Comments on Columbine
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Why?
On April 21, 1999 Lynne Russell began her commentary on CNN Headline News by saying that the people of Littleton, Colorado, are asking, "why?"
Why did Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walk into their high school and kill 13 fellow students and a teacher?
Here is the answer. It doesn't have anything whatever to do with the availability of guns or bomb components.
As anyone who has gone through, or is going through, adolescence knows, it can be extremely painful. The road from childhood to adulthood has many bumps and potholes and pitfalls and detours along the way. The problem is that it's always a new experience; the adolescent has no prior experience to draw upon. It's like an automobile trip; if you aren't familiar with the way, you might get lost.
By all accounts, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were lost indeed!
From that day until this, anyone interested has watched student after student say that these kids were "weird," "loners," "strange," "we all made fun of them." In spite of the contention that people "hadn't a clue" as to why these kids suddenly went nuts and started shooting their fellow classmates, the warning signs were there. A blind man could have seen them. They were clear enough for anyone who wanted to look.
Nobody wanted to look.
Why?
These kids were arrested a year previously for breaking into a car. That's a fact!
Both of them had "been through the juvenile detention system for property crimes." That's a fact.
They were described as members of an "outcast group." People called them the "Trenchcoat Mafia." Those are facts!
I'm not excusing or condoning what they did. In spite of what President Clinton said the following afternoon, I have no doubt whatever that they knew what they were planning to do, and that it was wrong, morally wrong, ethically wrong, socially WRONG!
The problem was, as of April 20th, they just didn't care.
Why?
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that people who break into cars and commit petty crimes and wear swastikas and keep to themselves are up to no good. WWII should have taught us that. Even the Columbine High School students recognized that their behavior was so bizarre that something was wrong with them...
...And did exactly the wrong thing.
We should probably not be too hard on the Columbine student body. After all, they are just adolescents themselves. They didn't seem to realize that making fun of people isn't nice. Maybe they have learned something from all of this. I hope so.
But where were the adults, for God's sake?
The primary responsibility for taking care of these kids rests with Mr. and Mrs. Harris and Mr. and Mrs. Klebold. That's a fact! The fact that these kids were not undergoing deep and extensive therapy, that they were allowed to mope around in their trenchcoats with their swastikas, to be ridiculed by their fellow students, is proof positive that they weren't getting the support they needed. Maybe the parents didn't realize just how serious the problem was. Maybe they were concerned about other things. Maybe they knew that something needed to be done, but didn't know what to do. Maybe they were doing the best they could. Who can say?
But whatever it was, it wasn't enough. That's a fact!
The faculty and administration of Columbine High School don't get off so easy. These people are paid by the state to watch out for this kind of thing. They are supposed to be able to observe and correctly evaluate adolescent behavior and take action, to sound the alarm to make sure that things don't get out of hand. If they were unwilling or unable to do what was necessary to give these kids the help they were crying out for, then they should have gone into another line of work. That's their JOB!
They didn't do it well enough. That's a fact!
I'm not judging them. Maybe they didn't have the necessary training, or maybe they were spread too thin. Who knows?
But 15 people are dead and another 24 are injured. That's a fact! No amount of hand-wringing is going to change that!
To paraphrase a very wise philosopher, "...do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another."
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold didn't get done unto them as they should have. They didn't get enough love. They didn't get enough support. What they got was derision and ridicule, pushing them inexorably to the brink of madness.
And so, when they couldn't bear to live their miserable lives anymore, they decided to take as many of their tormentors with them as they could.
That's "why."
As another wise philosopher said,
"How many times can a man turn his head, and pretend that he just doesn't see?"
"How many deaths will it take 'till he knows that too many people have died?"
The answer isn't blowing in the wind, it's right under our noses. It may be difficult; it may be painful, but the fact is that the community didn't give these kids the support they needed and to which, as our suffering brothers, they are intrinsically entitled. But the people of Littleton aren't any more guilty than any other community, or any other school, or any other gathering of any kind where fragile, lonely people feel different and unwanted or rejected and need help and don't get it. It just happened to be Littleton, Colorado where this tragedy occurred - this time.
It has happened before, in other places.
It will happen again, somewhere else.
Why?
If we as a nation don't learn to love and care for each other, if we don't start taking care of our kids rather than let some stranger or TV show do it, if we don't learn to look out for each other and do something positive when the danger signals are there, this kind of thing is going to happen again, and again, and again...
... As it has in the past.
As one of these tortured teenagers is alleged to have said just before he took his own life, "This is what you get for the way you treated us!"
How much clearer can the answer be to the question:
"Why?"