What it's like if Rachel Joy Scott survives Columbine High School Massacre

In an alternate timeline where she survives, what she can say towards modern school shootings like sandy hook or parkland shooting? Would there be a Rachel Challenge organization if she still alive today? Do you think she will become known like now even if she's still alive today?

Yes. I can see her becoming an activist and sorta new age mental health advocate, she was really into spirituality and may have struggled with depression herself. I have my doubts that the Rachel’s Challenge we’ve got today is accurate or authentic to the nuances of her views or beliefs...people made her out to be an evangelical christian martyr after the shooting but she was so much more complex.

Surviving an event like Columbine would provoke a crisis of faith in anyone, especially someone as fascinated by the metaphysical realm as Rachel Scott. So yes indeed, I can envision Rachel starting a research/outreach/whatever program and giving TED talks and stuff on the psychodynamic, narrative and mythopoetic dimensions of Why It Happens and How To Stop It. (FWIW Brooks Brown is doing some very, very interesting stuff with VR gaming and Zizek’s concept of Event, not directly Columbine related but influenced by his journey through the aftermath. I can envision Rachel doing a collab with him of some sort if she’d lived.)

That's why It would be better if she survived because she can say a lot of new helpful things in her mind that we don't see in her journals or drawing or the things she said before her death. As my prediction i think she is the only the powerful key element in order to prevent more school shootings but not to completely stop it because i understand school shootings are irrational. School shootings are mostly caused by society for the school shooters to feel marginalized, bullied and ostracized. Her passion is for the ostracized people to feel loved, accepted, valued, cared and supported. I have a gut feeling in her parents' organization "Rachel Challenge" is for the Christian agenda purpose because i feel like her father used Rachel's death in order for him to be recognized by many and especially for his sole purpose is the money. I say this because it doesn't mean to give insult to them or to discredit them and i understand atleast they love their daughter. There is something that i knew about rachel that when Rachel was still alive, i read that she feels resentment towards her parents for controlling or manipulating her due to their christian beliefs. I heard from someone who says that some of Rachel family member is making fun of her. I don't know if it is true or not. And also she was suicidal because of this that she have lost some of her friends due to her compassionate actions to others and her christian faith. This proves how cruel are humans are to drive Rachel into thinking of this. As far as i know and think about Rachel she looks genuine person who is not plastic and hypocrite.

Vwaifu wrote:

Yes. I can see her becoming an activist and sorta new age mental health advocate, she was really into spirituality and may have struggled with depression herself. I have my doubts that the Rachel’s Challenge we’ve got today is accurate or authentic to the nuances of her views or beliefs...people made her out to be an evangelical christian martyr after the shooting but she was so much more complex.

Surviving an event like Columbine would provoke a crisis of faith in anyone, especially someone as fascinated by the metaphysical realm as Rachel Scott. So yes indeed, I can envision Rachel starting a research/outreach/whatever program and giving TED talks and stuff on the psychodynamic, narrative and mythopoetic dimensions of Why It Happens and How To Stop It. (FWIW Brooks Brown is doing some very, very interesting stuff with VR gaming and Zizek’s concept of Event, not directly Columbine related but influenced by his journey through the aftermath. I can envision Rachel doing a collab with him of some sort if she’d lived.)

I generally agree with what you said to start this off. I disagree she would do a collab with Brooks. She was harassed my hum peripherally in junior high by being one of my sister's best friends. By the time they did drama and debate together as upperclassmen, he treated her as a trophy to be won, like "show the Christian girl how much smarter I am than her " She talked to my sister about it quite a bit, how he didn't make the connection they were such close friends because he was pretty self centered, then he thought after years of being awful to my sister he could just dominate Rachel for being "another stupid Christian girl". Even when she tried to avoid him he'd seek her out on smoke breaks to continue making her defensive about her faith.q

The ironic thing is if Brooks really cared about having a truly deep, respectful discussion he would have learned a lot from Rachel. While she was alive however, he was just focused on proving atheism's (and most importantly his) superiority over a girl raised and who still identified as Christian. He lumped her in with the WBCC Bible Club freaks and the jocks and their crowd who all identified as upper middle xlass conservative "Christian". In reality Brooks was more like them than Rachel, as far as his more priviledged upbringing. My sister still has some of their notes where this is mentioned.

But you're right, the narrative that Rachel's parents, particularly her biological dad, has put out, was not the real Rachel. Darrell married her mom Beth, when she was very young. He said he was a pastor and wanted her to be a pastor's wife. He discouraged her from working and or furthering her education or job training, to be his not equal but "complimentarian" as men's and women's traditional and unequal gender roles are known in conservative Christianity. They had five children in fairly quick succession and when they were young Darrell wasn't the hotshot leading pastor he thought he deserved to be, so he walked out on Beth. And jnstead of getting a job to pay child support he squandered his money on "new businesses" where he would "fulfill his calling to God" which was his terminology for not having to work for someone else and be as important as he thought he should be. Beth and the kids would have been homeless if Beth's parents hadn't bought the house in Littleton for them. She babysat and cleaned houses, the only skills she had, to put food on the table. Darrell did not contribute.

Rachel wasn't happy about this as she got older. She was poorer than the other kids qt school at Dutch Creek when she started there, except my sister who was in her class, whose parents were also divorced, her dad was between jobs and our mom had physical and mental health problems of her own. As Rachel grew older she saw the hypocrisy of this. When Darrelm had them over which was rare, they slept in sleeping bags in the newly rented office space of Darrell's next new business idea which never came to fruition. Her brothers still worshipped their dad especially as the "men of the house" with the conservative evangelical Christianity Beth continued to teach them. Rachel blamed her dad for her mom's and therfore family's position. But Beth was still the ideal conservative evangelical pastor's wife after he walked out and blamed herself and raised her daughters to be like her. When Bethanee got married young with no post high school education and little job training and her mom thought this was an answer to her prayers Rachel really started to not just rebel like she did in middle school and starting high school partying with my sister and their group of fairly popular friends, she started searching for more

She had even writing journals since early middle school when she went to Lousiana to stay with her cousins (she was 11/12 when that happened not 16/17) and got her first journal. Her auntie told her to write to God when she said she didn't know how to journal. That habit stayed with her until her death and she even taught friends like my sister the same habit.

She was using the vocabulary and concepts she'd been raised with, a Judeo Christian God, but was trying to push the boundaries in her exploration. She was very loving and understanding. Not because she wanted to be a missionary, but because she believed in love and a human truth that brought us all together from different cultures and beliefs and thought that was beautiful, not sometime to be forced into the same American evangelical belief. She never talked about Jesus with school friends, unless it was to explore deeper philosophical views or someone insisted on it like Brooks. She stopped going to her mother's and family's church and went over to Englewood/Greenwood Village/DTC/Centennial (I-25 and Belleview) which was a long haul especislly before shebhad a license. That says lot. She went to Mass a few times with my family. She went to Lutheran church with another friend. Her favorite was even further than Orchard Road Christian, it was Church in the City, an inner city super diverse church that ministered to the homeless on East Colfax in Denver near East High School. The members of one of her favorite bands Five Irom Frenzy, a Christian ska band from Denver who wrote songs about hypocritical religious people in the US, the evils of homopohobia, racism, materialism and censorship, about the plight of Native Americans and the brutality and evil of the Manifest Destiny, etc. They're one of my favorite bands too and one of the band members little sisters Amy and the same grade as Rachel and my sister. They wrote a song about Columbine, A New Hope. They were very untraditional and liberal especially for a 90s Christian youth group staple.

A lot of what was said after her death was her parents and siblings not understanding her especially lead by Darrell who lied about having been an involved dad in an amicable divorce. It was only amicable because Beth still submitted herself to him she was raised so deeply engraved in female subordination to their husbands. Rachel was closer to Larry her step dad than Darrell. My sister has more anger towards Darrell than I do she was best friends with Rachel since grade school and was beside her through some of his worst. I know people all grieve differently and have a little more sympathy. We are still all friends though because we loved Rachel whatever difference of opinion. She didn't want to be a missionary and the thing about "Christian youth theater" was just making becoming an actress and possibly leaving school more palatable to her mom.

She was planning on moving in with Lisha a close friend of hers and friends with my sister too as soon as she turned 18 the August before senior year started. Finishing high school didn't mean much to her. If their family was so close why would she leave home while still in high school despite the house being far more empty with her sisters gone and there being more money with Larry and Beth married. She was miserable at home. After she cut and dyed her hair for The Smoke on the Room, the last play she was in, she called my sister sobbing because her family made fun of her. Only Larry didn't. She wasn't happy at home. She loved her family but she felt they didn't know her and refused to look at her as her own person not just another "Good Evangelical Christian Girl". She smoked, she even smoked weed a few times, she drank. She stopped partying with the old crowd when she got more into theater but more because she had different priorities. No one made fun of her for being Christian. Not being religious was cause for ridicule at Columbine more than the reverse. My sister believes she meant that she was trying to live her faith authentically, caring and loving people no matter their background or faith, finding God in other places, not believing you had to be a young wife for God to love you, stuff like that, that wss against the conservative hypocrisy many "Christians" at Columbine had. My sister snd Rachel's sophomore year they went to the Young Life Halloween party and a girl.im a sexy cop stripper outfit won the costume contest the leaders voted in. That kind of crap.

My sister believes today if she were alive, she'd be living in NYC with friends of all ethnicities races and sexualities working in community theater. She might be in a new age religion or spirituality or she might be somewhere like Denver's Church in the City.

But the strength she had to fight what was forced down her throat when that was so hard to do and to be herself and be her own person with her own values...she was so close to getting out of Littleton and died before her hard work could reap rewards. And unfortunately because of her dad and lesser other family, for whatever reason, his own ego, his grief, etc. he painted her as a girl she was not. Some parts were right she was that loving, caring, witty and fun. But she was not a Jesus Freak or a conservative evangeoical Christian. She was open minded and spiritual. She had a huge heart and was so creative. She was amazing.

You mean if she survived like Richard Castaldo survived?

I guess maybe she could have written a book or something. If she had any juicy stories about Dylan from theater class maybe that could have gotten somewhere.

Weird that Brooks Brown of all people was the one who got a big book deal.

It is really sad to see the difference between Richard and Anne Marie, they had similar injuries- both paralyzed but I don't know if there are differences and Anne Marie is thriving and Richard did not have that support system he needed

Screamingophelia wrote:

It is really sad to see the difference between Richard and Anne Marie, they had similar injuries- both paralyzed but I don't know if there are differences and Anne Marie is thriving and Richard did not have that support system he needed

AnneMarie is just an incredibly strong, smart, resilient, wonderful woman. She also went through her mom committing suicide like she did publicly and shortly after and all that other crap. That doesn't make Richard lesser AT ALL and getting tied into Rachel's dad's insistence she was a Christian martyr was definitely hard and what he went through was incredibly difficult. I think it's just proof of how exceptionally amazing AnneMarie is!

Vwaifu wrote:

Yes.  I can see her becoming an activist and sorta new age mental health advocate, she was really into spirituality and may have struggled with depression herself.  I have my doubts that the Rachel’s Challenge we’ve got today is accurate or authentic to the nuances of her views or beliefs...people made her out to be an evangelical christian martyr after the shooting but she was so much more complex.

Surviving an event like Columbine would provoke a crisis of faith in anyone, especially someone as fascinated by the metaphysical realm as Rachel Scott.  So yes indeed, I can envision Rachel starting a research/outreach/whatever program and giving TED talks and stuff on the psychodynamic, narrative and mythopoetic dimensions of Why It Happens and How To Stop It.  (FWIW Brooks Brown is doing some very, very interesting stuff with VR gaming and Zizek’s concept of Event, not directly Columbine related but influenced by his journey through the aftermath.  I can envision Rachel doing a collab with him of some sort if she’d lived.)

Totally agree with the first part. My sister always saw her moving to NYC, doing community acting, having a new age type spiritually etc.

But I disagree with you strongly on the second part. Rachel and Brooks weren't friends, they were more people who knew each other. Rachel ranted to my sister a lot about how annoying it was every time she went out for a smoke during debate, Brooks would come find her and want to debate with her on religion. Brooks didn't really have tons of true friends, he was very patronizing and always thought he was smarter, more mature and better than his peers. She knew how he treated my sister too. She felt like he was trying to prove to himself he was so much smarter than the "Christian girl" even though he didn't really know her faith until it came up in a debate and after that he was always trying to "win" so to speak, she tried to hide and smoke sometimes

Quote :

Totally agree with the first part. My sister always saw her moving to NYC, doing community acting, having a new age type spiritually etc.

But I disagree with you strongly on the second part. Rachel and Brooks weren't friends, they were more people who knew each other. Rachel ranted to my sister a lot about how annoying it was every time she went out for a smoke during debate, Brooks would come find her and want to debate with her on religion. Brooks didn't really have tons of true friends, he was very patronizing and always thought he was smarter, nor mature and better than his peers. She knew how he treated my sister too. She felt like he was trying to prove to himself he was so much smarter than the "Christian girl" even though he didn't really know her faith until it came up in a debate and after that he was always trying to "win" so to speak, she tried to hide and smoke sometimes  

In an alternate timeline Brooks developes a taste for fedoras and becomes the Amazing Atheist
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