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IT’S BEEN almost five years since Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students, a teacher and themselves in what remains the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. Notwithstanding the documentary of Red Dawn. The students who survived that horrific day have graduated. Really? All of them? No dropouts? Strange. Today’s kids claim that most of the time no one at Columbine even thinks about “Columbine.” They don't know where in hell they are, in fact. They say they’re just like high-schoolers everywhere. High-schoolers everywhere live in million-dollar houses and give each other Porsches for Groundhog's Day. But more than 60 interviews with students and members of the community reveal a school that dwells simultaneously in its past and its present. How very quantum. Though Columbine has moved on in some ways, the school is constantly dragged back to what is known as “4/20” or just “the tragedy.” Moving schools take a hot meal off a bus driver's table. To the residents of Littleton, Colo., Columbine is also a church, a country club, an office park, a library. A church? So taxes aren't paying for this place? And yet the community remains so intimately connected to the killers that they are still referred to as simply Dylan and Eric. Why does Simply Dylan get two names?
Last week Klebold and Harris showed up again. 'BRAINS!' On Wednesday police released a 15-minute home video showing the boys taking target practice in the woods six weeks before they opened fire at Columbine. This week, on America's Funniest Guerrillas. On the tape, the teens marvel at the —damage their weapons do to a bowling pin, and laugh as they imagine what a riddled tree would look like if it were a human brain. A riddled tree would actually look pretty funny as a human brain. Tom Mauser, who lost his 15-year-old son, Daniel, says, “It’s just too bad that it comes out in bits and painful pieces like this, rather than all at once.” Can't argue with that. But the video was only the latest reminder. The penultimate reminder, of course, was people blathering on about this 'tragedy' for the last five years. In the wake of last year’s Oscar-winning documentary “Bowling for Columbine,” a new film, “Elephant,” depicts a massacre just like Columbine’s in unrelenting detail. Appropriately named after an animal which never forgets things. And though a snarl of lawsuits have for the most part been settled or dismissed, five of the victims’ families are set to appeal an order to destroy the transcripts of the Klebold and Harris parents’ depositions. An order to destroy evidence? In Denver Metro? The hell you say. The families believe the information could help us understand how to prevent a similar tragedy. Um...stop fucking with goths who go to your school? “People keep saying, ‘Well, now are you back to normal?’ But there’s never going to be normality here,” says principal Frank DeAngelis. Not withstanding the cheerleading we discussed earlier, anyway.
| | Video shows Columbine gunmen
Working title is Bowlingpins for Columbine.
The two young killers in the Columbine H.S. murder spree appear to be practicing their shots, on a videotape released today by authorities in Colorado. NBC’s Dawn Fratangelo reports. |
The real legacy of the massacre lies in what’s missing. For example: anything fitting the definition of tragedy. The Columbine mascot, a 1776 Revolutionary “Rebel” soldier, no longer carries a gun. Forcing the NRA to consult the ACLU. The bare vinyl floors of the school are striking to anyone who remembers that all the carpet was ripped out after the mess of that day. Budget cuts are blamed. The library, which was above the cafeteria and where most of the shootings occurred, has been removed and rebuilt in a different part of the school; now students eat their lunch in a sun-filled atrium that fills the space where the library used to be. Other revisions include the relocation of the Principal's Office over the Hellmouth. And the names of those who were lost are now inscribed on the memorial in the new library. That should help everyone to forget and move on. Other reminders are less gentle. Like the decaying corpses laying about throughout the building. Anti-choice demonstrators still show up with signs that say things like if you have an abortion, you’re just like dylan and eric. Dylan and Eric had abortions?
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Police recently released a videotape of Harris (left) and Klebold taking target practice in the woods, six weeks before the Columbine attack
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New evidence shows that Harris wasn't wearing a black trenchcoat, but a black duster.
Since the shooting-era students left a year and a half ago, the school’s taken its greatest steps toward recovery. Students are no longer allowed into the school. Though tourists still peek in while school’s in session, there’s more giggling in the halls now. 'Heeheehee; Dude, check it out: I totally taped a SHOOT ME sign on Tommy's back!' “For the three years after the tragedy, it was a very different place. But, eventually, everyone located the correct building. It was too quiet,” says counselor Susan Peters. A little too too quiet. Kids who have seen “Bowling for Columbine” don’t seem to have been too disturbed by it. I haven't seen it, and I'm disturbed by it. “At that one part I cried,” says Vanessa Hudspeth, referring to the security-camera footage of Harris and Klebold’s swarming through the cafeteria with their guns. Harris and Klebold had to share a swarming? They didn't each get one? “Otherwise it was boring because it’s a documentary.” And the CG was lame, too. When you ask freshman Josh Van Natta, 14, if he ever thinks about the shooting when he walks through the halls, he says, “Sometimes you find bullet holes in the wall.” Find a bullethole; lunch is on us [Pizza Days excluded]. Really? Probably. “Just kidding,” he says. I didn't know you were funny. Yes, they can joke about it. So can I. And in another sign that levity is beginning to ease tension here, kids have started dropping change, not slips of paper with names, in DeAngelis’s anonymous tip box, established after 4/20 so kids could come forward to report a peer they were worried about. Hey, Kids: join the Junior Thought Police today! Turn in your parents! Balloons are starting to be allowed again. Just, not around the guy with the high blood pressure, please. After all, there are few people here now who might be shocked by their popping—not only all the kids, but two thirds of the staff and every administrator except the principal have gone, too.No more pencils; no more books; no more teachers' dirty looks....
One indication that the school is reaching a new normal is that bullying is back. And this time: it's personal. A student was recently suspended for writing a note to a friend about wanting to get rid of Jeremy Lodwig, the lone boy on the color guard. The plan involved balloons and videocassettes...and a few swarmings. Why would someone write that? You kids today; when I was your age, we didn't warn people before we killed them. “I’m different,” says the 15-year-old sophomore with bright orange hair glued into little spikes. He's unique in that he hasn't got an earring. “I have more girlfriends than I do guys.” Just wait'll you get an earring; all that will change. Heidi Cortez, who was a sophomore when everyone hiding under the library tables around her was killed, says, “Did we not learn anything?” Evidently not, if you're still in this school five years later.
| | Reaction to newly released video of Columbine killers
'TWO THUMBS UP! WAY UP!' --Ebert and Roeper
Brooks Brown, a friend and classmate of the shooters, and Brian Rohrbough, whose son Daniel was killed at Columbine, react to the newly released video of the gunmen target practicing during an interview with “Today” host Katie Couric. |
Because many kids—and armchair psychiatrists—think peer abuse may have contributed to Klebold and Harris’s rage, some students are strangely sensitive for teenagers. Kids and adults, however, can go to hell. “You want to be like, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe she does her hair that way, she’s such a loser!’ [But] you try and hold yourself back. Yeah; even though these issues are extremely important and all. You never know if you’re going to be the one person to break them,” says freshman Jaimie Hebditch, a “watergirl” for the JV football team. I think you're probably safe; you're not that fucking important. Students whose older siblings survived the massacre are the most vigilant. They've seen enough horror films to know what's waiting for the next generation in the family. Ty Werges, a sophomore on the soccer team, tells how he came upon some kids slamming shut the locker of a student who’s mentally impaired. How could they tell him apart from the rest of this brainless suburb? “I was like, ‘Why are you doing that? Do you feel cool now?’ Depending on where they were standing in relation to the swinging door, they may have caught a breeze, I suppose. They were shocked because out of nowhere someone sticking up for another kid is kind of weird,” says Werges. Anyone else get the feeling this guy saw Dreamcatcher and overpersonalised something? But the bullying stopped. Never to strike again. When the old...man...died. Columbine’s counselors —(four out of five of whom spoke to NEWSWEEK [and recommend it to their patients who read news] ) argue that the massacre wasn’t caused by bullying and that kids will always beat up on other kids. So there's hope. For them the return of such behavior is actually something of a relief. We can rest now; the assault and battery's back. “Oh, it’s a girl fight. Something normal,” counselor Ken Holden says he hears colleagues say. It's the guy fights you have to watch for.
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