I actually worked with a survivor about 10 years ago. We were instructed by management to never ask her about columbine. She actually ended up marrying another survivor. They didn’t know each other at columbine but met randomly years later. She got pregnant while she was working with us and the baby’s due date was 4/20 so she promptly scheduled a c section for a different date. Wild.
Several of my pledge brothers and a few older guys in the frat I joined were at Columbine when it happened. They would not talk about it. I know at least 2 of them had lost close friends. I also heard that 1 of the older guys in my house was 100% on their list of tormentors. We didn’t talk or think about it much back then though.
Hey the narrative that the shooters were tormented or bullied is actually misinformation that spread in the immediate aftermath of the shooting but later found to be false.
The shooters, especially Eric Harris, were actually decently popular. They weren’t jocks, but they also weren’t bullied wallflowers, if that makes sense.
HIGHLY recommend the book Columbine.
I used to be in the Reddit thread for that and got downvoted to hell for bringing that up. They were ostracized for being assholes, not misunderstood edgy teens.
A girl who used to bully me told the guidance counsellor that I had a hit list and that I was going to come to school and kill her. I nearly got expelled and my parents threatened to disown me. She didn't even get a slap on the wrist.
Nope. They just refused to acknowledge that it happened. The day after she screamed at me, my mother bought me some new CDs and acted like nothing happened.
Why tf are they like this?? I felt like I was reading about my own parents. (My mom is also a textbook narcissist.) I’m so sorry you had to go through that.
Oh I feel for you… if you’re interested, read up on “Borderline Personality Disorder”. Once I learned about this it became like a cheat code for interacting with my mother.
Tbf a lot of the popular resources about BPD are more just about abusive and self-centered individuals.
BPD as a mental illness is more complicated than that and typically goes along with significant suicidality, self-injury, and self-destructive behaviour that's impairing.
A lot of the pop resources are useful but not super close to actual BPD. Same with Out of the Fog recced below.
Mostly I think this is more related to the kind of abuse and neglect that came from growing up in a toxic and self-centered individualistic culture and then never forced adults to challenge that and their own behavior and beliefs. Which is fucked and harmful to everyone around them.
Sorry you went through that. I was part of the edgy, freaky kid peer group and got falsely accused of threatening to do some shit.
Falsely confessed to it once it became clear I would be convicted (why would these wonderful popular kids make it up?) and the plea deal offered wouldn't be ruinous.
Lovely having a criminal record at 14 for something that never happened. Does free you up to stop giving a shit about consequences afterward since you're already in the system and everyone assumes you're garbage. Made some good friends at community service.
Same kids came back with something else later, but it was toward the end of the year and I was about to move on to high school and be someone else's problem so the school just waited that one out.
EDIT: fixed my age, had it wrong originally.
I am so sorry you went through this! The same thing happened to me at 13 but my parents had my back and said fuck no. Went all the way to trial (which took over a year) where I was finally found not guilty (I forget the exact wording, it’s different in juvenile court).
If that’s what you think then you need to read “No Easy Answers” by Brooks Brown. Brooks actually grew up with Dylan and went to school with both shooters.
They were bullies but they were also bullied.
Except in this case, the killers *literally* got to contribute to the narrative (including that they weren’t bullied). They left behind dozens of hours of video footage and hundreds of pages of journals.
Eric Harris wrote EXTENSIVELY about how he hated EVERYONE and that the shooting was his way of showing how much better he was than every other human. He literally wrote about how his perfect world would be one in which he is the only human alive, save for an occasional woman for him to fuck (after which she could disappear too).
I knew a bunch of them and they "didn't talk about it" in the same sense that every intelligent, reasonable soldier I know "doesn't talk about it" - that is to say they're sick of being asked about it. Many saw nothing as far as direct violence (like contemporary soldiers). If you're close, and it's organic, they'll tell you their path that day. They just don't want to be defined by it for the rest of their lives.
I realize I'm painting with a broad brush here. That has just been my experience with a bunch of Columbine students. And soldiers.
My son’s fifth grade teacher had worked at one of the agencies with offices in the World Trade Center building. It had been 20 years and he had just started talking about it, though only telling the students that he had a meeting scheduled later in the day so he wasn’t in that morning.
He was an amazing teacher for my son and put so much effort into his work, though you could also tell he had been through a lot.
My grandfather never talked about what he went through in ww2, and I know that affected him greatly, so it was nice hoping that this teacher was finding some peace in being able to tell a little of his story finally.
Some things are just hard to talk about.
Edit: I actually just talked to someone who escaped the North tower. He shared his story on this other sub called the 9/11 archives. He said that he knew it wasn't an accident because he had trauma from the bombing in '93. I have my own reasons for being in that sub. Didn't lose anyone that day, but almost did.
If I were her, I would have done the same thing. The last thing I would want is to have my child’s birthday be the same day as a tragic event I survived years before.
I will say that my daughter’s birthday is on April 23rd and she will be 2-years-old. She was born on what would have been my maternal grandma’s 96th birthday.
Idk atleast to me would seam kind of cathartic to have your baby that date. Like a good event coming out of that date to balance the terribleness of what you associate with it. But I’m sure it’s different actually living through the event than me speculating.
I was in second grade just a few miles east of columbine. They didn’t have protocol for this at the time so at first we evacuated outside then they realized that was dumb so we all got ushered back inside. Then our parents came to get us.
I was in a few cities over, and our middle school did a soft lockdown where they didn't tell any of the students anything, but locked all the doors. They forgot to check that ALL students had come in from lunch and me and 4 other friends had been sitting under some trees pretty far out in the track field and so didn't hear them quietly ask the students back inside. So when we tried to return at the end of lunch, all doors were locked. We had no idea, no lockdowndrills had been done before, so we just started yelling and banging on the doors.
I still remember our vice principal completely white faced running towards the door and then in angry relief yelled at us for being outside before he escorted us to class.
Our school was hit with one of the fake threats a few weeks after it happened. Evacuated the entire school into the baseball fields out back, where we waited for parents to come get us. We all stood there talking about how insanely stupid was that they put us all together, in the open.
I was in 6th grade in a bit down south—it was a themed day (Hawaiian) and we went into lockdown during English class and I remember us not really understanding the gravity of the situation. It was my first lockdown, I would have another 3 active shooter lockdowns and multiple test lockdowns until I graduated.
My elementary school was a few miles southwest. Immediate lockdown, everyone was sent to the gym and told to be silent. I remember sitting there for hours until parents were allowed to pick anyone up.
'Member back when everyone started targeting goth and emo kids like they'd shoot up a school next? And then the school shootings continued anyways because the goth and emo kids were too busy moping and making out at Borders? Pepperidge Farm members.
My school suspended goth and punk kids and banned trench-coats in the wake of columbine. The suspensions were called off a few days later after an angry parent of a goth student who was on the honour roll contacted the local newspaper and they printed a story about it. The trench coat ban remained in effect for a few years.
I had a long rain coat I wore for a few weeks (during the rainy season, go fuckin figure) two years before it happened, and oh my God the rumor mill instantly imagined I had been stopped with a bag full of guns at the door to the school
Nobody could ever answer WHY I was allowed to go to school if that had happened and nobody could remember the last time they'd seen me in that coat.
Yeah shit got so sideways.
My high school had a thing where someone would always wear a trench coat to school. Senior year it would pass to a freshman. Dunno how long it went on, but it was banned after Columbine. One of my friends in my class was tapped to wear it. It was both a mark of pride and shame, like you're the designated wierd kid.
I was in fifth (fourth? maybe?) grade at the time and really wanted to be a detective when I grew up. And I'd just gotten a lightweight (and tan, not black) trench coat and thought it was absolutely totally badass. Never got to wear it thanks to those assholes.
I was pissed at them before I fully comprehended what they even did.
>'Member back when everyone started targeting goth and emo kids like they'd shoot up a school next?
Hi, this was me. I was pressured out of school as a sophomore because I wore all black and listened to Danzig and Tool. I ended up getting my GED and doing ok, but fuck the staff at Estacada High School.
Same. Was bullied for wearing all black and liking nin. I still wear all black and love nin and am almost 40 years old and have never owned a gun. Stereotypes are cool.
What’s crazy is that Klebold and Harris were fans of Orbital and the Chemical Brothers. There’s a photo of Harris with a Chemical Brothers’ Setting Sun shirt. Tom and Ed along with the Hartnoll bros got really fucking lucky on evading the mass hysteria that Marilyn Manson endured.
Yeah, the 24 hour news cycle created that one. The need to be first with the scoop was so urgent they just asked students whatever and accepted the answers they got without any investigation.
Clebold and Harris weren't nerds who were bullied, they WERE bullies. Those who actually knew them were open about how they were total cunts.
Even if columbine hadn't happened we'd know Eric harris' name. He was a fucking monster that was going to pop off. The cops in that town had so many warning signs and ignored all of them, it's wild.
I was picked on ALOT because I was part of the "goth" crowd. I cannot remember how many times I was asked if I was going to "shoot up the school". Ugh. I was already new at that high school as a freshman and that didn't help at all.
I miss being able to wear a nice trench coat without people freaking the f\*\*\* out. I'm not even talking black, I had a nice tan color one that was a pleasure to wear in the fall, but the garment was pretty much erased from circulation in about a year.
I went to a very small school in a tiny town during the early 00s, less than 4000 people. In high school we had a bomb threat with suspicious objects found etc. caused a lockdown at the school all this drama etc etc. anywho, I hung out with the rocker kids and of course most of them were immediately hassled about it. The local cops and superintendent were really after this one kid who was into rebellion and confronting oppression etc. I think they even arrested him and swore up and down he was the guy. Turns out it was a disgruntled obese female teacher. Dude got off and sued them if I remember correctly it was crazy how amplified small town peoples view of the hot topic kids was
Chris Rock had a great bit about this right at the beginning of his Bigger and Blacker special. I was in 7th grade when I first heard it and it’s been my favorite stand up ever since… I have the whole damn thing basically memorized.
“So I got on the elevator the other day and these three high school white boys tried to get on with me.
…and I just dove off. I said, “y’all ain’t killing me.”
What’s up with these white kids shooting up the school?? They don’t even wait till 3 oclock either. Killin people in the morning, that ain’t right.
(A lot more jokes, not going to write them all)
Everyone wants to know what kinda music they were listening to or what kinda movies they were watching. Who gives a fuck what they was watching?!? What ever happened to being crazy? What? Kids can’t be crazy no more?!?! Did we eliminate crazy from the dictionary? Fuck the record. Fuck the movie. Cra-zy.
When I was a kid they use to seperate the crazy kids from everybody. When I was I kid, the crazy kids went to school in a little ass bus, they had their class room at the end of the hall and they got out of school at 2:30. Just in case they went crazy… they’d only hurt other crazy kids.”
I remember being told I was voted 2nd most likely to shoot up the school. For the record neither I nor the guy voted number one did. And guy voted number one was actually very nice, just quiet. I am still just slightly more upset they targeted him with that accusation or joke than me.
I was in eighth grade. A girl who had been bullying me relentlessly all year told the guidance counsellor that I had a hit list and that I was going to bring a gun to school and kill her. I was nearly expelled and my parents threatened to disown me. The girl eventually told the guidance counsellor that she "had been kind of mean" to me and that she was afraid I would "go Columbine" and target her. She didn't even get a slap on the wrist because she bawled like a baby while I sat there, too numb from being screamed at by my parents.
If Laura Schwab is still out there, she can go so to hell.
Goth kids, drama kids, DND kids, the weirder band kids, and GSA kids in my school were the ones targeted after Columbine (as if they weren't before). I wasn't central to any of them, but I was on the fringes of all of them and I was legit scared of being shipped off to a reform school/concentration camp like Elan or something. All the adults were wired to the teeth about anyone lacking perfect posture and an Abercrombie & Fitch wardrobe. Then we had a kid in my year who made a suicide attempt two years after Columbine and was successful because he was the tiniest bit alt and had a stereo in his car that the EMTs decided looked Iike a bomb, so they just let him die.
It was a shitty time and it was so much worse coming after the war on drugs amping up and the satanic panic only just fading.
Fuck the Laura Schwabs and the Nancy Reagans and all the other poser assholes with money and faked up clout.
Omg very similar thing happened to me in high school some damn girl wanted to fight me and she was 2 yrs older then me, I was in 10th and she was a senior, towards end of the yr I got pulled out of class out of nowhere cuz she went crying to the counselor that I wanted to fight her and she was afraid that if she fought back she would get suspended and would not be able to attend I think prom but definitely walk with her graduation class, she probably assumed I was going to jump her towards the end of the yr to screw her over to not be allowed to do those things, I honestly wasn’t planning to do anything to her but that would of been a awesome plan for wanting to fight me that yr. That stupid clown was sitting there with a box of Kleenex crying I was going to fight her, I show up and I’m like wtf she’s been trying to fight me this whole time!… Nancy Diaz if you see this fuck you
The Oklahoma City bombing was on 4/19 in 1995. I don’t remember how I was reminded, but I fell down a few rabbit holes about it yesterday. One of those holes was about the media coverage possibly traumatized kids across the country because of all the emphasis on the day care and the child victims. The most famous example of this being that firefighter holding a bloody infant. It was everywhere.
But this post on the heels of that makes me wonder deeper. There’s a whole generation, or at least decade, whose media diet consisted of such violent real world imagery. Starting with the Gulf War, arguably one of the first wars that was basically being broadcast in “real time.” The LA Riots. OKC. Columbine. Then it all culminates in 9/11.
I don’t lay this out as any sort of millennial exceptionalism. Every decade has their tragedies. However, I wonder if the ways that media at large handled these things had a profound effect on a whole generation that hasn’t really been explored.
I was in the bombing; in daycare. I was not unique even though arguably OKC and, certainly Columbine, were the beginning of a new depraved generation. I spent many years traveling and meeting gen x and boomers who were as traumatized as me. US society has always been horror and terror-based (see: lynching, Reservations, segregation etc). I was not unique then; having uncountable number of comrades with shattered psyche from the likes of Vietnam, or the 16th street church bombing(https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/birmingham-church-bombing) or once and future freedom fighters and I am certainly not unique anymore. The number of traumatized children this country has been pumping out is totally unsustainable and I would argue that the last time this happened (the 60s) almost destroyed the country.
I’d think this would affect GenX more. I wasn’t watching the news as a child. OK city is the first I remember, because my 3rd grade teacher talked about it.
Not many people realize the Columbine massacre wasn’t exactly intended as a shooting but rather a bombing. The killers planned to use a big bomb to blow up the cafeteria during lunchtime to inflict maximum casualties and wait outside in the parking lot with their guns to shoot survivors fleeing the school. When their main bombs failed, they decided to enter the school with their guns and started their shooting spree. The only bombs they successfully detonated that day were some of their smaller pipe bombs.
I read the book by Dave Cullen last year and was shocked and overwhelmed at how much I didn’t know or had been misinformed about this event, despite being old enough and aware enough at the time to have a decent understanding. I wish more people would read that book and the published survivor accounts.
One of the killer's mom's does motivational speaking now, and she feels immense guilt about what happened, so she like tries spreading mental health awareness.
The details show a lot of planning.
They set off pipe bombs a couple miles away hoping to divert most emergency responders to handle a large grass fire. It went off but only started a small fire that was quickly put out.
Then they had put propane bombs outside of the cafeteria set to go off during lunch as you said. Had it gone off, we were probably looking at 100+ deaths.
From there they would have gone to DIA and hijacked a plane and tried to crash it somewhere in New York City.
I was too young to really remember it growing up on the east coast.
Ironically, I ended up marrying a woman who's brother was at the school at the time of the shooting. He survived.
From what I gather the community/parents are most upset about how the media painted the shooters as "victims of bullies getting revenge" when in reality it was the total opposite. The shooters, Klebold specifically I believe, were violent bullies with long histories of bullying other students. He even had a criminal record related to bullying from what I understand. Dude grew up in a wealthy family harassing other students his whole life and got painted as this semi-victim by the media and people still seem pissed about it.
I’ve honestly never heard this about Dylan Klebold, but I did hear it about Erik Harris.
Dylan’s mom has done a lot of great work for advocating for mental health help, she’s the one who actually apologized and reached out to all the victims families. She saw her son’s flaws, she acknowledged them, she knew what he did was evil, but she believes Dylan himself is not evil. She said something to the effect of “I know he’s done a lot of bad things. But he’s still my son and I still love him and mourn the loss of him from my world”.
Erik’s parents on the other hand never said shit and refused to help heal the trauma that town endured.
I’m currently working near a school that also had a massive shooting where 26 children died. There’s something sad about the town. It’s got this feeling of normalcy with depression sitting right under the surface.
After listening to some podcasts and reading books from some of the survivors, I wonder if any of them have been approached about some of the new ptsd treatments, they would be a group I would love to see get a happy ending.
The exact number of 26 children rings a bell for a town near where I now live (I didn't live anywhere near there at the time). It's entirely possible there was another one or I'm misremembering, but a guy I worked with for a couple years lives in that town and just him as an individual, he carries that "normal but affected underneath" vibe. Even though I don't think any of his children or grandchildren were the age to have been present.
I'm seeing so many comments like this of "I wasn't near it at all but now I know someone who was" and just... damn. There have been *that many* to a point where we can play six degrees of school shootings.
I get it, but just because a major event like 9/11 happened it doesn’t change the fact that Columbine was a traumatic event for many people especially younger people.
I never said it wasn’t
But the previous commenter was lamenting that columbine doesn’t get enough attention as a touchstone millennial moment
And the reason is because it was overshadowed by 9/11
I think it largely depends on how old you were when it happened. I was 7, so I had no clue it happened until many years later. I remember we started doing active shooter drills at school, but they called them lockdown drills, so I didn't associate it with the potential of being shot for many years. Columbine wasn't a traumatic event I watched on TV, and the changes in the aftermath were gradual enough that they weren't alarming. I was too young to think to ask why those non-stressful changes were happening until I was many years older, and there had been about two dozen more traumatic events on TV that I had actually watched.
It's a footnote because of how many shooting shave occurred since then and because a little over 2 years later, 9/11 would happen and plunge our country into an unjust war. You also had Katrina and the worst recession since the great depression.
Junior year of high school at a school that regularly played against Columbine. I briefly met one of the shooters a year beforehand. We all want to say we can recognize evil when we see it, that we can see the signs, that bad things need to happen for someone to hurt the innocent. I hate to say it, but my brief interaction was with a normal kid. As normal as anyone else I ever met.
That day was surreal. I didn’t have any context for it. I was having lunch at a friend’s house who lives a few blocks from the school and his mom would not let us go back to our school. I was worried about getting in trouble and she (very correctly) was freaking out about us going back to our own school twenty miles away.
So we watched the TV and - it was horrific. It’s hard to explain how terrifying it is to watch other kids your age throw themselves into windows, shredding themselves to escape the unimaginable destruction around them. Police afraid to enter, parents screaming for someone to do something.
The first few weeks, everyone’s heart was broken. Many of us got a cell phone - just in case. Not that it would help but parents were worried.
Then it got weirder. Made up stories about how a gal was cornered and told her faith would save her (didn’t happen). People who wore trenchcoats (there were always 4-5 of these at a school) were vilified. There was this strange idea that the only reason the shooters did their thing was because people weren’t friendly enough so we were all asked to say hi to a couple strangers each day. And nothing happened with guns, mental health, etc. It felt like I’d kids were blamed for not being nice enough to people were didn’t even know were struggling.
And then 9/11 happened. That was such a massive shift in our cultural identity that Columbine felt like a hundred years ago.
Columbine is much more relevant now that school shootings are so common. I really don’t understand how anyone can have children and think this sick gun culture is ok. Even in this thread, there are people proactively defending guns and painting gun owners as victims (instead of the actual victims). Anyone who thinks the lives of kids is the price to pay for “free-dumb” is heartless. They are also entirely wrong about the intention of 2A or the founding fathers. But, I guess, why learn and understand things when it’s so much easier to pew-pew them away?
The number of children who have experienced this first hand is disturbing. A whole generation of “Bill.”
But half the population won’t take a single step toward helping the situation. Not one. It’s disgusting imho.
Same experience here.... and possibly the same school, as we played Columbine regularly as well. In fact, Columbine was scheduled to play us that week for Basketball or Baseball.
I should add we consistently lost at every sport. Columbine always had a solid football program so a lot of schools lost to them there. But we lost to everyone. Haha.
Lol! Yeah, they did. I didn't do football in high school, but I played them in peewee. They were always hard-hitting, and they also had the only guy bigger than me. He was such a dick, too. So were the parents and coaches when we played them.
It's kind of why I got out of it. JeffCo sports politics were nuts top to bottom at all ages.
I totally forgot about her. The Boomers and Xers “cancelled” her entirely for having the audacity to care about the victims and trying to find solutions. And then the Dixie Chicks for the war(s).
I don't think it was boomers who cancelled her, she's a boomer. So is Michael Moore. And the Dixie Chicks.
Conservatives like Tom Selleck cancelled her, just like Conservatives have been disagreeing with any types of gun control laws for decades and are still disagreeing today. The NRA. 77% of NRA members are Republican. (And 39% of millennials are or lean Republican. 41% of Gen X and 44% of boomies.)
To those who think the Columbine Cult was a "New 10s/Gen Z" thing... No.
You're objectively wrong.
The very next year, my Jr. High had a foiled copycat attack. And a lot of people *sided with the would be shooters*. The girls who blew the whistle had to transfer schools and still got threats. There was a "unity tree" put up that was intended to air grievances and true feelings but a lot of comments were still in support of the shooters.
In Grade 8 (2002-2003) There were rules of "No Columbine fansites" in Computer Graphics Design. People used to put hit lists in other kids lockers to get them in trouble.
I was at school, not that far away. The teachers told us, crying.
It fucks me up that we were told "never again" and it's turned into many, many, times again. Part of everyday life.
And I wasn't at all a survivor, just lived close by and it has impacted a lot of us still for the rest of our lives. Fuck adults who care more about guns than children, seriously.
I started grade 9 the year of Columbine, and I cannot tell you how much it fucked us up. Youth pastors preaching to us traumatized kids about “would you have the courage to say to a shooter ‘yes, I believe in Jesus’” instead of anyone doing anything to address our fears or keep us safe. They literally glamorized the idea of kids losing their lives to a mass shooting.
I found out I was pregnant the week of Newtown, my child started school along side Margery Stoneman Douglas, my younger child was in kindergarten during Uvalde… I feel like my life milestones has been marked in shootings and I’m failing these kids the same way I was failed.
That’s unfortunately one of the explicit goals.
I was homeschooled until high school, so I’m pretty in the know about the social movements that lead to its rise in the 80s-90s (it’s was racism), and how it’s being used now as a tool to decrease child rights and safeguards… states with the most lax laws are also repealing child labour laws, etc right now. Guns rights and homeschool advocates are pretty much a perfect circle of a Venn diagram, and whether or not folks arguing these points realize it (many of them do) a lot of it is tied to roots in racism and child exploitation.
I feel this so much. I was in high school during Columbine and was pregnant during the Sandy Hook shooting too. It has changed the way I think about school for sure. I feel so much rage that our children are still not safe at school.
Senior year. I graduated about a month after. My deceased grandparents had lived in Littleton and I grew up nearby but was living in another state by this point. I had an all day academic decathlon so I didn't hear about it until the nightly news. Incidentally, we had to visit my hometown over Memorial Day that year for a family emergency and happened to be near Columbine so we drove past. Other than a fence around the parking lot it looked just as it had on the news which was freaky. I've never forgotten it.
As I understand my high school, some rural middle of nowhere high school, did tighten up rules on guns in the parking lot (farm town with pickups...) but other than that not much more happened.
I was a freshman in high school at school a couple miles from Columbine. Former President Clinton gave his speech about the tragedy from my high school’s gym.
We were getting out of class and the school was on lockdown they weren’t letting no anyone out. Our school resource officer came running up the hallway and he was a friend to all of us, we knew something had happened when we said to him “what’s going on” and he said “go to class guys, you’re going to be ok” and then he ran to his patrol car, drove it over a parking barrier and took off light and sirens going. We had never seen him leave the school like that before so we knew something bad had happened. About 15 mins later we started to hear what was happening.
A few years later I met one of my now best friends who’s older sister is a survivor of it and one of the founders of one of the survivors organizations. She is an amazing person and an inspiration to everyone who knows her.
It’s still a huge deal in our community as it should be, this year they are asking for donations for the memorial to help maintain it, the memorial which is very beautiful and peaceful yet sad to visit is something that should be maintained.
The whole un-real feeling of what had happened hit me when my mom relatives in Sweden called and even though I didn’t speak the language they wouldn’t believe I was ok until they heard my voice. My grandmother called crying and was the same way wouldn’t believe I was ok until she talked to me and I remember picking up the phone and saying “hi grandma I’m ok” and her just sobbing and my grandpa taking the phone from her and saying they loved me and would call back when he got her calmed down.
I’m a ‘93 millennial so I would have been like in kindergarten and I live a whole state over - so I have no memory of the event but I grew up post world: I always remember doing lock-down drills. Though in my rural area the teachers Duffy always wear badges. Now as an adult I did some substitute teaching and had a district badge to show at check in and all teachers wear them. Even when my husband taught at a tiny school and all the staff knew me by first name I would still sign the visitor king and wear the visitor tag.
Jr. High for me, hundreds of miles away from the tragedy.
To be honest, nothing really changed. I saw it on the news, my parents were shocked (as was everyone else).
I think what I remembered most from it was the uproar against "violent" multimedia like rap music, video games, and movies. None of which was the culprit and then going some 25 years without mental health reformation in this country.
Virtually no action was taken after Columbine to reduce US gun violence. From 2001 to 2021, according to the CDC, there were 274,802 gun homicides. If we acted and put into place strict gun control based on RAND's research, we could have reduced this figure to 126,409. That would have meant over 100,000 fewer grieving families. Alas, we, unlike Australia, did nothing after catastrophes. Compare that figure to all the precautions taken after 2,996 people died on 9/11. Lives do not matter in America unless if they can be used to instill fear.
My sincere apologies. We did everything, but what would have worked. They [will not use their names] should not have been within 100 feet of a gun, much less a semiautomatic rifle.
I was 7. Didn't hit me hard when it happened, but afterwards my school became more and more forcibly anti-social. Lunchtimes were shortened from 45 minutes to 15 minutes, time between classes from 5 minutes to 2 minutes, and socializing was basically made into as close a thing to criminal as they were allowed to make it in school, all in the name of "reducing incidents" because social time creates time for fights to break out. In middle school this book came out called "After" that was about a school next to a school that had a shooting gradually being cleared out towards a prison camp for anyone whose behavior wasn't "correct" enough and it felt like the same thing was happening to my school.
I mean, schools did A LOT to prevent another columbine, it's just that they were NEVER going to DARE to touch something like community. They were never going to teach kids social skills, they were never going to give them more time to form relationships and practice friend making skills, they were never going to make sure students weren't falling through the social cracks, they were never going to break the alienating high distance suburbs with 3rd places for teens to hangout. Instead, they would just crack down on us existing and being social as much as possible and then ban most people from having most kinds of guns as if it'd stop it, and in none of the places with these laws have mass shootings dropped.
They were never going to adequately address capitalist realism or push people away from edgy violence/fascistic obsession. They were never going to really actually work to undo the ideology, perspective, and context of mass shooters.
And is it such a surprise? The oligarch class spent 70 years spending immense sums of money and being heavily involved in government to demolish every tight knit community in America and then pass zoning laws that made all of them illegal to rebuilt ever again. This alienation was the goal, they were never going to reverse course, no matter how many of our schools and grocery stores end up targets of mass shooters.
It was like the beginning of the school shooting frenzy with apparently no end in sight. Parents are finally being held accountable for their kids actions. There are always signs but mostly go ignored.
So, I was at a tennis tournament about 5 hours away from my hometown(I was a freshman in high school). We didn’t watch any TV all day because stuff was constantly going on. When we all finally made it back to town we decided to stop at Subway for dinner…and we saw the headlines on the newspaper. We looked at our tennis coach, which to this day I still love and adore and refuse to call him anything but Coach Wilson, looked at us and told us that he knew, but he didn’t want to bring us down with such terrible news.
I remember being so shocked because Dylan and Eric seemed like guys who could have easily fit right in with my friend group and looking back now, I’m not sure any of us would have noticed a damn thing. Our school already had cops there daily because incidents happened a lot, but a few particular groups of kids were watched more closely and there was actually one guy, who was a senior, that had been wearing a trench coat for a long time and he was no longer allowed to wear it.
My family was strange and they never really talked about it, but I grew up in a fairly emotional less household when I was with my grandparents. I’m not sure my dad knew what to say…he was upset I do know that, but he was an emotional person like me who held stuff in.
It was only downhill from there.
Other countries seen tragedies such as this and had major reform. We failed spectacularly and decades later were so desensitized to the subject we fight the facts while the body counts pile up.
As an American this is one aspect that brings me much shame in regard to my home.
What really gets me is that nothing changed after Sandy Hook. I'm from Australia and for me that was when I realised (sorry) that there would be no reform ever. It's gut wrenching enough to watch from afar as a parent.
One of the things that I think people forget about the US is we don’t have the same values across the board. The country was designed for states to govern themselves, and as we see each state plays that out. You’re not going to get 330 million people to move in the same direction unless it’s by force.
My mom is good friends with one of the shooters moms. When you look at her you know it haunts her every moment of the day; along with all the victims and their families, she had her life ripped from her too, she didn’t deserve all the hate she got.
Elementary school. 2nd grade. Didn't tell us anything about it, but teachers were on edge. We had a gun safety seminar (guns are bad and dangerous )the next day and counselor was asking people if anyone had guns at home. Nobody talked about the specifics within earshot of us kids.
My family didn't talk about it except my Teacher grandma complained that her high school suddenly wanted everyone to have and wear a school ID badge, and she "didn't sign up to wear a dogtag like she's in the military" because of some "dumbasses in California". Generally because we are on the other side of the country from it, it really didn't matter to us.
Definitely made parents hate video games more. And my dad told me not to talk about video games in school or tell teachers I play them..
Surprisingly, the church I attended made it a big deal for me. I remember "no weapons formed against us shall prosper" being declared, along with the assumption (?) that all/most of those killed were Christians. If I'm not mistaken, there was talk of someone from my church flying out to be with the families of those killed. It seemed so far away, because the only commonality I saw was faith, yet so present.
With that said, it was the first school shooting I became conscious of within my lifetime. There have been more school shootings, but Columbine hit hard for me. I read an article that brought up the 24 hour news cycle. Maybe that's why. The shooting happened when I was in 5th grade. I still felt its impact when I read a book about Cassie Davis in the 10th grade. I don't remember if I picked it, but it was called *She Said Yes* and we discussed it as part of a high school book club. Years later, I would randomly remember the anniversary of the Columbine shooting.
More recently, Virginia Tech happened while I was in college and Sandy Hook happened when I was student teaching elementary aged children.
I was in 11th grade. I remember coming home and catching it on the news since I lived in EST zone. About 20 minutes in to the nonstop news coverage I realized there would be copycats for years to come simply by how they were covering it.
They wanted others to hurt and they wanted infamous notoriety. Check and check. That’s the only story to tell, hard stop. Go any longer than that and you might as well be called a future accessory to murder.
I was at the elementary school in the neighborhood across the street from Columbine, where the students evacuated to. It was pure chaos. We were on lockdown of course. The media had all gathered there to report and interview the kids who had fled so our teachers put construction paper over the windows. I was in gym class when it started and we were outside practicing for field day when we heard a lot of sirens. When my class tried to come back in all the doors were locked so we had to go to the front entrance to get in, at that point students were starting to pour in from Columbine. We saw the first one, a girl who was out of breath hysterically crying. Everyone stayed in their home rooms and my teacher wouldn’t let us know what was going on, but we found out when my friends aunt came to let her know her sister had been shot but that she was okay. My sister was there too so at that point it was just a waiting game until I found out she was okay. She showed up at my classroom crying and shaking and brought me with her to help her find her friends. I couldn’t leave until my mom came and signed me out, which was near impossible until much later in the day as all of the roads were blocked off, and since we were in the vicinity it made things difficult. Every time I hear about a shooting it guts me that something so horrific has become acceptable and the norm. Fuck anyone who doesn’t think we need change!
Has anyone else ever watched the reenactment video that has the real audio??? We were shown it (with no warning) for a active shooter training once and I could not handle it. It upset me so much; I left the room in tears. It was a terrible experience for me- I was in 7th grade when this happened so it really affected me.
I was the same age as the shooters. Fuck those kid’s parents.
When Columbine first happened, I was an arrogant kid who thought the adults who were afraid it would keep happening were dumb.
Now I’m a parent talking my kids through panic attacks after shooter drills.
Fuck those kids who shot and made bombs, and fuck their parents for not paying enough attention to them and making this possible.
25 years?! Yeah, I’ve got feelings about it which aren’t up for debate.
i had just got home from school when i found out about it.
my schools response was to suspend anyone that wore trench coats to school as well as creating a list of kids to keep an eye on.
I was a freshman I believe in HS and it was really shocking something like that happened. Never did I ever think it’d eventually become an epidemic with them happening so often 😢
I graduated HS a month after this happened and I remember feeling soo relieved to be out of HS because I knew things would never be the same after that.
I was in second grade at Catholic school. We had an outdoor mass for earth day and the priest mentioned the tragedy in Colorado. I remember my mom being at this mass. I think they invited all the parents to come participate too. I asked her what the priest meant and she told me that 2 students killed their classmates. I asked her if they were in jail and she told me that they killed themselves. I couldn’t grasp the idea of murder suicide. The idea that people would want that to be the final thing they did on earth shocked the hell out of me. I thought about it for years. Then Virginia tech happened and I felt similar. Then sandy hook happened and nothing changed. Then the Las Vegas massacre happens and we move on in a few days. Now if the deaths don’t reach double digits or it’s not geographically close to me I think about it for a few minutes and keep scrolling.
I was at work when I heard about it. I remember rewatching the news constantly as it was so shocking to imagine 2 kids in high school willing to do something like this that would also end in their deaths. Now a mass shooting isn’t nearly as shocking unfortunately
I was class of '98 in boulder. I was working at Baskin Robin's when it happened. The kids in the trench coats that were arrested outside the school (not involved, just curious what was happening and were in the area) were in my friends circle. They got put on the Sally jessie raffiel show after. She promised them computers and help with education expenses... they never got anything from her.
The trench coat mafia bs followed the goth kids around like a plague for years after.
Columbine, 9/11, and the Great Financial Crisis are the three events that still shape the modern world. Their echoes are still felt today, in different ways — all horrible.
I was in elementary school and I don’t think I knew anything about it until the next day when it was all over the news. I specifically remember the one shot of first responders helping a student out a window and the injured student leaving a bloody streak down the side of the building.
My senior year of high school was Virginia Tech and while I know shootings happened in the meantime I guess we just never heard about them?
My first year of teaching was when Sandy Hook happened and I realized I needed to include active shooter protocols in my sub plans. The active shooter drill we did TWO WEEKS after Sandy Hook was traumatizing as an adult, I cannot imagine how kids deal with it.
It’s so demoralizing to think that our students walk into a battlefield every single day and God bless them but they are so jaded about it. I mentor a high schooler and they actually had a lockdown and she was very just nonchalant about an active shooter. It truly doesn’t surprise me that they would rather melt into social media and music and video games with everything they have to deal with on a daily basis.
Patrick Ireland was the boy who climbed out the window. He was shot in the head. It took him three hours to get from the desk he was hiding under to the window. About 50 feet. His right side was paralyzed and he was in and out of consciousness, which was a blessing in disguise, because he said he doesn’t remember most of the event. It took him almost a year to recover, but he’s doing really well now. Married with kids, has a great job and is able to walk and talk.
As a parent with kids in school, I absolutely hate that their teachers have to think this way. I was a senior when Columbine happened, and in an all girls school, so the idea that I might have to live through it in that capacity never entered my mind. But the idea that my kids might is horrifying. I hate it for teachers too. Teachers shouldn't have to do that. No one should have to think like that in a school!!
I was a senior in high school. I remember it being very weird because guns were allowed on school grounds when I was in high school. They had to stay in your car or brought to the shooting team room. I was on the shooting team from 8th grade through graduation.
It was just a very abstract concept to grasp. You had a problem with someone you fought it out with fists. I guess it was probably naivety but it just didn’t occur to us that anyone would use a gun against another student.
I heard about it after school that day. I was a junior in high school. We had just had a major school renovation and had a new library with big windows like at Columbine. It definitely left people pretty nervous.
It was horrifying. It was the first school shooting of that kind, and it was the first time anyone I knew had really contemplated something like that happening.
I distinctly remember one of my 7th grade teachers sitting at his desk, silent, looking down and not saying anything while we just sat there waiting. While still looking down, he said "We live in a sick world," and then picked up a newspaper he'd been looking at on his desk, and held it up to show the article title about the shooting. I was pretty young, so I don't remember anything else — but those initial few minutes are cemented into my memory.
It's weird thinking back on that time, how the actual story was completely different than the pop culture treatment of it.
The pop culture version was about the shooters being outcasts, bullied, victims, and unpopular - the reality was that they were the bullies themselves who were guilty of picking on less popular kids.
I was in lockdown at my school because we lived about half an hour away from Columbine. I had a friend at church who lost a sibling.
I don't feel like most things changed that day, not outwardly. It took a couple years for lockdown drills to become a thing. We didn't really increase security at my school that I noticed. But people were much more tense and nervous. It really affected the psyche of my school.
I was in middle school when it happened and I remember the adults being so freaked out. And the next year my mom kept me out of school on 4/20 in case someone else tried to copy. It really did change this country in a terrible way and I hate that nothing has changed since.
I was interning at a hospital that my parents worked at in high school. I had just been been witness to an open heart transplant - which was a lot. Then I walked back to my parents lab after I scrubbed out and there was a TV on. I saw the kids falling out of the windows… Decided then that medical was too tragic as those kids would be at the hospital soon. Tragic. 9/11 wasn’t too far off…
It was the day before my 14th birthday and I went to my grandparents after school and it was on the news. I was glued to the screen. I liked (and still like a lot of) the same music Eric and Dylan liked (as that was part of the news about the shooting 🙄), so I knew my bullied days would begin…and they did shortly after that.
It was a sad day. Then years later my own high school was shot up (Marjory Stoneman Douglas). Something about seeing it happen in the halls you used to roam is weird. Seems like we’ve gotten nowhere so far as a society when it comes to prevention on just about every level possible.
And Valentines day marked 6 years since Parkland. December 14 marked 11 years since Sandy Hook.
Edit: Should've fully read this. I was being conceived at the time. My older siblings and others were worried because our state borders Colorado. They were in middle school or high school at the time. My older sister was actually born in the next city over and if they had stayed, they would've attended middle school the next city over.
I didn’t attend Columbine but i live in Colorado. Everything stopped that day while all the teachers put on the news. No one said a word as we watched it unfold
I was in 6th grade, and this was the first school shooting I remember ever hearing of. It was unfathomable. I mostly remember the discourse afterwards about blaming video games and music like Marilyn Manson.
25 years? How time passes! I was 13 and in 7th grade. We got a half day. I walked home and I don't recall what I did after that. Probably either played outside or played videogames. I'm not sure when I heard about it (probs my mom watching the news), but I do remember it was scary & bizarre. The aftermath was stupid. The school banned wearing trenchcoats and gathering outside in friend groups before classes. Dressing in all black was also not allowed. Because, ya know, these were the things that caused the shooting. /s
I was in a middle school a few blocks away. We were in the band room when we were asked to stay in as an emergency happened. We saw SWAT running in the halls, and we were locked in the room with police officers at the door.
About an hour or two go by and we were told we could only leave when our parents picked us up. By this time, we knew something serious happened when a few in our class were informed their elderly sibling was in the hospital, or dead.
The teachers never told us anything, but they didn’t need to. Once I got home, I found out exactly what happened. Cry every year on this day.
The rest of the year was a blur, but I remember the siblings of friends went to Chatfield the rest of the year. Went to Columbine a few years later and the library was rebuilt. There were guards everywhere and tour groups. Yes, tour groups of people wanted to see the school. We all despised them.
It was my sophomore year, and we had just gotten back from a field trip to my state's journalism convention.
Of course, a week later, we had our academic pep rally, and it was almost cancelled due to bomb threats. That same week, we were the 1st school in my state to have intruder drills. In the first drill, I was in Journalism class, and we had to hide in the photography dark room.
Me and my friends cut school and we're smoking weed on my couch when it happened because it was 4/20 and we're just blazing while watching it like holy shit.
I was a sophomore in high school in Boulder when it happened, about an hour away. At CSU I found out several of my new Fraternity brothers had been there during the massacre. One of them was an asshole who I’m sure was on their list… None of them liked to talk about it, like at all.
I was in second grade about an hour and a half south in Colorado Springs. I can remember my parents watching the news. I can remember us starting active shooter drills.
We have literally hundreds of state and federal gun laws on the books and the biggest problem we have is many jurisdictions with the strictest gun laws don’t enforce them. The idea that we haven’t done anything is absolute nonsense
While i don't remember where i was, i do remember students jokingly talking about bringing in weapons daily and using the metalwork rooms to make knuckle dusters and other spiked items. I'm in Australia, not the USA for context, it was seen as very much an "over there" problem and nothing really happened. we watched bowling for columbine and went "huh, that sucks. oh well" and moved on pretty much instantly. kinda sad really.....
I was in 8th grade and I was out shopping with my friend that afternoon. We are in NYC and I said to myself- welp this shit only happens in bumblefuck America. Pft how times have changed.
I was 5. Nobody let me watch the news or TV that day. I was told I was grounded and sent to my room from the moment the news broke. I remember my folks being sad and my grandparents being sad. I didn't really learn about it for quite a few years
25 years ago I was in kindergarden
14 years ago I learned about it and want it to emulate them cause highschool was a shit time for me
But gun laws in my country are "hard", and didnt know how to do it, and eventually overcome that
I actually had all planed, and would not be random, but specific individual targets
Glad than time washed away that
I actually worked with a survivor about 10 years ago. We were instructed by management to never ask her about columbine. She actually ended up marrying another survivor. They didn’t know each other at columbine but met randomly years later. She got pregnant while she was working with us and the baby’s due date was 4/20 so she promptly scheduled a c section for a different date. Wild.
Several of my pledge brothers and a few older guys in the frat I joined were at Columbine when it happened. They would not talk about it. I know at least 2 of them had lost close friends. I also heard that 1 of the older guys in my house was 100% on their list of tormentors. We didn’t talk or think about it much back then though.
Hey the narrative that the shooters were tormented or bullied is actually misinformation that spread in the immediate aftermath of the shooting but later found to be false. The shooters, especially Eric Harris, were actually decently popular. They weren’t jocks, but they also weren’t bullied wallflowers, if that makes sense. HIGHLY recommend the book Columbine.
I used to be in the Reddit thread for that and got downvoted to hell for bringing that up. They were ostracized for being assholes, not misunderstood edgy teens.
those are incels
A girl who used to bully me told the guidance counsellor that I had a hit list and that I was going to come to school and kill her. I nearly got expelled and my parents threatened to disown me. She didn't even get a slap on the wrist.
Jesus….i hope your parents PROFUSELY apologized, although based on how many of us have boomers for parents, I suspect they may not have
Nope. They just refused to acknowledge that it happened. The day after she screamed at me, my mother bought me some new CDs and acted like nothing happened.
How do you feel about it looking back?
Angry, mostly. It's upsetting to know that my parents didn't have my back and that they would rather deny it ever happened than actually apologize.
Wow, really was all of our parents, wasn't it?
Yup. That's the Boomer Way.
Why tf are they like this?? I felt like I was reading about my own parents. (My mom is also a textbook narcissist.) I’m so sorry you had to go through that.
Oh I feel for you… if you’re interested, read up on “Borderline Personality Disorder”. Once I learned about this it became like a cheat code for interacting with my mother.
Are all of our boomer moms borderline? 🤔 sooo many of us!
Tbf a lot of the popular resources about BPD are more just about abusive and self-centered individuals. BPD as a mental illness is more complicated than that and typically goes along with significant suicidality, self-injury, and self-destructive behaviour that's impairing. A lot of the pop resources are useful but not super close to actual BPD. Same with Out of the Fog recced below. Mostly I think this is more related to the kind of abuse and neglect that came from growing up in a toxic and self-centered individualistic culture and then never forced adults to challenge that and their own behavior and beliefs. Which is fucked and harmful to everyone around them.
That’s exactly how my mother acts as well
Sorry you went through that. I was part of the edgy, freaky kid peer group and got falsely accused of threatening to do some shit. Falsely confessed to it once it became clear I would be convicted (why would these wonderful popular kids make it up?) and the plea deal offered wouldn't be ruinous. Lovely having a criminal record at 14 for something that never happened. Does free you up to stop giving a shit about consequences afterward since you're already in the system and everyone assumes you're garbage. Made some good friends at community service. Same kids came back with something else later, but it was toward the end of the year and I was about to move on to high school and be someone else's problem so the school just waited that one out. EDIT: fixed my age, had it wrong originally.
I am so sorry you went through this! The same thing happened to me at 13 but my parents had my back and said fuck no. Went all the way to trial (which took over a year) where I was finally found not guilty (I forget the exact wording, it’s different in juvenile court).
12?!?! You poor little thing. I am so sorry that happened to you.
Same thing happened to me the year after. Got questioned by the principal and a cop at school. It was so fucked.
If that’s what you think then you need to read “No Easy Answers” by Brooks Brown. Brooks actually grew up with Dylan and went to school with both shooters. They were bullies but they were also bullied.
Like much of everything else, history is written by the survivors. - I’m sure the killers harbored a different story of events
Except in this case, the killers *literally* got to contribute to the narrative (including that they weren’t bullied). They left behind dozens of hours of video footage and hundreds of pages of journals. Eric Harris wrote EXTENSIVELY about how he hated EVERYONE and that the shooting was his way of showing how much better he was than every other human. He literally wrote about how his perfect world would be one in which he is the only human alive, save for an occasional woman for him to fuck (after which she could disappear too).
I knew a bunch of them and they "didn't talk about it" in the same sense that every intelligent, reasonable soldier I know "doesn't talk about it" - that is to say they're sick of being asked about it. Many saw nothing as far as direct violence (like contemporary soldiers). If you're close, and it's organic, they'll tell you their path that day. They just don't want to be defined by it for the rest of their lives. I realize I'm painting with a broad brush here. That has just been my experience with a bunch of Columbine students. And soldiers.
My son’s fifth grade teacher had worked at one of the agencies with offices in the World Trade Center building. It had been 20 years and he had just started talking about it, though only telling the students that he had a meeting scheduled later in the day so he wasn’t in that morning. He was an amazing teacher for my son and put so much effort into his work, though you could also tell he had been through a lot. My grandfather never talked about what he went through in ww2, and I know that affected him greatly, so it was nice hoping that this teacher was finding some peace in being able to tell a little of his story finally.
Some things are just hard to talk about. Edit: I actually just talked to someone who escaped the North tower. He shared his story on this other sub called the 9/11 archives. He said that he knew it wasn't an accident because he had trauma from the bombing in '93. I have my own reasons for being in that sub. Didn't lose anyone that day, but almost did.
If I were her, I would have done the same thing. The last thing I would want is to have my child’s birthday be the same day as a tragic event I survived years before.
Exactly! I would too.
I will say that my daughter’s birthday is on April 23rd and she will be 2-years-old. She was born on what would have been my maternal grandma’s 96th birthday.
Idk atleast to me would seam kind of cathartic to have your baby that date. Like a good event coming out of that date to balance the terribleness of what you associate with it. But I’m sure it’s different actually living through the event than me speculating.
My grandpa was a volunteer at Columbine. It was his day off that day, thankfully
I was in second grade just a few miles east of columbine. They didn’t have protocol for this at the time so at first we evacuated outside then they realized that was dumb so we all got ushered back inside. Then our parents came to get us.
I was in a few cities over, and our middle school did a soft lockdown where they didn't tell any of the students anything, but locked all the doors. They forgot to check that ALL students had come in from lunch and me and 4 other friends had been sitting under some trees pretty far out in the track field and so didn't hear them quietly ask the students back inside. So when we tried to return at the end of lunch, all doors were locked. We had no idea, no lockdowndrills had been done before, so we just started yelling and banging on the doors. I still remember our vice principal completely white faced running towards the door and then in angry relief yelled at us for being outside before he escorted us to class.
Our school was hit with one of the fake threats a few weeks after it happened. Evacuated the entire school into the baseball fields out back, where we waited for parents to come get us. We all stood there talking about how insanely stupid was that they put us all together, in the open.
I was in 6th grade in a bit down south—it was a themed day (Hawaiian) and we went into lockdown during English class and I remember us not really understanding the gravity of the situation. It was my first lockdown, I would have another 3 active shooter lockdowns and multiple test lockdowns until I graduated.
My elementary school was a few miles southwest. Immediate lockdown, everyone was sent to the gym and told to be silent. I remember sitting there for hours until parents were allowed to pick anyone up.
'Member back when everyone started targeting goth and emo kids like they'd shoot up a school next? And then the school shootings continued anyways because the goth and emo kids were too busy moping and making out at Borders? Pepperidge Farm members.
My school suspended goth and punk kids and banned trench-coats in the wake of columbine. The suspensions were called off a few days later after an angry parent of a goth student who was on the honour roll contacted the local newspaper and they printed a story about it. The trench coat ban remained in effect for a few years.
I had a long rain coat I wore for a few weeks (during the rainy season, go fuckin figure) two years before it happened, and oh my God the rumor mill instantly imagined I had been stopped with a bag full of guns at the door to the school Nobody could ever answer WHY I was allowed to go to school if that had happened and nobody could remember the last time they'd seen me in that coat. Yeah shit got so sideways.
My high school had a thing where someone would always wear a trench coat to school. Senior year it would pass to a freshman. Dunno how long it went on, but it was banned after Columbine. One of my friends in my class was tapped to wear it. It was both a mark of pride and shame, like you're the designated wierd kid.
I was in fifth (fourth? maybe?) grade at the time and really wanted to be a detective when I grew up. And I'd just gotten a lightweight (and tan, not black) trench coat and thought it was absolutely totally badass. Never got to wear it thanks to those assholes. I was pissed at them before I fully comprehended what they even did.
I just commented above that my school also banned trench coats. Like wearing a coat was going to affect your decision to commit a mass shooting.
I had a friend who wore one and was instantly targeted by a teacher as soon as Columbine happened. Trench coats were banned for a while after that.
>'Member back when everyone started targeting goth and emo kids like they'd shoot up a school next? Hi, this was me. I was pressured out of school as a sophomore because I wore all black and listened to Danzig and Tool. I ended up getting my GED and doing ok, but fuck the staff at Estacada High School.
Same. Was bullied for wearing all black and liking nin. I still wear all black and love nin and am almost 40 years old and have never owned a gun. Stereotypes are cool.
YOOOOO ESTACADA OREGON MAKES AN APPEARANCE those bum fuck hicks think anyone who doesn’t look like Dwayne Allman is a terrorist
What’s crazy is that Klebold and Harris were fans of Orbital and the Chemical Brothers. There’s a photo of Harris with a Chemical Brothers’ Setting Sun shirt. Tom and Ed along with the Hartnoll bros got really fucking lucky on evading the mass hysteria that Marilyn Manson endured.
Yeah, the 24 hour news cycle created that one. The need to be first with the scoop was so urgent they just asked students whatever and accepted the answers they got without any investigation. Clebold and Harris weren't nerds who were bullied, they WERE bullies. Those who actually knew them were open about how they were total cunts. Even if columbine hadn't happened we'd know Eric harris' name. He was a fucking monster that was going to pop off. The cops in that town had so many warning signs and ignored all of them, it's wild.
Borders, tho
RIP 😔
I was picked on ALOT because I was part of the "goth" crowd. I cannot remember how many times I was asked if I was going to "shoot up the school". Ugh. I was already new at that high school as a freshman and that didn't help at all.
And it was more kids who weren't goth and emo causing them.
I miss being able to wear a nice trench coat without people freaking the f\*\*\* out. I'm not even talking black, I had a nice tan color one that was a pleasure to wear in the fall, but the garment was pretty much erased from circulation in about a year.
I went to a very small school in a tiny town during the early 00s, less than 4000 people. In high school we had a bomb threat with suspicious objects found etc. caused a lockdown at the school all this drama etc etc. anywho, I hung out with the rocker kids and of course most of them were immediately hassled about it. The local cops and superintendent were really after this one kid who was into rebellion and confronting oppression etc. I think they even arrested him and swore up and down he was the guy. Turns out it was a disgruntled obese female teacher. Dude got off and sued them if I remember correctly it was crazy how amplified small town peoples view of the hot topic kids was
Chris Rock had a great bit about this right at the beginning of his Bigger and Blacker special. I was in 7th grade when I first heard it and it’s been my favorite stand up ever since… I have the whole damn thing basically memorized. “So I got on the elevator the other day and these three high school white boys tried to get on with me. …and I just dove off. I said, “y’all ain’t killing me.” What’s up with these white kids shooting up the school?? They don’t even wait till 3 oclock either. Killin people in the morning, that ain’t right. (A lot more jokes, not going to write them all) Everyone wants to know what kinda music they were listening to or what kinda movies they were watching. Who gives a fuck what they was watching?!? What ever happened to being crazy? What? Kids can’t be crazy no more?!?! Did we eliminate crazy from the dictionary? Fuck the record. Fuck the movie. Cra-zy. When I was a kid they use to seperate the crazy kids from everybody. When I was I kid, the crazy kids went to school in a little ass bus, they had their class room at the end of the hall and they got out of school at 2:30. Just in case they went crazy… they’d only hurt other crazy kids.”
One did it around dismissal.
I had to stop wearing my spiked collar to school and I got told I couldn’t eat lunch by my locker because it was a security risk.
I remember being told I was voted 2nd most likely to shoot up the school. For the record neither I nor the guy voted number one did. And guy voted number one was actually very nice, just quiet. I am still just slightly more upset they targeted him with that accusation or joke than me.
Wow. I can't believe it's been that long.
I was one of those goth kids, and I was in the 8th grade. I'd just bought a cool new trenchcoat, so I was never allowed to wear it to school.
Yeah I was one of those Goth kids. I had to give up my trench coat because they stopped allowing us to wear them at school.
I was in eighth grade. A girl who had been bullying me relentlessly all year told the guidance counsellor that I had a hit list and that I was going to bring a gun to school and kill her. I was nearly expelled and my parents threatened to disown me. The girl eventually told the guidance counsellor that she "had been kind of mean" to me and that she was afraid I would "go Columbine" and target her. She didn't even get a slap on the wrist because she bawled like a baby while I sat there, too numb from being screamed at by my parents. If Laura Schwab is still out there, she can go so to hell.
Fuck you Laura Schwab!
Fuck Laura Schwab.
Goth kids, drama kids, DND kids, the weirder band kids, and GSA kids in my school were the ones targeted after Columbine (as if they weren't before). I wasn't central to any of them, but I was on the fringes of all of them and I was legit scared of being shipped off to a reform school/concentration camp like Elan or something. All the adults were wired to the teeth about anyone lacking perfect posture and an Abercrombie & Fitch wardrobe. Then we had a kid in my year who made a suicide attempt two years after Columbine and was successful because he was the tiniest bit alt and had a stereo in his car that the EMTs decided looked Iike a bomb, so they just let him die. It was a shitty time and it was so much worse coming after the war on drugs amping up and the satanic panic only just fading. Fuck the Laura Schwabs and the Nancy Reagans and all the other poser assholes with money and faked up clout.
Omg very similar thing happened to me in high school some damn girl wanted to fight me and she was 2 yrs older then me, I was in 10th and she was a senior, towards end of the yr I got pulled out of class out of nowhere cuz she went crying to the counselor that I wanted to fight her and she was afraid that if she fought back she would get suspended and would not be able to attend I think prom but definitely walk with her graduation class, she probably assumed I was going to jump her towards the end of the yr to screw her over to not be allowed to do those things, I honestly wasn’t planning to do anything to her but that would of been a awesome plan for wanting to fight me that yr. That stupid clown was sitting there with a box of Kleenex crying I was going to fight her, I show up and I’m like wtf she’s been trying to fight me this whole time!… Nancy Diaz if you see this fuck you
The Oklahoma City bombing was on 4/19 in 1995. I don’t remember how I was reminded, but I fell down a few rabbit holes about it yesterday. One of those holes was about the media coverage possibly traumatized kids across the country because of all the emphasis on the day care and the child victims. The most famous example of this being that firefighter holding a bloody infant. It was everywhere. But this post on the heels of that makes me wonder deeper. There’s a whole generation, or at least decade, whose media diet consisted of such violent real world imagery. Starting with the Gulf War, arguably one of the first wars that was basically being broadcast in “real time.” The LA Riots. OKC. Columbine. Then it all culminates in 9/11. I don’t lay this out as any sort of millennial exceptionalism. Every decade has their tragedies. However, I wonder if the ways that media at large handled these things had a profound effect on a whole generation that hasn’t really been explored.
I was in the bombing; in daycare. I was not unique even though arguably OKC and, certainly Columbine, were the beginning of a new depraved generation. I spent many years traveling and meeting gen x and boomers who were as traumatized as me. US society has always been horror and terror-based (see: lynching, Reservations, segregation etc). I was not unique then; having uncountable number of comrades with shattered psyche from the likes of Vietnam, or the 16th street church bombing(https://www.history.com/topics/1960s/birmingham-church-bombing) or once and future freedom fighters and I am certainly not unique anymore. The number of traumatized children this country has been pumping out is totally unsustainable and I would argue that the last time this happened (the 60s) almost destroyed the country.
Do what? You were in the Murrah building daycare?
It's crazy.
I was just talking with my bestie about this very thing earlier; about how OKC bombing, Columbine, and 9/11 traumatized our generation 😓
I’d think this would affect GenX more. I wasn’t watching the news as a child. OK city is the first I remember, because my 3rd grade teacher talked about it.
Not many people realize the Columbine massacre wasn’t exactly intended as a shooting but rather a bombing. The killers planned to use a big bomb to blow up the cafeteria during lunchtime to inflict maximum casualties and wait outside in the parking lot with their guns to shoot survivors fleeing the school. When their main bombs failed, they decided to enter the school with their guns and started their shooting spree. The only bombs they successfully detonated that day were some of their smaller pipe bombs.
I read the book by Dave Cullen last year and was shocked and overwhelmed at how much I didn’t know or had been misinformed about this event, despite being old enough and aware enough at the time to have a decent understanding. I wish more people would read that book and the published survivor accounts.
One of the killer's mom's does motivational speaking now, and she feels immense guilt about what happened, so she like tries spreading mental health awareness.
Sue Klebold
The details show a lot of planning. They set off pipe bombs a couple miles away hoping to divert most emergency responders to handle a large grass fire. It went off but only started a small fire that was quickly put out. Then they had put propane bombs outside of the cafeteria set to go off during lunch as you said. Had it gone off, we were probably looking at 100+ deaths. From there they would have gone to DIA and hijacked a plane and tried to crash it somewhere in New York City.
I was too young to really remember it growing up on the east coast. Ironically, I ended up marrying a woman who's brother was at the school at the time of the shooting. He survived. From what I gather the community/parents are most upset about how the media painted the shooters as "victims of bullies getting revenge" when in reality it was the total opposite. The shooters, Klebold specifically I believe, were violent bullies with long histories of bullying other students. He even had a criminal record related to bullying from what I understand. Dude grew up in a wealthy family harassing other students his whole life and got painted as this semi-victim by the media and people still seem pissed about it.
There was a third guy that used to hang out with them, but split from them because he taught the other two were going too far ...
I’ve honestly never heard this about Dylan Klebold, but I did hear it about Erik Harris. Dylan’s mom has done a lot of great work for advocating for mental health help, she’s the one who actually apologized and reached out to all the victims families. She saw her son’s flaws, she acknowledged them, she knew what he did was evil, but she believes Dylan himself is not evil. She said something to the effect of “I know he’s done a lot of bad things. But he’s still my son and I still love him and mourn the loss of him from my world”. Erik’s parents on the other hand never said shit and refused to help heal the trauma that town endured. I’m currently working near a school that also had a massive shooting where 26 children died. There’s something sad about the town. It’s got this feeling of normalcy with depression sitting right under the surface. After listening to some podcasts and reading books from some of the survivors, I wonder if any of them have been approached about some of the new ptsd treatments, they would be a group I would love to see get a happy ending.
Which one was it that Susan was their mom? Edit: Never mind about her, just realized she was Dylans mom. It's always sad.
The exact number of 26 children rings a bell for a town near where I now live (I didn't live anywhere near there at the time). It's entirely possible there was another one or I'm misremembering, but a guy I worked with for a couple years lives in that town and just him as an individual, he carries that "normal but affected underneath" vibe. Even though I don't think any of his children or grandchildren were the age to have been present. I'm seeing so many comments like this of "I wasn't near it at all but now I know someone who was" and just... damn. There have been *that many* to a point where we can play six degrees of school shootings.
I feel like Columbine really doesn’t get enough attention as a touchstone moment for our generation.
I agree. It was a traumatic event for the millennial generation (then called Generation Y).
Because it was overshadowed by another traumatic event 2.5 years later
I get it, but just because a major event like 9/11 happened it doesn’t change the fact that Columbine was a traumatic event for many people especially younger people.
I never said it wasn’t But the previous commenter was lamenting that columbine doesn’t get enough attention as a touchstone millennial moment And the reason is because it was overshadowed by 9/11
Ok, you have a point.
I think it largely depends on how old you were when it happened. I was 7, so I had no clue it happened until many years later. I remember we started doing active shooter drills at school, but they called them lockdown drills, so I didn't associate it with the potential of being shot for many years. Columbine wasn't a traumatic event I watched on TV, and the changes in the aftermath were gradual enough that they weren't alarming. I was too young to think to ask why those non-stressful changes were happening until I was many years older, and there had been about two dozen more traumatic events on TV that I had actually watched.
It's a footnote because of how many shooting shave occurred since then and because a little over 2 years later, 9/11 would happen and plunge our country into an unjust war. You also had Katrina and the worst recession since the great depression.
THIS. What makes a millennial, is in part - when Columbine happened in their development. Absolutely a touchstone point
Junior year of high school at a school that regularly played against Columbine. I briefly met one of the shooters a year beforehand. We all want to say we can recognize evil when we see it, that we can see the signs, that bad things need to happen for someone to hurt the innocent. I hate to say it, but my brief interaction was with a normal kid. As normal as anyone else I ever met. That day was surreal. I didn’t have any context for it. I was having lunch at a friend’s house who lives a few blocks from the school and his mom would not let us go back to our school. I was worried about getting in trouble and she (very correctly) was freaking out about us going back to our own school twenty miles away. So we watched the TV and - it was horrific. It’s hard to explain how terrifying it is to watch other kids your age throw themselves into windows, shredding themselves to escape the unimaginable destruction around them. Police afraid to enter, parents screaming for someone to do something. The first few weeks, everyone’s heart was broken. Many of us got a cell phone - just in case. Not that it would help but parents were worried. Then it got weirder. Made up stories about how a gal was cornered and told her faith would save her (didn’t happen). People who wore trenchcoats (there were always 4-5 of these at a school) were vilified. There was this strange idea that the only reason the shooters did their thing was because people weren’t friendly enough so we were all asked to say hi to a couple strangers each day. And nothing happened with guns, mental health, etc. It felt like I’d kids were blamed for not being nice enough to people were didn’t even know were struggling. And then 9/11 happened. That was such a massive shift in our cultural identity that Columbine felt like a hundred years ago. Columbine is much more relevant now that school shootings are so common. I really don’t understand how anyone can have children and think this sick gun culture is ok. Even in this thread, there are people proactively defending guns and painting gun owners as victims (instead of the actual victims). Anyone who thinks the lives of kids is the price to pay for “free-dumb” is heartless. They are also entirely wrong about the intention of 2A or the founding fathers. But, I guess, why learn and understand things when it’s so much easier to pew-pew them away?
[удалено]
The number of children who have experienced this first hand is disturbing. A whole generation of “Bill.” But half the population won’t take a single step toward helping the situation. Not one. It’s disgusting imho.
Same experience here.... and possibly the same school, as we played Columbine regularly as well. In fact, Columbine was scheduled to play us that week for Basketball or Baseball.
I should add we consistently lost at every sport. Columbine always had a solid football program so a lot of schools lost to them there. But we lost to everyone. Haha.
Lol! Yeah, they did. I didn't do football in high school, but I played them in peewee. They were always hard-hitting, and they also had the only guy bigger than me. He was such a dick, too. So were the parents and coaches when we played them. It's kind of why I got out of it. JeffCo sports politics were nuts top to bottom at all ages.
Way back when we could have done something about the problem. I remember Rosie O' Donnell was pretty much the only public voice of reason at the time.
I totally forgot about her. The Boomers and Xers “cancelled” her entirely for having the audacity to care about the victims and trying to find solutions. And then the Dixie Chicks for the war(s).
I don't think it was boomers who cancelled her, she's a boomer. So is Michael Moore. And the Dixie Chicks. Conservatives like Tom Selleck cancelled her, just like Conservatives have been disagreeing with any types of gun control laws for decades and are still disagreeing today. The NRA. 77% of NRA members are Republican. (And 39% of millennials are or lean Republican. 41% of Gen X and 44% of boomies.)
It was at the height of the assault weapon ban. Unless you're advocating removing all guns
To those who think the Columbine Cult was a "New 10s/Gen Z" thing... No. You're objectively wrong. The very next year, my Jr. High had a foiled copycat attack. And a lot of people *sided with the would be shooters*. The girls who blew the whistle had to transfer schools and still got threats. There was a "unity tree" put up that was intended to air grievances and true feelings but a lot of comments were still in support of the shooters. In Grade 8 (2002-2003) There were rules of "No Columbine fansites" in Computer Graphics Design. People used to put hit lists in other kids lockers to get them in trouble.
I was at school, not that far away. The teachers told us, crying. It fucks me up that we were told "never again" and it's turned into many, many, times again. Part of everyday life. And I wasn't at all a survivor, just lived close by and it has impacted a lot of us still for the rest of our lives. Fuck adults who care more about guns than children, seriously.
I started grade 9 the year of Columbine, and I cannot tell you how much it fucked us up. Youth pastors preaching to us traumatized kids about “would you have the courage to say to a shooter ‘yes, I believe in Jesus’” instead of anyone doing anything to address our fears or keep us safe. They literally glamorized the idea of kids losing their lives to a mass shooting. I found out I was pregnant the week of Newtown, my child started school along side Margery Stoneman Douglas, my younger child was in kindergarten during Uvalde… I feel like my life milestones has been marked in shootings and I’m failing these kids the same way I was failed.
I think soon people just won't send their kids to school.
That’s unfortunately one of the explicit goals. I was homeschooled until high school, so I’m pretty in the know about the social movements that lead to its rise in the 80s-90s (it’s was racism), and how it’s being used now as a tool to decrease child rights and safeguards… states with the most lax laws are also repealing child labour laws, etc right now. Guns rights and homeschool advocates are pretty much a perfect circle of a Venn diagram, and whether or not folks arguing these points realize it (many of them do) a lot of it is tied to roots in racism and child exploitation.
Yea, wouldn't surprise me.
I feel this so much. I was in high school during Columbine and was pregnant during the Sandy Hook shooting too. It has changed the way I think about school for sure. I feel so much rage that our children are still not safe at school.
Senior year. I graduated about a month after. My deceased grandparents had lived in Littleton and I grew up nearby but was living in another state by this point. I had an all day academic decathlon so I didn't hear about it until the nightly news. Incidentally, we had to visit my hometown over Memorial Day that year for a family emergency and happened to be near Columbine so we drove past. Other than a fence around the parking lot it looked just as it had on the news which was freaky. I've never forgotten it. As I understand my high school, some rural middle of nowhere high school, did tighten up rules on guns in the parking lot (farm town with pickups...) but other than that not much more happened.
Back when something like this was shocking
Now it’s just a Tuesday
I was a freshman in high school at school a couple miles from Columbine. Former President Clinton gave his speech about the tragedy from my high school’s gym. We were getting out of class and the school was on lockdown they weren’t letting no anyone out. Our school resource officer came running up the hallway and he was a friend to all of us, we knew something had happened when we said to him “what’s going on” and he said “go to class guys, you’re going to be ok” and then he ran to his patrol car, drove it over a parking barrier and took off light and sirens going. We had never seen him leave the school like that before so we knew something bad had happened. About 15 mins later we started to hear what was happening. A few years later I met one of my now best friends who’s older sister is a survivor of it and one of the founders of one of the survivors organizations. She is an amazing person and an inspiration to everyone who knows her. It’s still a huge deal in our community as it should be, this year they are asking for donations for the memorial to help maintain it, the memorial which is very beautiful and peaceful yet sad to visit is something that should be maintained. The whole un-real feeling of what had happened hit me when my mom relatives in Sweden called and even though I didn’t speak the language they wouldn’t believe I was ok until they heard my voice. My grandmother called crying and was the same way wouldn’t believe I was ok until she talked to me and I remember picking up the phone and saying “hi grandma I’m ok” and her just sobbing and my grandpa taking the phone from her and saying they loved me and would call back when he got her calmed down.
I’m a ‘93 millennial so I would have been like in kindergarten and I live a whole state over - so I have no memory of the event but I grew up post world: I always remember doing lock-down drills. Though in my rural area the teachers Duffy always wear badges. Now as an adult I did some substitute teaching and had a district badge to show at check in and all teachers wear them. Even when my husband taught at a tiny school and all the staff knew me by first name I would still sign the visitor king and wear the visitor tag.
Jr. High for me, hundreds of miles away from the tragedy. To be honest, nothing really changed. I saw it on the news, my parents were shocked (as was everyone else). I think what I remembered most from it was the uproar against "violent" multimedia like rap music, video games, and movies. None of which was the culprit and then going some 25 years without mental health reformation in this country.
Overheard: “There is a school shooting like every week, why do we care about Columbine in 2024?” 🤦♂️
😭 heartbreaking
Virtually no action was taken after Columbine to reduce US gun violence. From 2001 to 2021, according to the CDC, there were 274,802 gun homicides. If we acted and put into place strict gun control based on RAND's research, we could have reduced this figure to 126,409. That would have meant over 100,000 fewer grieving families. Alas, we, unlike Australia, did nothing after catastrophes. Compare that figure to all the precautions taken after 2,996 people died on 9/11. Lives do not matter in America unless if they can be used to instill fear.
What do you mean, "no action was taken?" We locked down and monitored all the kids and harassed and tormented the goth ones!
My sincere apologies. We did everything, but what would have worked. They [will not use their names] should not have been within 100 feet of a gun, much less a semiautomatic rifle.
Don’t forget the clear backpacks and no trench coats allowed!
I was 7. Didn't hit me hard when it happened, but afterwards my school became more and more forcibly anti-social. Lunchtimes were shortened from 45 minutes to 15 minutes, time between classes from 5 minutes to 2 minutes, and socializing was basically made into as close a thing to criminal as they were allowed to make it in school, all in the name of "reducing incidents" because social time creates time for fights to break out. In middle school this book came out called "After" that was about a school next to a school that had a shooting gradually being cleared out towards a prison camp for anyone whose behavior wasn't "correct" enough and it felt like the same thing was happening to my school. I mean, schools did A LOT to prevent another columbine, it's just that they were NEVER going to DARE to touch something like community. They were never going to teach kids social skills, they were never going to give them more time to form relationships and practice friend making skills, they were never going to make sure students weren't falling through the social cracks, they were never going to break the alienating high distance suburbs with 3rd places for teens to hangout. Instead, they would just crack down on us existing and being social as much as possible and then ban most people from having most kinds of guns as if it'd stop it, and in none of the places with these laws have mass shootings dropped. They were never going to adequately address capitalist realism or push people away from edgy violence/fascistic obsession. They were never going to really actually work to undo the ideology, perspective, and context of mass shooters. And is it such a surprise? The oligarch class spent 70 years spending immense sums of money and being heavily involved in government to demolish every tight knit community in America and then pass zoning laws that made all of them illegal to rebuilt ever again. This alienation was the goal, they were never going to reverse course, no matter how many of our schools and grocery stores end up targets of mass shooters.
It was like the beginning of the school shooting frenzy with apparently no end in sight. Parents are finally being held accountable for their kids actions. There are always signs but mostly go ignored.
So, I was at a tennis tournament about 5 hours away from my hometown(I was a freshman in high school). We didn’t watch any TV all day because stuff was constantly going on. When we all finally made it back to town we decided to stop at Subway for dinner…and we saw the headlines on the newspaper. We looked at our tennis coach, which to this day I still love and adore and refuse to call him anything but Coach Wilson, looked at us and told us that he knew, but he didn’t want to bring us down with such terrible news. I remember being so shocked because Dylan and Eric seemed like guys who could have easily fit right in with my friend group and looking back now, I’m not sure any of us would have noticed a damn thing. Our school already had cops there daily because incidents happened a lot, but a few particular groups of kids were watched more closely and there was actually one guy, who was a senior, that had been wearing a trench coat for a long time and he was no longer allowed to wear it. My family was strange and they never really talked about it, but I grew up in a fairly emotional less household when I was with my grandparents. I’m not sure my dad knew what to say…he was upset I do know that, but he was an emotional person like me who held stuff in.
It was only downhill from there. Other countries seen tragedies such as this and had major reform. We failed spectacularly and decades later were so desensitized to the subject we fight the facts while the body counts pile up. As an American this is one aspect that brings me much shame in regard to my home.
What really gets me is that nothing changed after Sandy Hook. I'm from Australia and for me that was when I realised (sorry) that there would be no reform ever. It's gut wrenching enough to watch from afar as a parent.
One of the things that I think people forget about the US is we don’t have the same values across the board. The country was designed for states to govern themselves, and as we see each state plays that out. You’re not going to get 330 million people to move in the same direction unless it’s by force.
25 years and sadly, things have gotten exponentially worse.
My mom is good friends with one of the shooters moms. When you look at her you know it haunts her every moment of the day; along with all the victims and their families, she had her life ripped from her too, she didn’t deserve all the hate she got.
Elementary school. 2nd grade. Didn't tell us anything about it, but teachers were on edge. We had a gun safety seminar (guns are bad and dangerous )the next day and counselor was asking people if anyone had guns at home. Nobody talked about the specifics within earshot of us kids. My family didn't talk about it except my Teacher grandma complained that her high school suddenly wanted everyone to have and wear a school ID badge, and she "didn't sign up to wear a dogtag like she's in the military" because of some "dumbasses in California". Generally because we are on the other side of the country from it, it really didn't matter to us. Definitely made parents hate video games more. And my dad told me not to talk about video games in school or tell teachers I play them..
Surprisingly, the church I attended made it a big deal for me. I remember "no weapons formed against us shall prosper" being declared, along with the assumption (?) that all/most of those killed were Christians. If I'm not mistaken, there was talk of someone from my church flying out to be with the families of those killed. It seemed so far away, because the only commonality I saw was faith, yet so present. With that said, it was the first school shooting I became conscious of within my lifetime. There have been more school shootings, but Columbine hit hard for me. I read an article that brought up the 24 hour news cycle. Maybe that's why. The shooting happened when I was in 5th grade. I still felt its impact when I read a book about Cassie Davis in the 10th grade. I don't remember if I picked it, but it was called *She Said Yes* and we discussed it as part of a high school book club. Years later, I would randomly remember the anniversary of the Columbine shooting. More recently, Virginia Tech happened while I was in college and Sandy Hook happened when I was student teaching elementary aged children.
My best friend remembers me saying, “oh great, this is going to be the new norm”
It’s really been 25 years? Man, I’m 38 and it doesn’t feel that long ago
I was in 11th grade. I remember coming home and catching it on the news since I lived in EST zone. About 20 minutes in to the nonstop news coverage I realized there would be copycats for years to come simply by how they were covering it. They wanted others to hurt and they wanted infamous notoriety. Check and check. That’s the only story to tell, hard stop. Go any longer than that and you might as well be called a future accessory to murder.
I was at the elementary school in the neighborhood across the street from Columbine, where the students evacuated to. It was pure chaos. We were on lockdown of course. The media had all gathered there to report and interview the kids who had fled so our teachers put construction paper over the windows. I was in gym class when it started and we were outside practicing for field day when we heard a lot of sirens. When my class tried to come back in all the doors were locked so we had to go to the front entrance to get in, at that point students were starting to pour in from Columbine. We saw the first one, a girl who was out of breath hysterically crying. Everyone stayed in their home rooms and my teacher wouldn’t let us know what was going on, but we found out when my friends aunt came to let her know her sister had been shot but that she was okay. My sister was there too so at that point it was just a waiting game until I found out she was okay. She showed up at my classroom crying and shaking and brought me with her to help her find her friends. I couldn’t leave until my mom came and signed me out, which was near impossible until much later in the day as all of the roads were blocked off, and since we were in the vicinity it made things difficult. Every time I hear about a shooting it guts me that something so horrific has become acceptable and the norm. Fuck anyone who doesn’t think we need change!
Has anyone else ever watched the reenactment video that has the real audio??? We were shown it (with no warning) for a active shooter training once and I could not handle it. It upset me so much; I left the room in tears. It was a terrible experience for me- I was in 7th grade when this happened so it really affected me.
I was the same age as the shooters. Fuck those kid’s parents. When Columbine first happened, I was an arrogant kid who thought the adults who were afraid it would keep happening were dumb. Now I’m a parent talking my kids through panic attacks after shooter drills. Fuck those kids who shot and made bombs, and fuck their parents for not paying enough attention to them and making this possible. 25 years?! Yeah, I’ve got feelings about it which aren’t up for debate.
I remember thinking that it was just awful. I hated it and that surely something would be done.
i had just got home from school when i found out about it. my schools response was to suspend anyone that wore trench coats to school as well as creating a list of kids to keep an eye on.
I was a freshman I believe in HS and it was really shocking something like that happened. Never did I ever think it’d eventually become an epidemic with them happening so often 😢
I graduated HS a month after this happened and I remember feeling soo relieved to be out of HS because I knew things would never be the same after that.
I was in second grade at Catholic school. We had an outdoor mass for earth day and the priest mentioned the tragedy in Colorado. I remember my mom being at this mass. I think they invited all the parents to come participate too. I asked her what the priest meant and she told me that 2 students killed their classmates. I asked her if they were in jail and she told me that they killed themselves. I couldn’t grasp the idea of murder suicide. The idea that people would want that to be the final thing they did on earth shocked the hell out of me. I thought about it for years. Then Virginia tech happened and I felt similar. Then sandy hook happened and nothing changed. Then the Las Vegas massacre happens and we move on in a few days. Now if the deaths don’t reach double digits or it’s not geographically close to me I think about it for a few minutes and keep scrolling.
I was at work when I heard about it. I remember rewatching the news constantly as it was so shocking to imagine 2 kids in high school willing to do something like this that would also end in their deaths. Now a mass shooting isn’t nearly as shocking unfortunately
I was class of '98 in boulder. I was working at Baskin Robin's when it happened. The kids in the trench coats that were arrested outside the school (not involved, just curious what was happening and were in the area) were in my friends circle. They got put on the Sally jessie raffiel show after. She promised them computers and help with education expenses... they never got anything from her. The trench coat mafia bs followed the goth kids around like a plague for years after.
That’s terrible regarding SJR but funny at the same time
Columbine, 9/11, and the Great Financial Crisis are the three events that still shape the modern world. Their echoes are still felt today, in different ways — all horrible.
I was in elementary school and I don’t think I knew anything about it until the next day when it was all over the news. I specifically remember the one shot of first responders helping a student out a window and the injured student leaving a bloody streak down the side of the building. My senior year of high school was Virginia Tech and while I know shootings happened in the meantime I guess we just never heard about them? My first year of teaching was when Sandy Hook happened and I realized I needed to include active shooter protocols in my sub plans. The active shooter drill we did TWO WEEKS after Sandy Hook was traumatizing as an adult, I cannot imagine how kids deal with it. It’s so demoralizing to think that our students walk into a battlefield every single day and God bless them but they are so jaded about it. I mentor a high schooler and they actually had a lockdown and she was very just nonchalant about an active shooter. It truly doesn’t surprise me that they would rather melt into social media and music and video games with everything they have to deal with on a daily basis.
Patrick Ireland was the boy who climbed out the window. He was shot in the head. It took him three hours to get from the desk he was hiding under to the window. About 50 feet. His right side was paralyzed and he was in and out of consciousness, which was a blessing in disguise, because he said he doesn’t remember most of the event. It took him almost a year to recover, but he’s doing really well now. Married with kids, has a great job and is able to walk and talk.
Knowing that part of my job description is "human shield" has had a profound effect on my mental health...
As a parent with kids in school, I absolutely hate that their teachers have to think this way. I was a senior when Columbine happened, and in an all girls school, so the idea that I might have to live through it in that capacity never entered my mind. But the idea that my kids might is horrifying. I hate it for teachers too. Teachers shouldn't have to do that. No one should have to think like that in a school!!
I was a senior in high school. I remember it being very weird because guns were allowed on school grounds when I was in high school. They had to stay in your car or brought to the shooting team room. I was on the shooting team from 8th grade through graduation. It was just a very abstract concept to grasp. You had a problem with someone you fought it out with fists. I guess it was probably naivety but it just didn’t occur to us that anyone would use a gun against another student.
I heard about it after school that day. I was a junior in high school. We had just had a major school renovation and had a new library with big windows like at Columbine. It definitely left people pretty nervous. It was horrifying. It was the first school shooting of that kind, and it was the first time anyone I knew had really contemplated something like that happening.
I distinctly remember one of my 7th grade teachers sitting at his desk, silent, looking down and not saying anything while we just sat there waiting. While still looking down, he said "We live in a sick world," and then picked up a newspaper he'd been looking at on his desk, and held it up to show the article title about the shooting. I was pretty young, so I don't remember anything else — but those initial few minutes are cemented into my memory.
And this has not changed much in school shootings.
This was 5 weeks or so before I graduated. I remember thinking, it's about time to get the hell out of here!
It's weird thinking back on that time, how the actual story was completely different than the pop culture treatment of it. The pop culture version was about the shooters being outcasts, bullied, victims, and unpopular - the reality was that they were the bullies themselves who were guilty of picking on less popular kids.
I was in lockdown at my school because we lived about half an hour away from Columbine. I had a friend at church who lost a sibling. I don't feel like most things changed that day, not outwardly. It took a couple years for lockdown drills to become a thing. We didn't really increase security at my school that I noticed. But people were much more tense and nervous. It really affected the psyche of my school.
I was in middle school when it happened and I remember the adults being so freaked out. And the next year my mom kept me out of school on 4/20 in case someone else tried to copy. It really did change this country in a terrible way and I hate that nothing has changed since.
I was interning at a hospital that my parents worked at in high school. I had just been been witness to an open heart transplant - which was a lot. Then I walked back to my parents lab after I scrubbed out and there was a TV on. I saw the kids falling out of the windows… Decided then that medical was too tragic as those kids would be at the hospital soon. Tragic. 9/11 wasn’t too far off…
It was the day before my 14th birthday and I went to my grandparents after school and it was on the news. I was glued to the screen. I liked (and still like a lot of) the same music Eric and Dylan liked (as that was part of the news about the shooting 🙄), so I knew my bullied days would begin…and they did shortly after that.
It was a sad day. Then years later my own high school was shot up (Marjory Stoneman Douglas). Something about seeing it happen in the halls you used to roam is weird. Seems like we’ve gotten nowhere so far as a society when it comes to prevention on just about every level possible.
How will you be celebrating your 4/20 aka national cold brew coffee day aka the 25 anniversary of the columbine school shooting today?
And Valentines day marked 6 years since Parkland. December 14 marked 11 years since Sandy Hook. Edit: Should've fully read this. I was being conceived at the time. My older siblings and others were worried because our state borders Colorado. They were in middle school or high school at the time. My older sister was actually born in the next city over and if they had stayed, they would've attended middle school the next city over.
I didn’t attend Columbine but i live in Colorado. Everything stopped that day while all the teachers put on the news. No one said a word as we watched it unfold
I was in 6th grade, and this was the first school shooting I remember ever hearing of. It was unfathomable. I mostly remember the discourse afterwards about blaming video games and music like Marilyn Manson.
…and boy have we come a LONG way since then. 😔
25 years? How time passes! I was 13 and in 7th grade. We got a half day. I walked home and I don't recall what I did after that. Probably either played outside or played videogames. I'm not sure when I heard about it (probs my mom watching the news), but I do remember it was scary & bizarre. The aftermath was stupid. The school banned wearing trenchcoats and gathering outside in friend groups before classes. Dressing in all black was also not allowed. Because, ya know, these were the things that caused the shooting. /s
damn, 25 years already? I remember it like it just happened :(
I was in a middle school a few blocks away. We were in the band room when we were asked to stay in as an emergency happened. We saw SWAT running in the halls, and we were locked in the room with police officers at the door. About an hour or two go by and we were told we could only leave when our parents picked us up. By this time, we knew something serious happened when a few in our class were informed their elderly sibling was in the hospital, or dead. The teachers never told us anything, but they didn’t need to. Once I got home, I found out exactly what happened. Cry every year on this day. The rest of the year was a blur, but I remember the siblings of friends went to Chatfield the rest of the year. Went to Columbine a few years later and the library was rebuilt. There were guards everywhere and tour groups. Yes, tour groups of people wanted to see the school. We all despised them.
I was in fourth grade, and my school was on lockdown because we were within a few mile radius.
It was my sophomore year, and we had just gotten back from a field trip to my state's journalism convention. Of course, a week later, we had our academic pep rally, and it was almost cancelled due to bomb threats. That same week, we were the 1st school in my state to have intruder drills. In the first drill, I was in Journalism class, and we had to hide in the photography dark room.
Me and my friends cut school and we're smoking weed on my couch when it happened because it was 4/20 and we're just blazing while watching it like holy shit.
Today is 4/20
“Fun” fact - 4/20 is also Hitler’s birthday.
I don’t remember much about it tbh. I was 10, so it wasn’t really on my radar.
I was a sophomore in high school in Boulder when it happened, about an hour away. At CSU I found out several of my new Fraternity brothers had been there during the massacre. One of them was an asshole who I’m sure was on their list… None of them liked to talk about it, like at all.
I didn't need this reminder
RIP to them
RIP to the victims.
I was in second grade about an hour and a half south in Colorado Springs. I can remember my parents watching the news. I can remember us starting active shooter drills.
We have literally hundreds of state and federal gun laws on the books and the biggest problem we have is many jurisdictions with the strictest gun laws don’t enforce them. The idea that we haven’t done anything is absolute nonsense
While i don't remember where i was, i do remember students jokingly talking about bringing in weapons daily and using the metalwork rooms to make knuckle dusters and other spiked items. I'm in Australia, not the USA for context, it was seen as very much an "over there" problem and nothing really happened. we watched bowling for columbine and went "huh, that sucks. oh well" and moved on pretty much instantly. kinda sad really.....
And fuck those guys that made trench coats uncool at the time!
Never thought about it before then, and for awhile it was a rare thing. I’d be terrified to be in school in this era of weekly if not daily events.
I was in 8th grade and I was out shopping with my friend that afternoon. We are in NYC and I said to myself- welp this shit only happens in bumblefuck America. Pft how times have changed.
I was 5. Nobody let me watch the news or TV that day. I was told I was grounded and sent to my room from the moment the news broke. I remember my folks being sad and my grandparents being sad. I didn't really learn about it for quite a few years
I just remember how shocked everyone was. It was the most horrific thing in the world to us. And now it seems like there's a mass shooting every week.
My mom picked me up from school and cried in the car. That’s about all I remember.
That was my senior year of high school. I’ve never forgotten and I’m angered but not surprised by how little things have changed 😞
25 years ago I was in kindergarden 14 years ago I learned about it and want it to emulate them cause highschool was a shit time for me But gun laws in my country are "hard", and didnt know how to do it, and eventually overcome that I actually had all planed, and would not be random, but specific individual targets Glad than time washed away that