EXCERPT: The Scene of the Crime Was the Cause of the Crime

By Mark Ames, AlterNet. Posted October 3, 2005.

The following is an excerpt from Mark Ames' recently released book, "Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion -- From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond" (Soft Skull, 2005).

On April 20, 1999, the bloodiest of all school rage massacres took place at Columbine. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered twelve students and a teacher, wounded twenty others, and then killed themselves. Americans wanted to blame everything but Columbine High for the massacre -- they blamed a violent media, Marilyn Manson, Goth culture, the Internet, the Trench Coat Mafia, video games, lax gun control laws, and liberal values. And still skipping over the school, they peered into the opposite direction, blaming the moral and/or mental sickness, or alleged homosexuality, of these two boys, as if they were exceptional freaks in a school of otherwise happy kids.

They searched all over the world for a motive, except for one place: the scene of the crime.

In fact, a typical Columbine school day for Harris and Klebold was torture. Former student Devon Adams told the Governor's Columbine Review Commission that the boys were regularly called "faggots, weirdoes, and freaks."

As one member of the Columbine High School football team bragged after the massacre, "Columbine is a good, clean place except for those rejects. Most kids didn't want them there ... Sure we teased them. But what do you expect with kids who come to school with weird hairdos and horns on their hats? ... If you want to get rid of someone, usually you tease 'em. So the whole school would call them homos."

Harris got it worse than most, not just because he dressed weird or was one of the computer nerds, but also because he was short, he was a transplant from out-of-state (like Andy Williams) and, due to an embarrassing indent in his chest, he never took his shirt off during P.E., giving the jocks more ammo to attack him.

Former Columbine student Brooks Brown recounted one incident: "I was smoking cigarettes with [Klebold and Harris] when a bunch of football players drove by, yelled something, and threw a glass bottle that shattered near Dylan's feet. I was pissed, but Eric and Dylan didn't even flinch. 'Don't worry about it, man,' Dylan said. 'It happens all the time.'"

Once, a student reported them to the administration for allegedly having brought drugs to school, just to humiliate them for a laugh. Harris and Klebold were dramatically removed from class and searched -- as were their lockers and cars. No drugs were found, but the damage was done. Another time, according to a report, students surrounded them in the cafeteria and threw ketchup at them.

They were so marked for abuse that even talking to them was dangerous. One female student recounted how, when she was a Columbine freshman, some jocks spotted her talking to Dylan Klebold in the school hallway between classes. After she walked away from him, one of the bullies slammed her against the lockers and called her a "fag lover." None of the students came to help her -- and when asked later why she didn't report the incident to the administration, she replied, "It wouldn't do any good because they wouldn't do anything about it."

Klebold and Harris weren't the only victims of bullying. Debra Spears, whose stepsons attended Columbine in 1994-1995, said, "It was relentless. The constant threats walking through the halls. You had a whole legion of people that would tell you that just going to school was unbearable." Her stepsons both dropped out and never earned their diplomas -- Columbine essentially destroyed their lives.

One favorite bullying game for the seniors was to "go bowling," in which they'd spread baby oil on the floor and throw a freshman on it, causing him to slide into the other kids. This was the original "bowling for Columbine." Another jock was notorious for forcing kids to push pennies across the ground with their noses in front of the whole school; teachers "would see it and just look the other way."

Regina Huerter, Director of Juvenile Diversion for the Denver District Attorney's office, compiled a report on Columbine's "toxic culture," as Dylan Klebold's parents later described it. One Jewish student she interviewed told how jocks threatened to "build an oven and set him on fire," and how, during P.E. basketball, each time someone scored a basket, the bullies would cheer, "that's another Jew in the oven!" The student complained over and over, but, he said, the school administration not only didn't punish the jocks, they "did everything but call me a liar."

Another student was physically and verbally abused by a group of jocks so badly that he refused to go back to the school. The father tried contacting the administration, but they didn't return his calls for six weeks, and when they did, they were curt and rude. The father pulled his son from the high school and told Huerter that "he still refuses to enter Columbine property to this day."

Mark Ames is editor of the Moscow English alt weekly, The eXile and author of the forthcoming book Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion -- From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond."

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »