straightforward and clear.  

Saint George wrote:

So "I wont be a part of it!" is not the motivation, it is not, in any way.

We entirely disagree here. For Eric that is exactly his motivation. There is one thing he fears and hates more than anything else - and that is to lead a normal, 9-to-5-grind, mundane, boring-ass-life "like a good little robot".

He blames his society (or maybe even all of humanity) for creating circumstances in which almost everyone is forced into such a boring existeence. Suicide is his way to avoid it, homicide is his way of sending a final "f-you" to the society he leaves behind.

Saint George wrote:

The motivation is "I want to be part of it but I can't be part of it" and because "They don't let me be part of it"

Well, all it took for E&D to be a part of it is just sit on their arses and do nothing for the next few weeks and then graduate. There was absolutely nothing to prevent them from doing so, except their own homicidal and suicidal plans.

Saint George wrote:

And many others like (...) Mishima

Here is where we agree. Eric's suicide and motivations for it are in fact similar to Yukio's motivations in a way. They arrive at those from entirely different points in their life and bullying seems to have not been a big factor for either of them. The disdain for the boring, pointless, 'mercantile-industrial' society and life around them was that big factor.

In a sense, Mishima and Harris both decided to 'opt out'. That was their reason for what they did.

Sabratha wrote:

The Pakistanis have either messed up their sources and footnotes completely, or are deliberately lying in the hopes that nobody will go to their original cited sources and check them.

Unfortunately for them, I have done just that

Thanks, they probably messed with the footnotes, but now you have to follow through and check if 3/4 of school shooters were bullied.  

Sabratha wrote:

Saint George wrote:

... Only Cho Seung-Hui is truly "crystal clear" with his "Oh the happiness I could have had mingling among you hedonists, being counted as one of you".

I would not mix Cho into this, as Cho had a serious developmental disorder and had psychotic episodes. He really was trapped and was not able to escape from that hell which was his own. Eric and Dylan were a totally different story.

The basics are not different: students who were bullied took revenge and left writings behind. And Cho and Dylan were intellectually gifted.

Sabratha wrote:

I don't buy that. You are in a sense saying that the lack of evidence simply means that the evidence we have needs to be reinterpreted to change its meaning entirely, so that it again points to the same conclusion you wanted to reach.

I will rather just take the evidence as it is and see if it fits.

But then you just have to stop writing about people who were humiliated as you refuse to consider humiliation, shame, resentment: you arbitrarily erase a whole section of reality. Humiliation, shame, resentment are facts and evidence, they have to be considered, and more than ever in the case of bloody revenge.

Sabratha wrote:

I feel like you have had some sort of personal experiences that made you sensitive to the plight of the bullied. But I think that makes you project bullying as an experience and a motive onto Eric and Dylan, even if their actions and words do not support that conclusion.

You don't have any idea of who I am, but obviously you ignore that there is an abundant literature exploring and disclosing all aspects and depths of the experience of social persecution. And people can care for the weak and the victims, it happens... no need to question personal backgrounds. Pity is not an extravagance.

But if you want to go on that ground, we have to conclude that you were a bully yourself and try to minor and avoid accountability. I had once such a conversation with a school supervisor who told me that he didn't really care about bullying - that is to say he didn't bother to see it when it happened - because he was himself a bully when he was a kid. The man in charge of discipline and school peace was a former bully... can you imagine the fate of the victims of bullying in that school? Fortunately we had a good relationship and he totally changed his behavior, and began to care about harassment in the school. But he had to go through a little personal revolution, and admit that he wasn't that clean. He went from a comfortable denial to awareness.

Saint George wrote:

Thanks, they probably messed with the footnotes, but now you have to follow through and check if 3/4 of school shooters were bullied.  

That's what made me instantly suspect that the Pakistani article is pulling data out of their arse.
Turns out I was right. Incidentally, "being right" happens to be my default state  

Consistently over the last two decades a huge proportion of incidents of firearm use and intimidation with a firearm on school property in the US have been 'gangland' style events related to drugs etc. Basically an extension of the crime that takes place outside of school

I would expect that individual "kid shoots bully/disliked teacher in the knee" incidents would also strongly outnumber spree killings. Columbine-style spree killings are an outlier as far as school violence is concerned.

Saint George wrote:

The basics are not different: students who were bullied took revenge and left writings behind. And Cho and Dylan were intellectually gifted.

Cho had a long history of mental ilness. He was sent for psychiatric evaluation due to depression, then again after his parents turned in stating that they fear a suicide attempt. Again, after a fellow student reported that he expressed suicidal desires. He has been sent for psychiatric evaluation in 2005 after having molested a female student. Finally last time because of the two theatre plays he wrote.
Throuought his life he was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder, selective mutism, depression.. his parents repeatedy sought more therapy for him.
While none of his medical records incldue information about him suffering from psychotic episodes, the writings and the video he made indicates that he very likely did, just nobody managed to diagnose him in time.

With that sort of mental ilness, bullying was pretty much the least of his problems. And don't get me wrong: He surely was bullied, especiually in middle school. By all evidence, far more than Eric or Dylan ever were. Also, unlike Eric and Dylan he was very asocial, never had close friends or a group of people he hanged out with.

I'd say the basics are very different. Cho is similar to Lanza and Michael Carneal, not so much to Eric or Dylan.

Saint George wrote:

but obviously you ignore that there is an abundant literature exploring and disclosing all aspects and depths of the experience of social persecution.

Sure. There's school shooting that happened because of harassment. I do not deny that.
Asa Coon case in point.

But there's abundant evidence for it in Asa's case. There's no evidence in E&D's case. In fact there's a lot of evidence to the contrary.

Saint George wrote:

But then you just have to stop writing about people who were humiliated as you refuse to consider humiliation, shame, resentment: you arbitrarily erase a whole section of reality. Humiliation, shame, resentment are facts and evidence, they have to be considered, and more than ever in the case of bloody revenge.

I do consider humiliation, shame, resentment as a possible motive. In the case of some shooters like Gang Lu or Asa Coon that is very clearly the main and only motive for their outbursts of violence.

But I also consider otehr possible reasons and check if the evidence matches.

In case of Eric or Dylan the evidence is not there.

Yes, CHS had a group of violent jocks 1 year older than E&D. These guys bullied all sorts of people and would also randomly harass or attack various kids "at the spurr of the moment" without following up with a systemic long-term pattern of abuse.

The Larkin interviews made it clear that a lot of kids experienced that sort of violence at least once. The victims that had it worst were jewish kids and loners. Eric and Dylan were not loners, they were part of the wider industrial/alter/metalhead group together with Nate, Zach, the TCM people around Joe Stair, Robyn, Becca and others. Also, a few times Dylan proved that he can defend himself quite well given his size.
Were E&D at some point attacked by the jocks of 98'? Sure. But the testimony indicates that these were the sort of "at the spurr of the moment" attacks that a lot of other kids suffered, and therivalry between jocks and the metalheads/TCM. Nothing like the persistant-pattern of humiliation like what happend to the jewish kid or Brooks.

So:

1. The bullying was endemic in CHS up till 98, whith all sorts of kids falling prey. E&D were not among the worst affected, not by a long shot.
   
2. These 98 jocks were gone for a whole year already before the shooting. So that factor was gone. There's no reports of E&D being targets of bullying in 98/99.
   
3. E&D were to graduate in just a few weeks. They would have left CHS just by doing nothing.
   
4. The journals indicate different motives. Moreover, Dylan writes about different motives than Eric which to me makes it even more likely that their journals express genuine beliefs.
   
5. The "Hitman for hire" film paints a derisive portrait of the bullied kid. E&D's self-insert characters show him no sympathy and decide to kill him at the end. I feel like the bulied kid character might be parody of Brooks perhaps. Or just a generic character. Either way, E&D do not have sympathy for him at all.
   
6. The shooters target random kids, not athletes. In fact they explicitly and deliberately spare Evan Todd, who was a jock.
   
7. The shooters kill freshmen who were not even around in CHS when the jocks of 98' were bullyig people.
   
8. They kill mentally challenged kids who had nothing to do with E&D or the jocks or bullying. By all evidence, these were exatcly the sort of kids who would be the targets of bullying themselves.  
   

My interpretation fits all the evidence as well as the words of the shooters themselves. Also the actions of the shooters during the massacre.

To follow up with your interpretation, I would need to first throw out their own written words as lies. Then assume a larger and more significant bullying than the evidence suggest. Then assume that E&D made bullying their core gripe without actually showing any sympathy to their own fictional bullied character in their own film. Then assume that they 'expand the  blame field' to thee whole of society and kill the freshmen and mentlaly challenged kids seeing them as in some weird way participants in the bullying that happened a year before they even joined CHS.

To me, that's making a whole lot of assumption without evidence to back them up, while thorwing out existing written and video evidence produced by the shooters, as well as their actions on 4/20

So I'm confident with sticking to my interpretation. Ockham's razor 101.  

Saint George wrote:

But if you want to go on that ground, we have to conclude that you were a bully yourself and try to minor and avoid accountability.

It would of course impact my viewpoint and cause a bias one way or the other.

But regardless if I were a bully, been bullied, or both... that does not impact any of the pieces of evidence I listed in the bulletpoints above.

So you do not have to take my word for it or adress my bias or agenda. All you need to do is adress the facts listed above. Then people can compare our two approaches and see which one lines up better with the evidence and which is the simpler one that requires less assumptions.

Ockham's razor 101.


For the record: I experienced quite a bit of bullying betwen the ages of 11 and 12 (Basically the quivalent of American early middle school.)

Saint George wrote:

I had once such a conversation with a school supervisor who told me that he didn't really care about bullying - that is to say he didn't bother to see it when it happened - because he was himself a bully when he was a kid. The man in charge of discipline and school peace was a former bully... can you imagine the fate of the victims of bullying in that school? Fortunately we had a good relationship and he totally changed his behavior, and began to care about harassment in the school. But he had to go through a little personal revolution, and admit that he wasn't that clean. He went from a comfortable denial to awareness.

That is interesting, but also irrelevant to the events of 4/20 at Columbine.

I think most victims of awful sustained bullying tend to go for a straight suicide. They can’t take living anymore and can’t see any other way out of the pain and suffering. And most people are at least laughed at during school for something, yet most don’t actually take a gun in and do a shooting. So there are obviously other factors at play here, I suggest a multitude of them coming together lead to columbine, not just one. It also raises the issue of bullying in schools. Not all or even most of it is ever reported. Lots go on in places where there are no teachers at that time and are very subtle especially with girls. Realistically teachers can’t be held responsible if it happened out of their sight and they never even knew it happened because no one reported it. Zero tolerance is great but it has to get to the right people for them to step in. It’s so hard. School feels like your whole world when you’re there, and then you get old like me and realise how much time you wasted fretting and that life is so much bigger than those years you spent learning chemistry. The popular kids get old too and there’s nothing to be envious of.

Hello Bookish

Bookish wrote:

Realistically teachers can’t be held responsible if it happened out of their sight and they never even knew it happened because no one reported it.

Yes but they just don't care, they don't want to open their eyes. Bullying happens in front of them, in the playground, in the halls, in their own classrooms, and they don't want to see.

Kids can be totally isolated, without anybody looking at them, other students and teachers being unanimously hostile or indifferent to the drowning and the final outcome.

But adult educators are responsible of their students. It is even their first duty, before teaching math or history.

The worst case is when the principal and the teachers gang up against one colleague who reported a case of harassment, accusing him of being a traitor to the school and the to team of educators. It happened, they fired such a teacher, it was in a prestigious European school and in a city where a few years before a boy was killed by fellow students... they didn't even pushed him to suicide, they threw him by a window.

So, educators can be and should be held responsible, because when you care, you see bullying happening just in front of you, and it's easy to stop it and to prevent recurrence.

I witnessed many ugly and lazy behaviors of my colleagues. Once there was a fight, 5 or 6 students battering one, there was a colleague of mine who just passed meters from the brawl, walking with her briefcase, rushing to the teachers' room and cappuccino time... The kid under the weight of the 5 or 6 others could have died, she didn't care. And if a few years later, that same kid came back to the place of his ordeal, tall and strong then, to take revenge, she would be surprised and say: "OMG what a tragedy! But we need more psychologists to detect bloody psychopaths before they become terrorists"...

The principal and teacher are responsible, and parents who sued them are right. Children and adolescents are like clay: you can do whatever you want with it, they seek guidance, they are impatient to do their best. There is no excuse for "educators" who waste their students.

And as long as principals and teachers deny any responsibility, there will be more suicides and more school shootings, they will go on generating bullied who take revenge in a blood bath.

If you don't put principals and teachers to face their responsibilities, then you agree with more school shootings, you consider the death of a few student as an acceptable and fair price for the comfort of the adults. There is no escape.

I think it very much depends on the school culture and the individual teacher though. There are a lot of them working so hard to end bullying too, it’s not a sweeping statement we can apply to all teachers all of the time. I don’t disagree that there are failings and it’s horrendous to be bullied but I don’t want to just lump it all on teachers who are mostly already overworked.

Bookish wrote:

I think most victims of awful sustained bullying tend to go for a straight suicide.

Most of them, certainly, yes, and more, they can feel guilty: under social pressure, their ego is breaking, and they come to believe the accusations and insults of their tormentors, and that their death is justice. But some are in the intermediate, they are driven to suicide, but not completely crushed by social pressure, and they are still able to fight back.

When persecuted as a POW, a British soldier remembers he closed his eyes on the persecution of his little brother:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

From the masterpiece by Nagisa Oshima:


Oshima was absolutely brilliant in his depiction of persecution as he showed how bearing a difference attracts social violence:

The younger brother was a hunchback with a beautiful voice, the elder brother was beautiful and had heterochromia iridis, one iris was of different color from the other.

Being so different from the crowd, so individualized, they both attracted persecution.

Bookish wrote:

It also raises the issue of bullying in schools. Not all or even most of it is ever reported. . Zero tolerance is great but it has to get to the right people for them to step in. It’s so hard. School feels like your whole world when you’re there, and then you get old like me and realise how much time you wasted fretting and that life is so much bigger than those years you spent learning chemistry. The popular kids get old too and there’s nothing to be envious of.

Of for sure!

Bookish wrote:

Lots go on in places where there are no teachers at that time and are very subtle especially with girls. Realistically teachers can’t be held responsible if it happened out of their sight and they never even knew it happened because no one reported it.

Well, yes and no. There are varying levels of culpability:

1. Teacher sees bullying happen right in front of them, but willingly chooses to ignore it.
   
2. Teacher hears a report of bullying, but fails to believe the victim even if there is hard evidence.
   
3. Teacher hears a report of bullying, but fails to believe the victim becuase there's no hard evidence.
   
4. Teacher hears a report of bullying from the victim, but then a whole group of other kids deny it. Teacher goes with the majority opinion without further investigation or following up on it.
   
5. Teacher hears a report of bullying from the victim, punishes the perpetrator but treats this as a one-shot thing, does not recognize it as a pattern of long term abuse.
   
6. Teacher does not create a culture and atmosphere where kids feel safe to report bullying.
   

I think at least the last one is what happens in the vast majority of schools.

Bookish wrote:

I don’t disagree that there are failings and it’s horrendous to be bullied but I don’t want to just lump it all on teachers who are mostly already overworked.

For sure. There's good people in the profession as well. And sometimes you do get those "he-said-she-said" instances where two kids accuse one another and you do not have any evidence to let you know who is telling the truth.

It is also important not to overreact. A pattern of overreaction will discourage witnesses from speaking out. The reactions in the vein of: "I'd be ok if Johnny got suspended for a week, but he doesn't deserve being kicked out of the school entirely. So I'll just say nothing and pretend I did not see anything".

The punishment should be harsh enough to discourge further bullying, but not so harsh as to destroy people's lives and create an atmosphere of terror where no witnesses ever come forward.

Saint George wrote:

The worst case is when the principal and the teachers gang up against one colleague who reported a case of harassment, accusing him of being a traitor to the school and the to team of educators.

It is bad enough when students create such cult-like cliques that demand absolute obedience. When teachers do the same, the shcool is bound to go under.

Saint George wrote:

(...) we need more psychologists to detect bloody psychopaths before they become terrorists"...

We do. The fact that there are huge problems with drugs, violence and bullying should not be used as an excuse to cut back even more on mental health. The history of the past 20 years is riddled with stories of ill kids who went years and years without proper care and diagnosis and everyone noticed the problem only when they kiled someone or themselves. Adam Lanza case in point.

Moreover, while spree shootings are a problem, the amount of kids that die in those is tiny to those who commit suicide as a result of untreated depression or other disorders.

We do need more mental health. Especially in the US. We also need to get rid of the stigma of having a mental health issue and visiting a psychologist or psychiatrist.

.. ok, I'm off the soapbox.

Thank you, I’m loving this respectful debate we are all having, listening and trying to work together towards more understanding.

I think he was just a guy doing a stressful job and to have two bozos shoot up a place associated with you probably messed him up along with him losing a fellow teacher. I feel like it should've been a huge wakeup for him to better the bullying and shit going on at columbine but instead he didn't do much and just blamed everything on dylric and wants them to be buried despite them being cremated. Sometimes in life you get so stressed on small things you ignore big things it ruins you and that is what happened to Frank the tank.

Hello Bookish

Bookish wrote:

I think it very much depends on the school culture and the individual teacher though.

Absolutely, but who defines a "school culture", the particular culture of that particular school? As in any other group, the leader: the manager, the captain, the director, the Principal... And specially when the leader exercised authority for years.

Bookish wrote:

There are a lot of them working so hard to end bullying too, it’s not a sweeping statement we can apply to all teachers all of the time. I don’t disagree that there are failings and it’s horrendous to be bullied but I don’t want to just lump it all on teachers who are mostly already overworked.

I'd like to agree with you, I can't help but see excessive optimism there. First because of "overwork": opening eyelids on a persecuted student doesn't require any work at all. And second because, in the US at least, youth suicide and school shooting are still on the rise.

However, I agree that if teachers can be divided, then, it's going in the right direction. Because the worse, and that we see most often, is unanimity: the school as a group unanimously (bullies, students, teachers and principal all together) agreeing with bullying and the loss of the bullied.

So the right place for Frank DeAngelis is a Russian monastery, in the Northern islands, where people hide and try to live with their guilt, just like in Island (2006), the beautiful movie by Pavel Lungin:



Instead of parading across the country, Frank DeAngelis should be shoveling coal as lay brother in the Solovetsky.

And by the way, there are many beautiful scenes in that movie, but there is one that I like more than the others: when the injured woman locked in denial of her injury is finally freed from her prison of denial, accepting the injury and the beginning of healing... it's big, it's a very big scene.

Very big scene also (but not so big), when the man who was given the choice between being executioner or victim, and chose executioner,

Spoiler:

...

That movie is about adults trying to live with their wounds, about adults, and it's beautiful, a masterpiece no doubt, but we can't ask children and teenagers to follow the same path by themselves. The responsibility of adult educators is to make that such wounds do not happen.

Bookish wrote:

Thank you, I’m loving this respectful debate we are all having, listening and trying to work together towards more understanding.

Don't mention it, pleasure was all mine. It was high time someone with a personality and some brains showed up here and talked about this stuff.