The Scotsman 

July 31, 1999, Saturday 

SECTION: Pg. 12 

PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFULS FORCED TO FACE UP TO GUN CULTURE

GUNS and violence were already emerging as significant issues on the campaign trail as American politicians started preparations last month for next year's presidential election. The horrific shootings in Atlanta guarantee they will go top of the agenda. So there might be one blessing to come from Mark Barton's deadly rampage. 

Not before time either. Limited gun control measures were enacted by the Senate after the massacre of 13 school children and teachers in April this year at Columbine High School, near Denver. The shootings were carried out by two Columbine schoolboys who shot themselves dead with the murder weapons they had purchased at gun fairs. 

The feeble Senate measure made mandatory background checks on anyone buying a handgun at a gun show. It was bitterly resented by Republicans who viewed it as the introduction by stealth of compulsory registration of gun ownership. The bill, which also made compulsory child safety locks on all new handguns, crept through only on the casting vote of Vice-President Al Gore after Republicans had added an amendment that would permit states to display the Ten Commandments in schools. 

The new controls were due to come into force next month, but have got stuck in the House of Representatives, some of whose members thought the proposal too strict. 

Teenage survivors of the Columbine High massacre traveled to Washington for the House debate and listened in horror as the legislators talked out the bill. Told by one elderly lawmaker that law-abiding citizens needed guns to protect themselves, 16-year-old Jessica Garrett replied with the clear logic of youth: "If there weren't violent people with guns, you wouldn't have to protect yourself.” Rosa Chavez, aged 17, was furious with the House inaction: "It's one thing for them to say they sympathize with our pain. It's quite another thing to look down a gun barrel and think maybe you're going to die." Raymond Chandler's detective, Philip Marlowe, would have backed the children. "My, my," drawled Marlowe, played 50 years ago by Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep, "Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains." 

Intelligence is possessed by Al Gore, and surely he will use it on the gun control issue to put clear distance between himself and George W Bush, his likely Republican challenger for the White House. If he also has courage, he should be able to undermine the Republicans' defense of the "sacred" American right to bear arms. The Republicans are backed, financially and morally, by the mighty National Rifle Association, which has blamed the Goth band Marilyn Manson, Adolf Hitler, the Internet and practically everything except "guns" for the Columbine and Atlanta massacres. 

Opinion polls show Gore, with his image of stiffness and wonkishness, trailing Bush. He is perceived as decent but unexciting. He lacks the common touch and his oratory is so stilted and jargon-ridden that a group of Congressional Republicans, hoping to exploit these weaknesses, has begun holding regular public readings from Gore's books and speeches. He even has a "woman problem." However, it is just the opposite of Bill
Clinton's. Gore, who is by all accounts a good husband and father, is running 7 per cent behind Bush among women voters. 

Bush, on the other hand, is personable and charismatic. The governor of Texas, with a taste for monogrammed cowboy boots, also has the pedigree of a father who was president before Bill Clinton. Bush has an obvious talent for presenting himself, but has been notably vague on the specifics of policy issues, as though worried that the more positions he takes the more he will risk losing the support of voters who do not agree with him. So far, this has worked in the opinion polls. But following Atlanta, it may no longer be good enough. 

It is hard to see how Bush can shake off the yoke of the National Rifle Association, whose members continue to argue: "Guns-don't-kill-people: people -kill-people." Bush, even after Columbine, but before Atlanta, backed the NRA, arguing: "I believe that people ought to be able to bear weapons. I believe that's part of the constitution of the United States." 

Bush has also called for increased military spending. This might be a tactical error. It might draw attention to the fact that, like Bill Clinton, he avoided the draft while Gore is a Vietnam veteran. 

Bush could be undone next year when Gore finally asks Americans the old Ronald Reagan question: Are you better off now than you were last time? At a time of unprecedented personal prosperity and job security for Americans, the answers will be hugely in his favor. And by then also, Rosa Chavez, and millions like her, will have the vote for the first time. 

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The Times-Picayune

May 23, 1999 Sunday, ORLEANS

SECTION: METRO; Pg. B7 

 CODDLING KIDS RECIPE FOR DISASTER

By Leonard Pitts Jr. syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald 

   He is, we're told, a 15-year-old sophomore in high school, a church-going Boy Scout. An acquaintance says he recently broke up with his girlfriend and quotes him as saying, "I have no reason to live anymore." On Thursday, he shot and wounded six people at a high school in Conyers, Ga., just outside Atlanta. 

And so, another name joins the list of little towns and suburbs touched in recent years by random school violence. Joins Jonesboro, Ark.; Pearl, Miss.; West Paducah, Ky.; Springfield, Ore.; and, of course, Littleton, Colo., where two schoolboys killed 12 classmates and a teacher and then committed suicide just a month ago. 

At this writing, we know next to nothing about the boy who shot up Heritage High on Thursday. Yet, preliminary as it is, I find the milk-and-cookies description of this latest suspect telling. No red herrings of Goth fashion or video-game obsession to distract us here. So maybe we can move beyond the reflexive reach for easy answers. Maybe we will finally face the harder question that comes of gazing into the
unremarkable faces of kid killers: 

Who are these children? 

A new survey offers the glimmer of an understanding. It seems that the Gallup Organization recently polled young people about school violence. Thirty-six percent of those surveyed reported having classmates they considered capable of shooting up the school. Of those, the vast majority -- about 80 percent -- attend rural or suburban campuses. So these children are not -- at least, not solely -- the children of the cities. 

More telling, though, is the answer young people gave when asked what causes acts of campus violence. They pegged not pop culture, but the cruelty of their own peers -- the fact that some kids are bullied, taunted and made to feel like outsiders. 

If you're old enough to have some space between yourself and your graduation, I'm sure that jumps out at you for the same reason it does me. Being bullied, taunted and made an outsider is a part of high school. Heck, for many of us, it is high school. Always has been. The terminology may change, but the dynamic is constant: Jocks and trendsetters still segregate themselves from nerds and space cadets. Bullies still make every day a torment for smaller kids. 

So what's changed isn't school but some of the students who go there. 

Who are these children? It's a question I find myself asking with increasing frequency. A question that unavoidably attends not just the recent rush of random killing by schoolyard shooters but also the equally troubling string of infanticides by secretly pregnant teen mothers. 

An answer seems to lie in the very mundaneness of their motivations. In the mother who explains that she killed her baby to avoid embarrassment or the shooter who says he went on the rampage because he lost his girl or was picked on by a bully. 

Who are these children? 

But it seems obvious, doesn't it? These are the children of entitlement. These are the children who were never shamed enough, blamed enough, held accountable enough, or told "no" enough, to understand that the world does not orbit around them nor exist for their immediate gratification. These are the children for whom an excuse has always been found, a way always made, a shortcut always carved, the children who have never had to bear the consequences of their own actions upon their own shoulders. 

These are the children of the new age, the one wherein parents worried so much -- too much, I think -- about bruising self-esteem. As a result, these are the children who fall apart like a house of cards in a hurricane the moment life deals them a hard slap or two. 

The problem is that life doesn't give a damn about self-esteem. Life just does what life will and demands that you deal with it or not. Too many children do not. Cannot. Because they're not tough enough. 

These children are a reminder that our job as parents, teachers and elders is not to smooth the way but to teach a child to walk safely in the rough places. It's a job we need to approach more assiduously than we do. 

Because ultimately, the answer to the question is chilling in its simplicity: Who are these children? They are tomorrow. 

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald.

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The Plain Dealer

May 10, 1999 Monday, FIRST / ALL

SECTION: METRO; Pg. 1B 

SCHOOLS DEAL WITH UNEASE, RUMORS; 
STUDENTS, PARENTS ARE JUMPY AFTER LITTETON TRAGEDY 

By JANET TEBBEN; PLAIN DEALER REPORTER 
 

   When the fire alarms were scheduled to go off for a drill at Renwood Elementary School in Parma recently, Principal Patricia Hilfer worried about the students who wouldn't think it was a fire at all. 

Bomb threats, rumors of potential shootings and general uneasiness in schools since the April 20 school massacre in Littleton, Colo., have made educators locally more prepared, and more encumbered by security issues. 

Renwood Elementary, which had a bomb threat days after the shootings, is one of dozens of schools plagued by rumors and threats since the tragedy, and Hilfer said some students and parents were upset even after police declared the school free of explosives. And as serious as a fire might be in an elementary school, Hilfer said she thought she needed to warn students, after the bomb threat, that they would be having "just a fire drill." 

The focus on security has become frustrating for some educators who continue to deal with the threats. At West Geauga High School in Chester Township, Principal Joseph Mueller said about 200 students were absent Wednesday following rumors of a "5-5-99" violence scare. About 100 of the school's 800 students are usually absent at this time of year. 

"You got kids out there who are genuinely concerned and fearful, but on the other hand, you got some kids who just want to keep the screw turned," Mueller said. "At some point we've got to find a way to just focus on what we are here for, but you can't, because you have to take everything seriously." 

On April 24, worried parents emptied about half of the Ravenna School District's middle and high schools after talk surfaced about a student with a "hit list" and bomb threats. 

Two students were arrested for making threats, but the damage in the community had been done. 

"It's pretty hard to deal with panic," Ravenna schools Superintendent Philip Warner said. "When it begins to spread, you can't stop it, no matter what you do." 

David Majesky, director of educational services at Lorain city schools, said it had been difficult for teachers and students to go about their daily routines. Teachers are handling problems with students individually. 

"Because of the rumors, there have been a lot of students absent ..." Majesky said. "Our school is on a semester system. Classes are 1 hours long. When you miss a day, it's like you miss two days. That puts the students at a disadvantage. Teachers are working with students to make up the work." 

Many schools have adopted take-no-chances policies on disruptive behavior and threats in recent weeks. Cleveland schools did not always evacuate after a bomb threat in the past, but all schools have been ordered to evacuate since the Colorado shootings, said William Wendling, a district spokesman. Students, teachers and parents everywhere have also adjusted the way they think about school. 

"Everything we didn't pay attention to before, we pay attention to. People making comments or kids joking around. I talked to my father in Virginia, and he said the same thing is going on down there," Strongsville High School Principal Bud Martin said. 

There's little evidence that discipline has become harsher for students who make threats, but many administrators say more student activity is being checked out. 

"I had two guys very innocently walking home from chemistry class arguing about what ingredients make up a bomb, but we had to investigate it," Martin said. 

But schools have to keep focusing on education even when students are distracted by rumors. 

"With everything that has happened the last few weeks, we spent a lot of time investigating things," said Thomas Burton, principal at Willowick Middle School, who last week expelled two eighth-graders for bringing a bomb-making manual to school. "That time could have been better spent on improving school programs. But when things happen in society in a big way like they did in Colorado, the same things will come up in our local schools in some fashion. You sometimes have to let kids deal with societal issues." 

Across the nation, American Civil Liberties Union offices say they are being swamped by complaints that nervous school officials are trampling students' constitutional rights since the shootings in Littleton. Ann Beeson, a staff lawyer at the ACLU's headquarters in New York, said, "Most school officials are not aware or not focusing on the fact that students are citizens, too." 

Greg Daniels of the ACLU in Ohio said the most serious of more than two dozen complaints to his office involved 11 students from Brimfield Township in Portage County. The students had a Web site for the Gothic subculture of youths who wear black, listen to rocker Marilyn Manson and think a lot about death. 

The two Colorado gunmen embraced some Goth trappings but also exhibited racist attitudes and violence that most in the Goth world reject. 

During an evacuation in North Royalton on Friday, middle school students spent two to three hours in the high school gymnasium singing songs, listening to music and eating lunch instead of going to class. It was what had to be done, said Michael Mayell, assistant principal of North Royalton Middle School. 

A school official said some students had heard that a bomb was supposed to be in the school. A search found nothing. 

"The students were outstanding," Mayell said after the all-clear sign was given at 11:30 a.m. "Most likely it is a prank, but you have to make sure every child is safe." 

Mayell said counselors would be available for worried students, but some parents were not taking chances. 

"I came home and my girlfriend had just heard they evacuated the middle school. And naturally, what goes through a mother's mind is Columbine," said a tearful Kathy Bizyak of North Royalton, whose sons are in sixth and seventh grade. 

When one of her sons walked up to her, Bizyak clutched him and kissed him, asking: "Where's your brother? Let's get him and go home." 

With summer break approaching, schools will get a chance to regroup and put the Colorado shootings at a greater distance. The disruptions are already starting to subside, Martin said. 

"We encouraged our faculty from the onset to 'Take time from your classes to give students an opportunity to talk about the incidents and ventilate.' After the first two weeks, things settled down. We're back to as normal as we're going to be,' he said.
 

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The Christian Science Monitor

May 4, 1999, Tuesday

SECTION: OPINION; Pg. 11 

What is 'Goth'? 

This is a letter sent to major American newspapers by 'Calek Hunter,' the online role-playing alias of Russ Brewer, a 22-year-old sales- floor associate at Wal-Mart in Waukesha, Wis. It is an explanation of 'Goth,' the youth subculture that apparently fascinated the two students who killed 15 people last month at a Colorado high school. 

Because of the terrible tragedy in Littleton and the wrongful accusations of a handful of reporters, open season on Goths has begun. 

In hopes that a few of you may take this to heart, I want to explain what "Goth" is. 

Everyone outside who sees someone of a Gothic nature wants a peek inside. Most are afraid and chastise us for how we look, even before they see who we are, how we act, and why we prefer what we are over all the other stereotypical archetypes. 

Jocks like sports. Cheerleaders like jocks. Skaters like skateboarding and other extreme sports. Goths like beauty, and the wondrous imagery of the supernatural and occult. 

People wonder why we dress like something out of "Night of the Living Dead" - frilly poet shirts, lace, leather, and fishnet. It's not that we're obsessed with death. It's that dressing like we're in a casket is our own way of expressing ourselves. 

In a perfect world, Goths would accept everything and everyone for who and what they are. But unfortunately it isn't a perfect world, no matter how much we all attempt to delude ourselves. So we must suffer the degradation and harassment of everyone outside. 

Goths live by their own rules. Most people see that as anarchy. We don't. We live our lives the way we see fit, disregarding all everyone else says about us. We strive to be content with ourselves and surroundings. To find peace. We may see beauty differently than you do, but beauty is beauty any way you see it. It may be dew on a rose in the morning, or the way the clouds wrap the moon at night. 

The reason Goths may lean toward the supernatural and the occult is the extreme nature of those things. The imagery of the supernatural and occult myths and facts appeal to us in many different ways. Vampirism and fairy lore, for example, are the most popular among the Goths. 

If you look deeper into the mythology of the vampire, you'll see that it is nothing short of a romantic love myth. As for the fairies, who can resist a beautiful male or female with wings? 

We do not set out to avenge any wrongs committed against us, we do not wear our trench coats to conceal automatic weapons to open fire on our peers. If someone would act against a Goth, the most we'd do is toss spiders in his hair. At the darkest, we'd glare with an unsettling gaze from our black-rimmed eyes. Then we'd talk and laugh about it later with our friends. 

The dark music we listen to is not why we are Goths. That music is made by Goths for us. For this reason, most Goths tend to disregard the claim that rock star Marilyn Manson (b. Brian Warner) is Goth - simply because the teeny boppers who have become Goth because of him don't know the true meaning of the culture. Instead, they revel in the wave of demented anarchy that Manson has brought into the limelight. At
best, Brian Warner simply took from us a small amount of the fashion. At worst, he has warped the idealism in favor of his own twisted thinking, lyrically, photographically, and in appearance. 

We may seem to act strangely to you, but we are merely content with ourselves, and know that no matter what others think of us, we know our own self-worth. You see us acting ethereal, or depressed, or zombified - but that is just our way of showing you how we feel inside. We aren't afraid of our emotions; we revel in them and show the world how we feel, because how we feel is what makes us who we are. 

Whenever the "objective" media come along and do a report on our subculture, many times they see us as a threat. Very few reporters have been brave enough to actually dig deep into our lives, our thoughts, and our reasons for being true to ourselves. Those who have, know we are not a threat and come away more enlightened - not just about us, but about their own lives as well. The majority of reporters who take us at face value deem us "evil" or a threat to the "normal people." 

We are not a "gang." We group together due to friendship and camaraderie just like jocks - who are never considered a street gang - would go to a basketball game together. 

We wear black for many different reasons, some symbolic, others not so symbolic. Black is the absorption of all colors. Like black, we wish to absorb and feel the range of human emotion and sensation. Also, black clothes go with anything - in a fashion sense. Black also makes the skin look paler which adds to our dramatic and theatrical appearance. That dramatic flair is an outlet for expressing who we are and how we feel, not to scare little children and the elderly. 

I hope this explanation helps you in the media to see a little more into our lives. Maybe next time you'll be a little more kind when it comes to finding a scapegoat in a terrible tragedy like Littleton. We may prefer the night, but we are not the creatures who go bump in it. 
 

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Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)

May 1, 1999, Saturday, Metro Edition

SECTION: VARIETY; Pg. 3E 

Littleton killings dominate newsmagazine coverage 

By Bo Emerson; Peter Carlson; Michael Prager; Paul D. Colford 
 

   The killings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., dominated the newsstand this week, while newsmagazines struggled to make sense of the nightmare. How did smart kids from stable, affluent families turn themselves into killing machines? Time and Newsweek try _ but fail _ to come up with answers. 

    They do provide chilling accounts of the rampage, in the voices of the students who were trapped under desks and behind barricaded doors. 

    Time introduces us to "The Monsters Next Door," with attractive half-page portraits of the violent teens, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. Time visits their homes and interviews friends, including one who just "hung out" with the two boys, and reveals that, along with the bloody video game Doom, the two enjoyed such inane kiddie cartoons as "Pinky and the Brain." 

    With its cartoonish graphic tracing the movements of the shooters through the school, Newsweek builds a timetable of the killings and the SWAT team's response, and tries to answer questions about the agonizingly slow 3-hour effort to roust the attackers, during which time wounded teacher William D. Sanders bled to death. 

    People also placed Littleton on its cover, relying on first-person accounts from survivors such as Zak Cartaya, 17, who helped herd students into the office of a choir room, then barricaded the door with a filing cabinet. 

    The magazines include sidebars on violent pop culture, the "Goth" connection, school safety and other issues. Newsweek delves into brain chemistry in a companion story trying to explain "Why the Young Kill." A stronger contribution comes from Time essayist Amy Dickinson. In "Where Were the Parents?" Dickinson asks, "Were the Harrises aware of the pipe-bomb factory" in their garage? "The kid down the street was aware of it, and he's 10 years old." 

    While refusing to point the finger at video game makers, media critic John Leo notes in U.S. News and World Report: "We are now a society in which the chief form of play for millions of youngsters is making large numbers of people die." 

     _ Bo Emerson, Atlanta Journal Constitution 
 

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The Washington Post 

April 29, 1999, Thursday, Final Edition 

SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A01 

Portrait of a Teen at War; Colorado Killer Craved Violence; Medication Barred Enlistment in Marines 

 

By Joel Achenbach; Dale Russakoff, Washington Post Staff Writers 

Eric Harris thought about war, fantasized about war and wrote about war. He was thrilled when he heard, one morning in philosophy class, that the United States was on the verge of bombing Yugoslavia. Rebecca Heins, who sat next to him, remembers Harris saying, "I hope we do go to war, I'll be the first one there." He wanted to be in the front lines, he said. He wanted, as he put it, to "shoot everyone," Heins recalls. 

Harris said that morning that he hoped he would get drafted. But then he took direct action to improve his chances of becoming a real warrior: He tried to enlist in the Marines. He seemed a good candidate, physically trim and extremely smart. But he was not destined to storm a beach or parachute behind enemy lines in the uniform of his nation. 

On a visit to his home April 15, Marine recruiters learned from Harris's parents that their son took a powerful antidepressant called Luvox. 

Harris had explicitly stated on his application that he did not take any prescription drugs, so the Marines rejected him. 

Five days later, Harris and his buddy Dylan Klebold staged their own private war at Columbine High School, killing 13 people before they finally killed themselves. 

In hindsight there were many clues, many peculiar signs, that Harris, who has emerged as the leader of the rampage, and Klebold, the follower, were actively dangerous, that they weren't just rebels, or juvenile delinquents, or "Goths" who liked to wear black and listen to German rock bands. There is now a trail of evidence that the two telegraphed their actions. 

But they also operated under the general camouflage of teenage life, when dark moods and obsessive thoughts and sudden changes in clothing and beliefs are not all that strange. The Columbine case shows how difficult it is to separate the rebels and individualists and creative people from the serious menaces to society -- until something horrible happens. 

In a childhood memoir he composed for a creative writing class one day in early April, Harris re-created a world in which he and his older brother, Kevin, were young boys, sons of an Air Force pilot, playing a war game in his back yard in small-town Plattsburgh, N.Y. 

But the war game wasn't just a game. In the memoir, the boys were Rambo-like heroes, caught in a genuine battle for survival. Armed with M-16s, Eric and his brother were fending off an entire army of assailants. 

"It sounded like they were in Vietnam," says classmate Domonic Duran. "They were running away from the enemy, diving under logs, hiding from helicopters, throwing pine cones that were like grenades. It was shocking because it was so good." 

So good, in fact, that when it was read aloud to the class by a friend -- Harris declined the honor -- the students snapped their fingers vigorously, the class sign of approval. No one could have known that the high school literary triumph prefigured the horror to come, with Klebold cast as the brother and all of Columbine High as the emeny. 

Not only friends were fooled by Harris and Klebold. So were law enforcement authorities and counselors who dealt with the two after they were arrested for burglarizing a car. When a judge asked Eric Harris what kind of grades he got, Harris answered, "A's and B's, your honor" – which was true. When a neighbor heard a racket at the Harris house the day before the shootings, he investigated and saw the teenagers banging pipes and breaking glass. It was material for their pipe bombs. The boys looked at the neighbor, smiled, and gave two thumbs up. 

Also fooled, apparently, were their parents. 

"You can't imagine how confused they are," said Randy Brown, a friend of Thomas and Susan Klebold. He was one of six people, other than the parents and a minister, who attended Dylan Klebold's funeral. 

"If you knew this kid and you knew what he was like -- other than the fact that he was associated with Eric -- you would never believe this was possible. . . . They're having trouble coming to grips with this situation. It's so unbelievable. With Eric, there were signs, there were red flags everywhere, that were ignored. With Dylan, there was not one sign. Not one," Brown said. 

The Browns knew that Eric Harris had the potential for violence because Harris threatened their son, Brooks, in electronic messages and on Harris's Web site. They turned the material over to police, who did nothing, according to the Browns. Police did not notify the juvenile court magistrate supervising the burglary case of Harris and Klebold. 

The material from the Browns is on Web pages written by "rebdoomer" and "rebdomine," screen names linked to Harris. America Online removed the material from its public sites soon after the shooting. 

One typical passage states, "I live in Denver and god damnit I would like to kill almost all of its residents. [Expletive] people with their rich snobby attitude thinkin they are all high and mighty and can just come up and tell me what to do and then people I see in the streets lying their [expletive] asses off about themselves." 

That was included under the label "Society." Under "Philosophy" he wrote: "My belief is that if I say something, it goes. I am the law, and if you don't like it, you die. If I don't like you or I don't like what you want me to do, you die. . . . I'll just go to some downtown area in some big ass city and blow up and shoot everything I can. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame." 

Harris also listed the wide range of things that he said he hated. He hated R-rated movies on cable television ("My DOG can do a better damn editing job than those [expletive].") He hated people who think they can forecast the weather. He hated people who think that wrestling is real. He hated it when people blocked his path in the hallway. What he loved: When a kid blows his hand off playing with firecrackers. 

"Eric was evil," said Randy Brown. 

District Attorney Dave Thomas said he had reviewed some of the pages of the journal found in Harris's house, presumably written by Harris, detailing the year-long plans for the killings, which the teenagers hoped would result in 500 people dead and end with them hijacking a plane and crashing into New York City. 

"What I read was disjointed. I found it rambling. There were words that I don't know what they mean. I'm going to have to do some research," he said. He said he didn't detect a philosophy -- other than a serious dislike of other people. 

What's clear is that they liked war, war as a game, war as entertainment. Like many kids, they played "Doom" and "Duke Nukem," computer games where the object, more or less, is to shoot and kill as many people as possible. 

In creative writing class, they did nothing to conceal their dark interests. 

Terra Oglesbee, who sat in front of Harris and next to Klebold, said, "It was good writing, but it was very gory." And littered with profanity, she said. The teacher of the class, identified by students as Judy Kelly, could not be reached for comment. 

Oglesbee, Heins and Duran said that nothing about Harris and Klebold indicated a propensity toward real violence. They wore Army boots and fatigues and trench coats, but so did a lot of students. Heins said that the report that Harris took antidepressants doesn't mean much, because a lot of kids do, even her sometimes, she said. 

Luvox is licensed by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder, which is characterized by persistent and distressing thoughts, or compulsive behaviors, such as hand-washing. It is in the same family as Prozac and functions as an antidepressant, and it is often prescribed to people who are both depressed and have obsessive thoughts. 

Oglesbee, who is black, said neither Harris nor Klebold showed signs of being racist -- an element that came into focus during the shootings, when one of the gunmen reportedly used a racial epithet before shooting a black student in the face. 

"They were great. I thought they were cool. I thought they were nice guys," said Heins, who has been in all-black clothing since 8th grade, when she shared a class with Harris and Klebold. They were "preppie" back then and called her "devil child," she said. Only in the last year or so, students said, did their attire turn toward the dark, Gothic fashions. 

Before he started dressing that way, Oglesbee said, Harris was not only normal-looking but rather attractive -- "hot," she said. 

The signal that the two were planning something violent was cloaked in abundant noise. For example, last fall, Klebold and Harris made a video for a government and economics class in which they showed themselves as hit men, a protection ring of sorts, who could be hired out to wreak justice on jocks who picked on other students. The video was violent and ended with the two bludgeoning the head of a dummy amid much fake blood. 

"Everyone thought the end was a little freaky," said one classmate, who wouldn't give her name because, like some students, she fears there might still be an accomplice or accomplices on the loose. 

But she noted that many of the videos were violent and that her own contained sexual scenes. "Everybody's video involved fighting," she said. 

Staff writers David Brown and Dana Priest and research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report. "You can't imagine how confused they are," a friend of gunman Dylan Klebold's parents says. Ed Harris wanted 'to shoot everyone.'
 

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The Toronto Star

April 26, 1999, Monday, Edition 1

SECTION: NEWS

DON'T BLAME POP CULTURE FOR MASSACRE

LIKE EVERYONE else who watched the horrific events as they

unfolded at Columbine High School last week, I have no answers

for why it happened.
 
 

But I do know one true thing: This isn't a generic problem.

It's not Toronto's problem. It's not Canada's problem. It's not even, in truth, America's problem.

If anyone's got a problem here - and it seems we must blame somebody - then it's the families of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, particularly the parents, those intelligent professionals who did all the appropriate '90s stuff with their sons, went to the Little League ballgames, provided their sons with the best of opportunities (and four-wheel drives) available to the American comfy class, and, certainly, allowed them all the space they needed to grow up, grow strong, become screwed up teenage mass murderers.

So, let's start with the parents, who apparently never noticed that their self-identified, self-obsessed outsider boys were building bombs in the basement, had bits of munitions strewn about their bedrooms, and were losing their marbles.

It seems quite evident, as well, that Columbine High School and the community from which it draws its students has one heck of a problem.

I wonder about the values that are of manifest importance at a school where almost every student had a cell phone; where so many of those kids had knowledge that something was severely wrong with the two particular adolescents who had spoken often, in frightening detail, about their morbid plans; where at least some teachers had been aware of how unhinged these boys had become in their loathing.

School, as a live-at environment, is keenly important to teenagers, even when they hate it. It's not peculiar that, choosing to act out their rage, sociopathic adolescents would target school. Where else to unleash their warped rage - the mall?

There has been much discussion about the skewed values that produce severely damaged adolescents. Let's blame violent movies, Goth culture, hateful lyrics. How facile.

The culture of entertainment embraced by teenagers is so shallow, it can't create monsters. At most, it can merely invest a crime with the details - a date of execution (Hitler's birthday), a fashion ''look'' (trench coats) a convenient ''cause'' (anti-jock, anti-black), which, in the Columbine tragedy, was patently feeble. These boys were not neo-Nazis or racists. They were, I think, sick, perhaps brilliant, adolescents seizing an

anti-social construct on which to hang their own feelings of alienation and disaffection.

The mental illness is still bred in the bone.

High school violence in the U.S. may be endemic, but mass slaughter of one's fellow students is not. Kids take knives and guns to school for self-protection, coolness and to establish territorial supremacy - not to blow up the building and kill as many classmates as possible.

Isn't it curious how these incidents of sprawling violence involving adolescents never occur in those places that we traditionally associate with crime: east Los Angeles, Harlem, east St. Louis, south Boston, inner Detroit. Places where violence is real and danger constant. Where, I think, there is an actual respect for the consequences of gunshots and where young people know enough about hardship, up close, that they don't have to invent social grievances.

Bad cases make bad laws, and even lousier social policy. Banning Marilyn Manson, forcing kids to wear uniforms, removing Catcher In The Rye from the library: all this does is run roughshod over the rights of adolescents. They do have the right to be different, act weird, entertain evil fantasies.

How difficult it must have been, to not belong, at a place like Columbine High.

Rosie DiManno's city column usually appears Monday. E-mail: dimanno@hotstar. Net

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THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR

April 23, 1999 Friday CITY FINAL EDITION

SECTION: EXTRA; Pg. E02; LET IT OUT

LET IT OUT

Got a comment about life, love, politics, whatever? Call InfoLine, (317) 624-4636, and enter category 4233. Or write LET IT OUT, Features Department, The Indianapolis Star and The Indianapolis News, P.O. Box 6187, Indianapolis, Ind. 46206-6187. Or fax us at (317) 630-9565, attention LET IT OUT. Comments might be held because of space limitations or questionable taste.

Good morning, parents: It's a brand-new day. Do you know what your children are doing?

It's sad that we live in a day and age when you send your child off to school and you don't know whether he or she is going to come home alive.

Parents and grandparents: When children leave in the morning, they need a word of encouragement, a smile, a hug and an "I love you. "

When we stopped spanking, they started opening fire. I did not say abuse. I did not say beat. I said spanking - consequences for actions. They're asking what they can do to keep their children safe in schools. Teach them not to make fun of people, not to laugh at them. That's the best thing they can do.

People need to start taking threats of violence seriously. If we're against selling guns because of use by irresponsible people, then we should not sell pipes in hardware stores because of their potential for making pipe bombs.

Gun owners: We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us. I suppose the National Rifle Association position will be that if all the other students in Colorado were heavily armed, they could have fought back.

Why does Market Square Arena book shows like Marilyn Manson?

If we believe music can, in a positive way, set the stage for a romantic evening, why don't we believe Marilyn Manson music can affect our children negatively?

If I'm exposed to the same material on television that the kids in Colorado were, how come I'm not going around shooting people? This is for everyone who thinks music influenced the actions in Colorado: You'd better stop listening to country music. Otherwise, everyone will be cheatin', lyin' and drinkin'.

Don't blame Goths for what happened in Colorado. I'm a Goth, my friends are Goths and we never killed anything bigger than a spider.

What good are unarmed police officers in the schools? As a parent of three Indianapolis schoolchildren, I demand that metal detectors be put in every entrance of every school. When we took God out of schools, that's when the trouble started.

Where was God in Littleton? Now that his income is down, how can I make a donation to Steve Hilbert?

Go, Indianapolis Ice. Heart and soul will bring home the Turner Cup. To the person pleased with Mel Kiper's grade of the Colts' draft (Let It Out, April 22): To quote Bill Tobin, the former Colts' president: "Who the hell is Mel Kiper?"

Indiana School for the Deaf teaches American Sign Language (Let It Out, April 22). I hope you people who've been dogging Indiana Pacer Derrick McKey for so long noticed how well he played Wednesday night. Another Secretaries' Day come and gone, and we were showered
with flowers and lunches. But what we really want is respect. And maybe a union.

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The Denver Post

April 22, 1999 Thursday 2D EDITION

SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A-11

WORLD OF DARKNESS Comfortable suburbs harbor troubled teens

By Susan Greene and Bill Briggs, Denver Post Staff Writers

News of Tuesday's massacre and the killers' involvement in Columbine High School's Trench Coat Mafia has triggered questions about how a youth underworld of nihilism and rage could emerge in conservative, cushy south Jefferson County.

Masked gunmen Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, are said to have hung out with the so-called mafia, a small, self-styled group drawing on the satanic "Goth" scene and neo-Nazi paramilitarism.

Underlying both those subcultures, experts say, are preoccupation with death, feelings of being misunderstood and isolated, and often unspeakable anger.

Classmates say Klebold and Harris - who apparently killed themselves - wore swastikas and worshiped Adolf Hitler. Some say their clique drove hearses, tested friendships by cutting each other with knives, engaged in endless hours of macabre Internet chatter and relished a bloody fantasy game called "Doom" on their computers.

Several Columbine students say the group idolized Marilyn Manson, who claims to be a satanic priest. Others say they eschewed the shock-rocker, preferring instead Euro-technopop.

Whatever their musical tastes, both killers were, by all accounts, kids of opportunity and privilege. Both excelled in school, classmates say. And Harris and Klebold lived in $ 184,400 and $ 390,710 homes, respectively.

The dark symbols with which they surrounded themselves contrast with the upbeat, upscale image of Jefferson County, which lures 3,500 residents annually with its rolling foothills, aura of safety and prosperity, and promise of an average 255 sunny days a year.

Indeed, the community's corporate office parks, its strip malls, bike trails and housing tracts contrast with the nefarious, nonconformist image the clique chose. South Jefferson County, if it were an article of clothing, would be a pastel sundress or Pat Nixon's respectable Republican wool coat compared to the dark trench coats the "mafia" took as its moniker.

Perhaps the contrast between the two cultures was best portrayed in a cartoon that ran March 11 in Columbine's student newspaper, The Courier. Cartoonist Kim Snyder drew a darkly dressed teen approaching the cosmetic counter at Foley's, asking "Do you have the official Marilyn Manson eyeliner and make-up applicator?"

Columbine, like all high schools, had its student factions: athletes, brainy kids, band members, dramatists, burnouts - some considered cool and others treated as outcasts.

So - people shocked by Tuesday's tragedy are asking - what went wrong? What accounts for the bravado and rage that led such promising teens to target their schoolmates, whom they derided as "niggers" and "jocks," and then turn their guns on themselves?

How could kids so comfortable, with such pretty homes, computers in their bedrooms and spare cash in their pockets, turn out so brooding, so racist, so fascist? And why did they dabble in death?

Some experts in adolescent psychology find explanations in comfortable neighborhoods such as those in South Jefferson County - the very place where this kind of thing isn't supposed to happen.

Ted Hoyer, a psychologist with Jefferson County Schools who recently moved to the suburb from Denver, said he was driving around the area Wednesday noting that "houses are empty and nobody's home. Somehow it feels a little less like a community.

"Parents aren't around and it's fairly easy for kids to feel isolated, with hours to themselves," he said.

Such isolation, coupled with the self-consciousness of adolescence, can lead to angst and anger over the sense that nobody understands and nobody's listening.

"High school is tough. Kids can be pretty cruel and some get very marginalized," said Dave DeForest-Stalls, executive director of The Spot, a nighttime activity center for urban high school and older youth in Denver.

Others say problems can stem from a '90s parenting style that aims to shield kids from the harsh side of life. It pervades in the suburbs, said Dr. Brian Brody, a psychologist whose office looks out on Columbine High School and who works with "Goth" kids and other adolescents attracted to "kiddie cults."

While some inner-city teens are forced to learn survival skills to get by, many suburban kids are growing up "weaker and crippled, without the ability to cope" with any sort of emotional pain, Brody said. It's the same reason rashes of teen suicides have often struck in white, opulent parts of town, he added.

"I do see some 'Goth' kids who are into the dark side of life. But whatever their form of hate - however they express their pain - the underlying root is that these kids are hurting and don't know what to do with the pain," he said. "The pain gets worse, they get angry. And without the skills to process the pain, it escalates."

Further, when teens get pushed to the fringe socially toward "Goth"-type groups, a few like Klebold and Harris are destined to lash out in violence, said Dr. Alex Panio, who runs the Adolescent and Family Institute of Colorado in Jefferson County.

They are teased, get angry and crave bloody recognition in order to push aside the feelings that they are society's losers.

"This probably is a group of white, angry kids who want to associate themselves with some sense of power, who are searching for recognition and an identity," Panio said. "It's the recognition that they are 'bad' as opposed to inadequate or a nerd. In order to (show) their strength, to show that they have power and control, they go out and victimize and hurt."

Given that violence has become so much a part of kids' worlds - whatever their socioeconomic class - some experts expressed bewilderment Wednesday that so many people are surprised by the Columbine rampage.

"The white picket fence is an illusion," said Julie Polisher, coordinator of an intervention program called Passages in the Boulder Valley School District.

"I don't understand how people think money can prevent violence," added DeForest-Stalls.

"What it all comes down to is 'Who's listening to these kids? Who is spending enough time to listen them? Who knows them?' This is a school of 1,900 kids. Is that place too big to listen?" Deforest-Stalls said.

So, some experts note, Klebold and Harris shouldn't be the only ones held responsible for Tuesday's rampage. Adults, they say, should share some blame.

"We don't spend enough time with kids and we've taught them they're not valued. We'll give them a check, a credit card, a car before we give them our time," DeForest-Stalls said.

"We have to focus on our oun behavior and neglect rather than on what's so wrong with kids these days," he continued. "We have to let them know their lives have value beyond cheap labor at McDonald's."

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The San Francisco Chronicle

APRIL 22, 1999, THURSDAY, FINAL EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A1

Eerie Hints of the Outcasts' Dark Side;

Classmates recall frequent threats, jokes about shooting

By Kevin Fagan, Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writers

Littleton, Colo.
Dylan Klebold was a lanky computer genius who had been on an honor studies track since elementary school, and his pal Eric Harris was a promising short story writer who was so good at his studies they bored him.

They were also deep into Hitler, wore black trench coats and steel-toed Army boots and filmed videos of each other blowing up plastic green soldiers and showing off high-powered weaponry. They broke into cars, hacked into nether regions of the Internet, created Web sites trumpeting doom and racial genocide and made it pretty well known that they hated jocks.

Leaders of the small clique of Columbine High School outcasts called the Trenchcoat Mafia, they were a horror waiting to happen. On Tuesday it did.

As authorities combed through the minefield of booby traps, weaponry and 15 bodies -- including those of Klebold, 17, and Harris, 18 — left behind after the duo's murderous eruption Tuesday morning, they were still at a loss for a real motive. The boys were frustrated, yes, and maybe even a bit scary to those around them -- but who thought they would go on the most deadly school shooting rampage in the nation's history?

"I have no idea whatsoever what could have caused this craziness," said Jefferson County Sheriff John Stone, shaking his head. "We've got a sick society."

However, in the aftermath of seeing their schoolmates slaughtered, the danger they should have seen before suddenly snapped into focus for just about any student who had ever had any contact with that Trenchcoat crowd.

"If you had gone and asked what group in the school would be capable of doing something like that, it would be this group," said Michael Staver, a 17-year-old junior who knew the group. "If anyone was going to do it, it would be them."

"It was the way they talked about bombs," Staver said solemnly as he and hundreds of his classmates outside the school walked among makeshift memorials of flowers, balloons, stuffed animals and testimonial banners. "I know people who were threatened. They'd say, I'll kill you,' or You better watch it.' "

Several students said in hindsight they should have been alarmed by the group's constant jokes and offhand comments about blowing things up and shooting people -- and one of duo's friends said he did raise an alarm but nothing happened.

Brooks Brown, 18, said he had been friends with both shooters since elementary school, but last year he had a falling out with Harris when Harris threw an ice chunk at his windshield.

Brown complained to Harris' parents, got nowhere, and then "Harris said he would kill me," Brown said during a quick visit yesterday to the campus memorial. "I knew Eric was looking into making pipe bombs. It freaked my parents out. And then when those guys got pissed at me, my parents told the cops. They should have known something was coming." Brown said he later patched things up with Harris, but he was always a bit apprehensive after that.

PENCHANT FOR NAZI PARAPHERNALIA

Even everyday activities took on a bizarre twist for the small group of misfits, which began three years ago with about a dozen members but had winnowed down to a hard core of Harris, Klebold and few others by this past year. The group was often ridiculed by schoolmates for their weird, Goth dress -- most notable for the black trench coats -- donning of makeup and fondness for Nazi paraphernalia and techno-strange music ranging from Marylin Manson to the German band Rammstein.

John House, 17, a junior, said he had a bowling class with Harris, Klebold and two others in their group. "When one of them made a strike, they would salute and one of them would say, Heil Hitler,' " House said. "Stupid stuff. I took offense to it. I asked them to stop several times. They just looked at me stupid."

Students also recalled how Harris and Klebold shot several videotapes that ranged from them showing off high-powered guns to blowing up toy soldiers and coffee cans. One of their films was aired on the school's student video production network, shocking some classmates.

Both boys were seniors, considered model employees at a local pizza parlor, and lived in upscale neighborhoods in this upper-middle class suburb outside Denver. They were convicted of breaking into a car last year, but their academic record was good: Klebold was always in accelerated studies, and Harris often earned A's, especially in creative writing, teachers said.

"Dylan was a genius, real good at math, writing, everything," said Josiah Pina, 18, a Columbine Senior who was a sixth grade classmate of Klebold and knew both of the suspects. "Eric was a genius, too. In fact, when he was a freshman, he was a real preppie, and then last year he started changing."

Harris' parents, retired military veteran Wayne and his medical professional wife Kathy, occupy a huge two-story house on a cul-de-sac. Klebold lived with his father Tom, a geologist, and mother Sue, who works for a neighboring school district, in a Sea Ranch-style mansion in the rolling hills.

SMELL OF CHEMICALS

Harris' neighbors said they knew something unusual was happening over the weekend when Klebold parked his black BMW sedan in Harris' driveway early Saturday and the two trench-coated youths disappeared inside the garage. All weekend they could hear the sound of power tools and breaking glass, accompanied by the reek of gasoline and other chemicals.

"You'd barely see them when they came home. They would pull right into the garage and shut the door," said Karen Good, who lives two doors down from Harris. "He was intense and quiet, but you'd never think he'd do this."

Several of Harris' neighbors said he used to play street hockey with them, and though he was unusually stoic and cut an odd figure driving around in black Army-style clothing in his old Honda Prelude coupe, he never seemed overly strange. Until recently.

"He'd let us take a lead start (in street hockey), and he played real good. Nice guy," said Sean Kennedy, 12, who lives around the corner from Harris. But Sean and others said three months ago Harris suddenly became very withdrawn and stopped hanging out with anyone from the neighborhood.

"He just became a bat and stayed in his garage all the time," he said. "We didn't know what he was doing."

Sean Kelly, a 16-year-old junior, said Klebold was an internet whiz who was suspended from school for a week last year for stealing credit card numbers off the Internet. "He was a computer genius," Kelly said. "He had a lot of talent, I always thought. It was just a matter of how he used it."

Harris also was an avid computer buff, and in addition to playing the violent "Doom" and "Duke Nukem 3-D" computer games, the pair ran a hate-talk Web site monitored over the past year by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. But the most chilling message Harris left behind on the Internet this week was in his America Online profile: "Quit whining, it's just a flesh wound. Kill 'Em AAALLL."

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SOUND OFF ON THE GATE

.

What can be done to prevent tragedies like the one at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.? What is the proper role of the schools, parents and the media? Join the discussion online at SF Gate at: sfgate.com/vent/columbine/

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Los Angeles Times

April 21, 1999, Wednesday, Ventura County Edition

SECTION: Metro; Part B; Page 1; Zones Desk

VENTURA COUNTY LIFE;

By STEVE CHAWKINS, TIMES STAFF WRITER

It can't happen here.

These days, the once-familiar phrase is used mainly with an ironic smirk. Thankfully, I didn't hear it at all as Tuesday's grim drama in Colorado played across TV screens throughout Ventura County.

Students with quavering voices and terror in their eyes spoke of executioners stalking through the school library. Anguished parents wanted to know if their children had escaped, or had been evacuated, or had been cut down by gunfire, or were still trapped inside the charnel house. Their torture was as real as anything from Kosovo.

It can happen here.

That was what they were saying as the images of pain filled the TV screen in Macy's employee break room.

"Anything can happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time," said Daniel Tuando, a 20-year-old cologne salesman. "You can't check everyone in school."

Juan Naranjo, his friend and fellow Channel Islands High School graduate, echoed that sad truth.

"It's just something that happens," said Naranjo, an 18-year-old stock clerk who wants to become a police officer. "You just never know when or where."

I thought helplessly of my daughter Kate, who's in high school now. I can't protect her from the stresses of growing up. I certainly can't shield her from lunatics with lethal grudges.

In Ventura County, school officials on Tuesday said reassuring things. We have programs in place. We teach conflict-resolution, peer mediation, character, values, decision-making. We enforce our dress codes.

But the TV in the Ventura school district headquarters' board room was tuned to the carnage of the day, and, as somber employees drifted in and out, Supt. Joseph Spirito watched and thought: What if?

"You always say to yourself, God forbid, what if it happened here? My good Lord, what would I do--how would I handle this?" Spirito isn't big on metal detectors or more police in the hallways or, as he put it, "anti-aircraft guns on campus." Instead, he wants more educational programs, more instruction in the spirit and practice of tolerance, more emphasis on simply getting along.

To me, it sounds well-intended, squishy, ineffectual. But a couple of young guys taking a break at Skate Street, Ventura's indoor skateboarding palace, came up with much the same idea.

Josh Feldman, a 1996 Buena High School graduate, pointed to the razor-sharp divisions of the high school caste system and spoke of "pent-up

aggression."

"You're taught about what happened to the Jews and the blacks, but you're not taught about the jocks coming down on the punk rockers and the Goths every day of their lives."

Chris "Thor" McMakin agreed. "Things are getting bad, man," he said. "It makes me think of the people I made fun of at school. Maybe they'll want to come back at me now."

In the days and weeks to come, we'll hear plenty about the boys of Littleton. Maybe there will be the usual tidy explanations: guns as close as the family closet, meanness as close as the TV.

Or maybe we'll learn about a monstrous pathology that nobody in the family--perhaps the nicest of families--ever wanted to deal with.

Who knows?

For now, we can only shudder, and conclude: It can happen here.

Steve Chawkins is a Times staff writer. His e-mail address is steve.chawkins@aol.com.

* MAIN COVERAGE: Colorado high school attack stuns nation. A1

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