Who has the right to care about Columbine?

Some years ago, I corresponded briefly with a teacher who knew Dylan and Rachel. One of the things she said to me - in a polite way - was that I didn’t have the right - the moral authority - to have strong feelings about the massacre. That privilege, she implied, was reserved for those who had a personal connection to 4/20.

She was right, of course, but she was also wrong. I have the right to have strong feelings about anything and everything. But I do feel kind of guilty about it.

A friend of mine who once made it inside the school asked me if I would ever go. I said, “No. It would be crossing a boundary. As curious as I am, I cannot justify that kind of intrusion. I respect your decision, but I could never do that.”

Lately I’ve come to realize just how much of my interest in NBK is wrapped up in my own issues about myself. And I can’t help but wonder if I’ve inserted myself where I don’t belong. I’m not going to disavow my interest in the massacre or my participation on this board, but I really do feel like I’ve invaded territory to which I have no legitimate claim. It makes me feel like I’ve crashed a private memorial service or something.

What do you think?

That teacher was gatekeeping, which is not cool. For those that don't know, gatekeeping is when someone takes it upon themselves to decide who does or does not have access to a community or identity, or access to information.

And quit worrying about what other people think of you. Their opinions don't matter.

She was absolutely gatekeeping.

It is interesting the different POV's regarding who can care about the case vs who can't. I don't remember if she said anything specifically but I think Devon has spoken about how she doesn't like others caring about "her" tragedy... but I have a few people in my life who are survivors who totally get it and understand that it was a really big event for many people our age no matter where you were.

I sometimes am surprised how it affects people much younger or older than me though. There was a blog that was run by someone who was in her 30's when Columbine happened and I did wonder why someone who wasn't a teen then could be so affected by it. However that is kind of a gatekeeping mentality too.

There’s a difference though in inserting your self into someone’s personal pain and feeling strong empathy and desire to learn from something going on around you. Is Columbine my personal tragedy. No. Was I affected by it on a personal scale? Yes. My empathy towards the victims and their families, what got the perpetrators to that point and their families, the effect on my classmates and people who I could see understood E&D a little too much for my comfort, that DID affect ME. The school assemblies with speakers from the Columbine community, the change in how bullying was addressed at my school, the pain of my own bullying issues. That WAS personal to me. So for someone to say, oh Columbine shouldn’t affect you, you shouldn’t care this much, well those people shouldn’t have come to my school to speak with my classmates and I. They shouldn’t be writing books for me to read where I am, through reading comprehension, forced to insert myself into their place in the tragedy. Documentaries where they speak out about what happened, no don’t do it because someone may be emotionally swayed by your story.
No.. I did not suffer personal loss on that day. But I was affected in such a way that it brought me emotional pain. I will never speak or act like I was a part of it. But I will empathize and try to understand because that’s my way of dealing with the horrors of life around me.

ETA— I want to add, my next post I went to after this one was the “American Tragedy” thread. This may not have HAPPENED to each of us. But something happened to affect us, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. So I do get a tiny bit offended when I hear “oh you weren’t involved, you shouldn’t care like you do”. ThIs truly was a national tragedy. And to assume, like Randy Brown did, you didn’t know a student involved so you can’t care as much as you do, is in one way very manipulative and it makes me feel gross and dirty for having empathy in the first place. And that’s a dangerous road to travel.

I don’t feel guilty at all for being and empathetic person. I feel it’s one of my positive qualities actually. I meant, RB or anyone really, saying ‘you have no right to have the feelings you do’ makes me feel dirty. Not because I’m empathetic but because I view that as being part of the problem in the first place. I guess we will have to agree to disagree because only I know my heart and my mindset or my reasons for being affected by someone else’s pain. To state categorically that someone can not feel a sense of suffering for their fellow man is part of the problem we are trying to address by learning about this tragedy in the first place. There is a HUGE difference in being obsessed with the case, just because, and having the desire to learn, grow, and hopefully change for the better. I’m not taking ownership of Columbine, but I was/am greatly affected by it. And I will not let anyone tell me I have no place in those feelings. Am I actively trying to hurt the people I am empathizing with?? Come on now....

I think anyone who wants to be interested in the shooting in a nonharmful way has a right to be.

I was only in eighth grade when the massacre happened, but I was already in a pretty dark place. When my grandfather died, I lost the closest thing to a father that I ever had. Then my mother went through an abusive relationship with a live-in boyfriend and we were both pretty traumatized from that. And, of course, I was going through puberty. I had severe issues due to my weight and a horrendous acne problem. These problems only got worse as I entered the high-school years. My emotional bottom came during my sophomore year.

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I was in special ed all through my K-12 years. At first I was labeled "emotionally handicapped," but eventually I was designated "severely emotionally disturbed." (My official diagnosis was OCD, but I don't know what my "real" problem was.) So not only did I feel like a defective freak, but I had an official label.

Being in special ed was not entirely bad for me. I did benefit from the individualized attention. And I felt a certain camaraderie with the other "freak" kids. I didn't have any close friends, but I did talk to a few people every now and then, so I wasn't completely socially isolated. A lot of them were pretty smart, but everyone always called me "the genius," so I had a reason to feel some positivity about myself. Eventually I was mainstreamed for most (but not all) of my classes. I never felt comfortable around the normal kids, although I did get to know one or two of them.

The social dynamics at my school were different from those at Columbine. It was an upper-middle-class public school, and there were lots of snotty "rich kids" who had their lunch delivered from expensive restaurants, but there was no real equivalent to Rocky Hoffschneider and his "steroid poster boys." Also, the demographics were different. My school was more diverse than Columbine. Even the white kids were different - for one thing, most of them were Jewish.

My initial spark of fascination about E&D's crimes was probably due to the fact that here were two kids who were seemingly taking charge of their lives, refusing to allow the world to kick them around. I identified with the idea of two outcasts who said, "Enough is enough." And I formed an emotional attachment to them based on this sense of shared suffering.

When Dave Cullen's book came out, I was so angry, because I felt that he was trivializing Eric's suffering by writing him off as "crazy." That anger is what prompted me to start posting on a predecessor of this board. Then I just went crazy. For a number of years, I spent almost all of my free time on this board. When I wasn't posting on the forum, I was PMing with various members.

Like I said, I don't regret spending so much time thinking and writing about NBK, but I do realize that it was never about anyone but me.

There were a couple of times when people who went to the school - people who had a right to feel strongly about it - told me that they were offended by various things I had written. One of them was a football player who resented the implication that jocks bullied E&D to death. He said, "You tell yourself you are defending the weak, but what you are doing is no different from what any bully does." And I have to admit that, while I didn't agree with everything he said, that statement did prompt me to take a long, hard look at what I was doing.

And, of course, Dave Cullen once told me that I was hurting him with my incessant ad hominem attacks. I don't apologize for pushing hard against his book, because I really do believe that he got Eric dead-wrong. But I have to admit that I went too far at times. There were many times when I acted ... less than honorably.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] I don’t know how to quote yet, but I wanted to reply again.. I think I may have misunderstood what you were saying in regards to Randy. Reading too much between the lines so to speak. But I appreciated your reply and see where you are coming from. And I agree with your obsession statement, to a degree. Because I think think that the obsession doesn’t necessarily have to be rooted in Columbine as a whole, but some facet of it. Me, I’m really into mental health and why it makes different people react in drastically different ways, but I also love learning about investigations, mistakes made/facts withheld/evidence collection/etc. I also find victim stories very impactful and like to look at things in a ‘where do we go from here - how do we change X in society as a whole’ and Columbine has a whole lot of all of that. Hope that mishmash made sense
And [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] thank you for being so candid with your story.

LMFAO