The date brings a familiar mixture of ritual and change, avoidance and embrace.
Today’s eighth anniversary of the Columbine shootings, arriving only four days after the still- raw horror of an even deadlier rampage at Virginia Tech, also carries a new level of reflection.
“It shows that as a society we haven’t made the impact or changes we hoped Columbine would make,” said Beth Nimmo, whose daughter, Rachel Scott, is believed to have been the first killed at the school. “I always knew there would be people who wanted to eclipse Columbine, and somebody found a way to do it.”
Thirty-two people died on the Blacksburg, Va., campus at the hands of 23-year-old suicidal gunman Cho Seung-Hui. At Columbine, the deaths of 12 students and a teacher – plus two dozen wounded – on April 20, 1999, had established a grisly standard for school violence.
But Columbine’s imprint on America’s culture had less to do with its physical toll than the way its images burst into living rooms and captured a nation’s attention, experts say.
Robert Thompson, founding director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture, said Columbine was the first school shooting that Americans tracked in real time on TV. In addition to endless updates and replays on a 24-hour cable-news cycle, it produced what Thompson calls “iconic images” – students streaming from the building with hands up; the dramatic rescue of injured student Patrick Ireland out a window.
Hypnotized by televised horror
Thompson sat transfixed by the TV images. “I knew there was no new information coming in, nothing I was going to hear from midnight to 3 a.m. that I hadn’t heard already,” he said. “But I couldn’t leave the set. There was a need to binge because it seemed so horrible. The only way to process it was to hear it repeated.
“Having gone through that, (with Virginia Tech) you got a sense that we’d been here before. That didn’t make it less horrible, but it made it different.”
So overarching is the cultural significance of Columbine that it can actually hinder meaningful analysis of discrete incidents – including the latest rampage, said Peter Sheras, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Virginia’s Youth Violence Project.
“Columbine is a verb,” he said. “We hear that from kids all the time – ‘I’m going to Columbine the school.’ When it makes it into the language on that level, it not only reflects reality, but makes a new reality. We lose the fine-grained distinction between these events. We lose the ability to see their separateness.”
Cho’s fleeting reference to Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold in his recorded diatribe, coupled with images of Cho striking poses reminiscent of the two, only encouraged comparison. Among Columbine survivors, it also fueled anger that Harris and Klebold’s desire for infamy, revealed through videotapes, has been fulfilled.
“After everything they’ve taken away from so many people, it makes me angry that they are getting what they wanted out of the situation,” said Sean Graves, who was shot six times and partly paralyzed in the attack. “Their message, and what they did, has become a reality for many, many people.”
Some have focused on a different reality – that the Columbine tragedy also left a legacy of compassion and kindness.
Craig Scott, Rachel’s brother and witness to the carnage in Columbine’s library, has been part of a familywide effort to encourage such traits in schools through an organization called “Rachel’s Challenge.”
“What you give attention to, you give power to – especially when it’s sensationalized,” said Scott, 24, who now helps produce inspirational films. “People think that if we study everything about the shooter, we’ll get answers to what’s going on with America. But some evil people do evil things, and you can’t always stop it.”
“There’s going to be another one”
A sense of foreboding has haunted some in the Columbine community, often around the time of the anniversary. They have felt that an even more awful toll loomed somewhere in the future.
Monday’s events confirmed those fears.
“I wait every April for something horrible,” said Connie Michalik, mother of injured Columbine student Richard Castaldo. “Is this the month now for school shootings because of Columbine? It’s a terrifying thought. There’s going to be another one. You know it and I know it.”
In the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy, Columbine principal Frank DeAngelis described reactions from survivors – including about 30 school staffers remaining from the 1999 attack – as “re-traumatized.”
Graves, who learned of the most recent rampage while at work, said that when he saw the death toll rise to 32, he became physically ill.
“Coming as close as it did to the anniversary makes it more difficult because it stirs things up,” said Graves, now 23 and continuing to recover from his injuries. “I reflect more deeply on what I went through emotionally and what everything that happened that day has done to me.”
Eight years later, he planned to continue his annual ritual, visiting the spot where he was wounded outside the school and lighting a cigar in memory of Daniel Rohrbough, who died there. Then he’ll get a tattoo: a Superman logo peppered with six bullet holes.
Scott said he planned to spend Thursday night at his sister’s gravesite, and the anniversary with family at the dance production of “Edward Scissorhands” – one of his sister’s favorite movies.
Michalik scheduled lunch with another Columbine parent. Others planned to find solitude, or head out of town, or seek the company of friends and relatives. But heaped on the mix of feelings about the anniversary comes a recognition of tragic common ground with the community in Blacksburg.
“They have no idea what’s happened to them yet,” said Nimmo. “They’re feeling such shock and trauma. It will be weeks, months and maybe years before the impact of Monday’s events hit home.
“I just wept.”
United in mourning
Invoking Colorado’s own school tragedy at Columbine eight years ago, Gov. Bill Ritter on Thursday asked the state to join a nationwide bell-ringing and moment of silence for the victims of the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech. The observance will be at 10 a.m. MDT Friday.
Jim Spencer: Cho Seung-Hui’s invocation of the Columbine killers allows pair to once more kick their community from the grave. 1B
