Abstract
This afterword considers the cultural effect of the 1999 Columbine High School shootings. I bring together the aspects of a traditional academic review with my personal reflections as a scholar who spent the past two decades researching its cultural and policy ramifications. Columbine is a noted milestone in the American cultural lexicon, and one that has become an important reference point for discussions of school violence and other social problems concerning youth. Columbine often serves as an inaccurate exemplar of the broader problem of youth violence, and this so-called “Columbine Effect” means that extreme cases exert a disproportionately strong influence on public discourse about the problem. Over the past 20 years, the net effect has been the acceleration of punitive anti-violence school policies that include policing, surveillance, and zero-tolerance policies. I consider my experience as a researcher in this area and conclude with modest suggestions for guiding policy development to mitigate the problem of violence in schools.
Columbine, as a shorthand for the shootings at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, is a noted entry in the American cultural lexicon, and thus can be examined as an important referent in public discourse. Specifically, Columbine entered the broader cultural field (Bourdieu, 1984), and serves as a reference point to understand youth social problems and violence in educational institutions. The effect of Columbine is substantial, not only on anti-violence policy in schools, but also as a cultural touchstone. Columbine attained the rare status as a milestone moment where people can pinpoint exactly when they heard about the shootings. Regardless of how Columbine is memorialized, when we speak about “Columbine,” we are not really talking about what happened in that incident in 1999, but rather its reverberations that continue to this day.
This afterword combines aspects of a traditional academic review with my personal reflections as a scholar who has spent the past two decades researching the cultural and policy ramifications of Columbine. The academic and more professional aspects of this piece examine the entry and evolution of Columbine in the American collective memory, ultimately reflecting on the ways in which Columbine has become an influential touchstone for how the culture conceptualizes and responds to the threat of violence in schools. My reflections explore my personal connection with Columbine as a graduate student in Colorado and my subsequent work studying the legacy of Columbine. I conclude by bringing these themes together to consider future work. As I intersperse my personal reflections in the text, personal reflections appear in italics.
Columbine in American Collective Memory
The shared memories and subsequent meanings of the 1999 Columbine High School shootings are a noted aspect of contemporary American cultural life. A tragic event undoubtedly occurred on April 20, 1999, yet the lingering poignancy of it has become more abstract in the collective American psyche. The concept Columbine is one that is distinct from the concrete facts or historical context of the events that actually occurred, and its salience arises from shared memories, or what sociologists would call the nation’s “collective memory” (see Olick & Robbins, 1998). It is in this shared memory of Columbine that generates what may be its most significant legacy.
The study of collective memory is distinct from history. Collective memory examines how shared memories of past events are created and sustained, and in turn influence contemporary social relations. As such, this sociological perspective focuses on detached, evaluative, and shared aspects of memories (Zerubavel, 2003). “Sociologists of memory stress the importance of social contexts including the historical, cultural, subcultural, and political environments in which memories are generated and to which they refer” (Song & Muschert, 2013, p. 17). In collective memory studies, individual memories are subjective frames of reference through which individuals interpret the social realm and attribute meanings to the contemporary notion of the past (Zerubavel, 1996). Collective memories also are a part of the ideological sphere, which provide a shared sense of a social group’s origins. As such, collective memories serve as orientating concepts that groups can use as they negotiate and interpret contemporary or future challenges. The social dynamics of memorializing the past help solidify the collective identities of social units, including communities, nations, and generations.
One additional reason that Columbine serves as a particularly relevant historical point of reference is due to the crime-conscious nature of American society (see Reiman & Leighton, 2013). Americans share a fascination with crime and justice, which often captures the public imagination (see, for example, Chermak & Bailey, 2007; Garland, 2000). Famous crimes, criminals, and trials tend to anchor themselves as cultural milestones in collective memory. For example, many Americans can speak about the salience of noted crimes such as the 1955 lynching of Emmitt Till; the 1969 Manson family murders; the 1978 massacre at Jonestown, Guyana; the 1992 Rodney King Trial and subsequent Los Angeles riots; the 1995 O.J. Simpson trial; and the 2011 Casey Anthony trial. With this lineage, it is not surprising that a mass school shooting also achieved this collective memory status.
Although prominent collective memories arise from past events, their actual salience is in the present. Thus, Columbine in its ideological sense as a collective memory exists in the present and is therefore useful as a tool in meaning-making and orienting individual and group actions in the present. “In its more abstract senses, Columbine has become a keyword for a complex set of emotions surrounding youth, risk, fear, and delinquency in early 21st century United States” (Muschert, 2007a, p. 365). The importance of the collective memory of Columbine in America is that it serves as a significant point of reference for interpretation and orientation of action toward contemporary social problems associated with youth, particularly violence at school.
How Columbine Became a Part of My Life
Although Columbine indeed is a noted entry in the cultural lexicon, it is also a noted milestone in my own life and career, one that has influenced my professional work through the past two decades. At the time of the Columbine massacre, I was a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Colorado at Boulder (commonly referred to as “CU”). April 20, 1999 fell on a Tuesday. I rarely watch television (TV), and at times have even foresworn the medium for extended periods of time. However, for some reason I tuned in to watch the media coverage of the Columbine event, almost from the moment the reporting preempted the regular programming. Not only was it a strange occurrence that I was watching TV, but it was also unusual that I had cable TV. I lived in university family housing (populated mostly by graduate students and visiting scholars), which provided gratis access to cable TV. The initial coverage of the shooting was broadcasted by Denver area network news (namely local affiliates of ABC, CBS, and NBC). Soon after cable news started covering the event. CNN’s coverage often showing the video footage from the network news stations, but overlaying their own audio commentary. We know from subsequent reports (see, for example, State of Colorado, 2001) that it was less than an hour between the start of shooting and the death of the two shooters. From the point of view of the view of those watching the Columbine media event, however, the attack seemed to stretch on for 4 or 5 hr, and well into the afternoon. For those who did not watch the Columbine story unfold in real time, suffice it to say that it was riveting. I have no recollection of what else I did that day and evening, outside of consuming the non-stop media coverage on various news channels.
The following day was a Wednesday and a teaching day for me at the university. I clearly remember that the students on the campus seemed to be walking around in a collective sort of daze as all seemed to have some personal connection with the tragedy. As the flagship public academic institution in Colorado, the majority of the CU student population were in-state students. The lion’s share of Colorado’s population lives on the Front Range, a swath of land extending from Fort Collins and Boulder in the North, through Denver, and on to Colorado Springs and Pueblo in the south. Most of the in-state students were from somewhere within 2-hr drive from Columbine High School, located in a suburb south of Denver. Some students had graduated from Columbine, and many still had siblings enrolled there. Many more CU students were from schools nearby and felt a connection to Columbine as a neighboring, rival school. Others who were from farther afield in Colorado and across the United States also were affected, as many students had come up through schools and communities that fit a similar profile as Columbine.
On the day following the Columbine attack, facts of the case were still emerging, and some discussion centered on rumor or speculation about what had happened. Many graduate instructors and professors reported making little to no headway on their scheduled academic topics that day. In my own classes in sociology, two sections on the sociology of social problems, regular discussions were preempted by the students’ desire to discuss the shootings, their aftermath, and the reverberations it was having in our communities and across the nation. Although I have little recollection of the actual conversations that ensued in classes, I do recall that the focus was on taking inventory of the facts of the attack and to a lesser extent in a search for the meaning of the event. In the subsequent days, more information were released about the identities of the shooters and those fatally wounded, as well as the conditions of those victims with non-fatal wounds. As these facts became clearer, discussion shifted to examination of the police response and the search for the meaning of Columbine, including the perhaps unanswerable question of what could motivate two youths to undertake such a horrendous act (Muschert, 2009).
The week following the shootings dragged onward, and somehow folks muddled through, if for no other reason than to return to the mundane normalcy of life. As the weekend approached, individual memorial services for the fatally wounded victims began to take the focus of media coverage. In addition, on Sunday, April 25, a group memorial for the Columbine victims was held in a movie theater parking lot not far from the high school. In the presence of a massive crowd, politicians offered speeches and condolences, including Vice President Al Gore, Colorado Governor Bill Owens, and former Colorado Governor Roy Roemer. In addition, Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, addressed the crowd, and Christian musicians Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith gave performances. I listened with rapt attention to the various speeches, but found it confusing that the commentaries of politicians bore many similarities to those of the religious speakers. Although many in the crowd seemed comforted by the religious rhetoric, regardless of the source, I wanted to hear from politicians what plans or insights they had to mobilize responses to this particular attack, and indeed to develop plans for prevention and response for potential future events. I went to the memorial for several reasons: to pay my respects to the victims and to show solidarity to the community, but also as a sociological observer, who wanted to learn what policy makers might do. I was soon to become disappointed by the speeches, as significant change to mitigate the underlying causes of rampage attacks rarely appeared in the discourse about such events, and even less often was reflected in concrete policy responses. Over the subsequent two decades, I have continued to feel frustrated by the rhetoric of policy makers offering “hopes and prayers” for victims of similar attacks, when I have believed that they should make more concrete changes.
That Sunday afternoon, I also visited so-called Rebel Hill (named after the Columbine sports teams), which sits in a public park adjacent to the high school. The snow from an April storm that fell on the Thursday after the shootings had melted and saturated the ground in the park, such that walking up a hill in muddied grass was rather difficult. Nonetheless, a stream of mourners filed up and down Rebel Hill, to observe an impromptu and controversial memorial. Within hours after the Columbine shootings, an unemployed carpenter from the Chicago area named Greg Zanis had driven the roughly 1,000 miles to Colorado and erected 15 crosses approximately 7 feet high and constructed of 4 × 4 lumber. On each cross, he had written in black marker a name of one of those who died in the school. Each cross also had a black and white photo of approximately 2 × 3 in cut from the newspaper.
On a personal level, attending the large-scale memorial and then climbing Rebel Hill to see the crosses left a deep impression on me, one which I will never forget. As those who made the trek filed past, many stopped to have discussions about those who had died and frequently left items like written notes, stuffed animals, or flowers at each cross. Friends and other community members in small groups mourned their losses, their grief palpable and powerful. What was controversial about the crosses was the tally of 15 fatalities, and thus the 15 crosses, represented the 12 students and one teacher killed by the shooters, with two additional crosses at the end for the shooters themselves. Some conflicts arose as friends and family members of the 13 victims objected to the presence of the crosses representing the shooters. Some altercations ensued that were directed at the friends of the shooters who also had climbed the hill to memorialize their deceased friends. In short order, a parent of one of the 13 victims used a saw to fell the shooters’ crosses, which ultimately ended up in pieces in a nearby dumpster. Within days, the remaining 13 crosses were removed by park officials, citing that they had been placed on Rebel Hill (a public park) without a permit. I’ve often wondered about the irony of the cross as a symbol for universal redemption, and wondered why the symbol would not be appropriate for even the worst of the worst. Nonetheless, I also recognize that it is not appropriate to memorialize murderers prominently and in close proximity to their victims, particularly at a time when the trauma is still fresh. (For a more detailed discussion of the controversy of the crosses, please see Spencer & Muschert, 2009).
The Evolution of Columbine as Shorthand for School Violence
As an aspect of collective memory, Columbine has particular salience in both its meaning and continued relevance as a cultural point of reference for understanding extreme violence in schools. Over time, the meaning of the term Columbine has evolved, such that its use has little direct connection to the historical event, but rather used as shorthand to express a broad concern about violence in schools and other problems associated with youth. For example, we have seen the two decades since Columbine referred to the “post-Columbine” era in schools, and generations of youth may be defined as the “Columbine generation,” meaning those who attended school in the years following the attack (e.g., Toppo, 2018; Vila, 2018). Even wider usage clarifies the salience of the term as news media will offer reports of a “Columbine-style” or “-type” shooting incident, or may refer to threats or actions where a person might “pull a Columbine” or “go Columbine.” Few terms are as broadly applied as points of reference or retained with continued relevance as Columbine. Even youth born after the actual attacks in 1999 immediately recognize the meaning. The term still expresses a widespread angst regarding the risk of such attacks in the present. The development and scope of Columbine as a collective memory as well as its continued salience is discussed here.
There are a few reasons for the broad application and continued relevance of the term Columbine to refer to school shootings and violence. Media coverage is one reason that collective memory of Columbine serves as the archetypal school shooting rampage and a salient cultural referent for discussion of subsequent events. The Columbine attack took place during a period in the development of news reporting characterized by the rise of the 24-hr cable news industry in the 1990s. Through its intense media coverage at the time, and later through its continued use as a point of reference, Columbine has been used as a prime example to typify school violence. Since 1999, with emergent news of another school shooting event, public discourse routinely circles back to an orienting point of reference, notably Columbine (or, more precisely, the collective memory of Columbine). As much of public discourse occurs in mass media, it is noteworthy that media personnel will typically refer to Columbine, by comparing the current event to the 1999 shooting. This comparison is not surprising, given the fact that Columbine was among the most prominent media stories of the 1990s (see Muschert, 2002) in coverage and readership. Specifically, Columbine was the single largest U.S. media story in 1999, and indeed was the seventh highest rated media event in its decade (Muschert, 2002, pp. 96-97), surpassed only by the media attention paid to the O.J. Simpson car chase, trial, and verdict (see Muschert, 2002). As case in point of the national media salience of Columbine, it is worth noting that the story appeared on the front page of the New York Times for 10 consecutive days (Harris, 2018). This legacy continues as Columbine has a prominent place in the American cultural lexicon of noteworthy crimes and has proven influential in affecting the discussion of school violence.
The second reason for the continued salience of Columbine as a collective memory is that the Columbine shooting demonstrated that such an attack is indeed possible. Before Columbine, a rampage attack with such mass casualties at a school seemed unfathomable (despite that such attacks had taken place in other settings). It is also noteworthy that similar attacks in educational settings did occur before Columbine; however, such occurrences had been ideologically relegated to some off-center context, such as urban schools in highly criminogenic environments or to the American South (which has been theorized to have a culture of violence). For mainstream suburban America, it seemed that it happened to other people in other contexts and was therefore easily viewed as a distant threat.
In contrast, Columbine appeared to take place in what would seem the type of community that had achieved the American Dream, generally white, suburban, middle- to upper-middle class (Larkin, 2007). Thus, it was no longer possible to dissociate from the potentiality of such violence, as it threatened the cultural core, and those communities occupying it. What ensued was the collective realization that such an attack could happen in nearly any setting, and thus fear about Columbine-style attacks became a widespread and salient concern in America. In addition, it was not only the narrow scope of the immediate physical victims and the Columbine community that were affected. The massacre also affected the nation more broadly, as from that point forward it became untenable to disavow the possibility of such an event in one’s own town or school. Confronting this new reality was unsettling to those occupying the core of American society, who generally reflect a similar socio-economic and cultural profile as the Columbine community. In other words, it became clear that if it could happen at Columbine, then it might very well potentially happen anywhere.
A third reason is that the collective memory of Columbine often finds expression in the public discourse, frequently news and entertainment media forms (see Muschert, 2012). The images of the shooters and their actions provided a model for would-be shooters more broadly. In various contexts, the Columbine attack has been described as an approximate model for rampage attacks, and indeed many subsequent shooters have emulated (even idolized) the shooters. Violent actions can be expressive, in that they often contain communicative aspects (the intent to convey a message), and may have implications beyond those victims directly impacted. “In its broader sense, violent behavior [such as school shootings] may also involve attempts to contest the regime of control, or to establish new rules of transgression within the cultural field of violence” (Muschert & Ragnedda, 2010, p. 348). What has been called the “performative script” in many school shootings is one in which the shooters (mostly young males) who believe (accurately or not) that they have been illegitimately relegated to an inferior position in their social milieu. Such shooters use deadly violence to undertake an attack on a public stage to reassert what they believe to be their rightful place in the social hierarchy. Various aspects of the underlying script seem to emphasize the need to maintain or reassert masculine dominance (Kellner, 2008; Kimmel & Mahler, 2003), seek revenge for perceived maltreatment such a bullying (Larkin, 2007), engaging in violence for its own sake (Derber, 2004), or because the youth are violent predators that have a lack of regard for human life (Muschert, 2007a). Given this context, the term “Columbine” has become shorthand for youth problems and mass violence, especially in schools.
My Scholarly Exploration of Columbine
Time moved on, and so did my life. The national news focus of Columbine eventually faded, although the Denver-area news coverage continued to churn. With each coming day I scoured the two Denver daily newspapers, Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, which reported on the events for months to come. It was difficult to keep up with subsequent investigations, finger pointing, law suits, and other events which roiled on. In the months following Columbine, I attended numerous memorial events and town hall meetings in various locations around Colorado on the topic of youth violence.
At the same time, my research aspirations continued, and I was in need of a focused project for my doctoral thesis project. In April 1999, I was an All But Dissertation (ABD) doctoral student at CU in a sociology program with a specialty in the study of deviance, social control, and criminology. Before Columbine happened, I had spent the previous 6 or 8 months preparing a proposal to study surveillance in supermarkets. In the days after Columbine, my advisors rightly counseled me to drop the surveillance project (correctly saying that it would always be there) in favor of studying Columbine and mass violence in schools, which appeared as an emergent phenomenon rich for study.
Initially, I intended a comparative study of social and behavioral control measures in high schools, and had selected two schools which had experienced school shootings (including Columbine), and two schools which had not for comparison. I proposed to do a series of interview and observations of security measures (both formal and informal) at these schools. I worked on a dissertation proposal for many months, and submitted twice to the human subject ethics board at the university, and I waited. Immediately after I received a second rejection, all federally funded research at CU were shut down as auditors discovered that pharmaceutical trials were being conducted at the Medical School without having proper documentation. If the second rejection hadn’t been enough, it became clear to me that the university was risk averse, and that the type of project I had proposed would likely never get ethical approval. In retrospect, I cannot blame them for declining a proposal to contact people at Columbine High School, especially from a relatively unseasoned scholar. The risks simply outweighed potential benefits of my proposed study.
By the time that I received my second rejection from the university ethics board, I had already dug into relevant literatures, but I needed a project that was feasible, and ideally which would be exempt from ethical review. That was when my work took a different tack, one which has defined my scholarly approach since then. Thus began my efforts to study the Columbine “story,” particularly as it appeared in news media. I selected this topic as much for the scholarly reason that I have a strong sympathy for social constructionist work in the area of social problems, but also for the reason that research using media content is exempted from ethics board review. As content which is, by its intent and definition, inherently public, the body of data was openly available and ripe for analysis. I had followed the Columbine story closely, and having spun wheels on a dissertation topic related to Columbine for as much as a year, I threw myself headlong into this new project. At the time, I can confidently say that I was the only American sociologist working on that topic. In the nearly two decades since, I have become something of an expert in the area of the mass media coverage of school shootings, (in my opinion) not because my work was particularly exciting, but rather because I was working in an area that had not been firmly explored or established, and thus by its novelty groundbreaking.
My earliest project resulted in my doctoral dissertation (Muschert, 2002), which was a thematic and structural analysis of the U.S. national-level reportage of Columbine, during the 1-month period following the shootings. I began to make presentations at professional meetings, and was on occasion called as the “Columbine guy,” an appellation I never appreciated. I completed PhD studies at CU, and after a 1-year visiting position at Purdue University, settled into a full-time faculty position at Miami University, where I rose through the ranks.
Over the past two decades, I have made contributions to this sub-field, with notable projects including the following: co-editing a double special issue of American Behavioral Scientist on the “Lessons of Columbine” (Muschert & Spencer, 2009a, 2009b), which featured articles from various fields in social sciences and education, and which marked the 10-year point following the shootings. The following year, I published a co-authored piece (Muschert & Peguero, 2010), which examined the social construction of the social problem of school shootings, with links to how the problem framing influenced anti-violence policies in school. For a 2014 volume (Muschert, Henry, Bracy, & Peguero, 2014), our editorial team invited scholars to consider two articles (Henry, 2009; Muschert & Peguero, 2010) for the production of an edited volume which linked the social construction of the school shooting problem to policy analysis for anti-violence, and ultimately offered recommendations regarding how policy responses can be improved for the future.
Over the last two decades, I have made a contribution to this general area of research and have even done my best at times to encourage a unified field of inquiry. Case in point is what seems to be my most-cited and most-downloaded piece, “Research in School Shootings” (Muschert, 2007b), in which I reviewed as broad a swath of the literatures as possible, and suggested coherent typologies for studying school shootings, such as a typology of school shootings and a multi-level statement of factors related to the etiology to such events.
The Effect of Columbine on Policy, Research, and Me
Clearly Columbine has affected thinking about youth crime in America, and indeed this influence extends to shaping whether youth crime is seen as an issue to address with treatment or a threat to be prevented with security. It is axiomatic in the social constructionist sociology of social problems that the domain framing of a problem implies a limited range of solutions, ones which are rhetorically resonant with the frame applied to the problem definition (see Best, 1995). The prominence of the Columbine event in the collective concept of school violence, means that such severe and unlikely events occupy a greater portion of the public consciousness, and therefore may serve to skew not only the perceptions of the problem, but by virtue of the problem framing also limit the range of possible solutions that seem appropriate.
One of the primary effects of the Columbine event is the perseverance of what has been called the “Columbine Effect,” a term which refers to the tendency of high-profile extreme cases of school violence to exert a disproportionately strong influence on the development of anti-violence policy in schools (Muschert et al., 2014; Muschert & Peguero, 2010). It must be clear that when used in this way, Columbine refers not to the historical event, but rather to the collective sense of Columbine and its ongoing influence on social life. With regard to the American ideology of youth crime and related social problems, the legacy of Columbine is significant and continuing on policy, scholarship and my own career.
One example of the influence of this effect is on policy. The Columbine Effect makes the extreme typical. Although school shootings, including Columbine, are exceedingly rare, in a rhetorical sense, they have come to typify what many may think of as “school crime” or “school violence.” Naturally, school shootings are significant as a problem and should not be ignored. It is, although, inaccurate to characterize rare events that occupy an extreme end of the continuum of school violence as typical, especially when compared with relatively widespread incidences of less severe forms of violence in schools. The hazard of normalizing the extreme cases is that school anti-violence policies may address only this one aspect of school violence, although ignoring or minimizing policies for more common types of school violence, such as assaults, bullying, sexual misconduct, and others as these appear less urgent. Focusing on policies to address extreme school violence are not without their costs, which include clear fiscal ones and unintended consequences. These unintended consequences are often borne disproportionately by the most vulnerable demographic groups of students. Minority and poor students are negatively affected at higher rates by policies with a punitive outcome, such as policing in schools, surveillance measures, and school exclusion than white and affluent students (Muschert et al., 2014). Although it is debatable whether punitive measures and security in schools have made them any safer, evidence strongly indicates that minority and poor youth are more likely to be the recipients of harsh punishments and the targets of surveillance practices, and these negative consequences seem to fall especially on young African American students (including Black girls as discussed by Addington in this issue).
Another aspect of the Columbine Effect is the heighted interest by scholars and vast body of research that has emerged to consider school shootings. The range of disciplines engaged in this work include sociology, social work, media studies, communication, cultural studies, masculinity studies, criminology, criminal justice, and education. The field, although, is still trying to find its voice. Research in the area of school shootings has developed in a rather disorganized way, with scholars in various disciplines adding to the field of knowledge without necessarily engaging in a unified or coherent conversation (or even sub-set of conversations). As few, if any, journals speak to a significant subset of these fields, it is challenging for scholars to get a handle on the work in this area.
The Columbine Effect on policy and scholarship is not limited to the United States. What appeared in the late-1990s as an emergent and potential social issue, grew into a recognized social problem, not only in the United States, but also in other countries, most notably Canada, Finland, France, and Germany, countries who have also experienced multiple school shootings. These incidents suggest that the “American disease” of violence was communicable and had been transmitted across the globe. In many cases, shooters across the world mentioned the Columbine shooters as inspiration and idols for imitation. It is important to note that while this social problem seems to have spread internationally, the responses to it seem to vary. Although there are exceptions, the North American responses have been relatively punitive in nature (with a reliance on police in schools, use of surveillance technologies, and increased penalties for infractions), although European responses have tended to be restorative (with a focus on conflict resolution education, peer mediation education, and undertaking efforts to improve social and psychological well-being in school institutions).
On a more personal note, Columbine has also affected me and my work. Through the past 20 years, Columbine and school shootings research has been a constant presence in my life. Numerous times I have been contacted by friends, family, or media personnel informing me of an emergent (sometimes on-going) shooting event. These include the shootings with mass fatalities such as Virginia Tech (2007), Sandy Hook (2012), and Marjory Stoneman Douglas (2018) as well as dozens of others with fewer victims but which are no less tragic in themselves. As the problem seems to have no proximate resolution, there are times when the prospect of researching this topic seems hopeless. At times, it is difficult to feel a sense of reward or progress, given the constant gnawing of the fear that one’s research seems to have little or no effect in ameliorating such a noted problem. Perhaps the most difficult project on which I worked was for a global study of crisis management funded by the Canadian government, in which I was sent to Germany (I am proficient in German) to conduct interviews with school staff and first responders at school shooting sites. Conducting multiple interviews daily was akin to asking a series of people to describe in detail the worst thing that ever happened in their lives, and it took considerable emotional effort on my part to manage my own emotions in the face of those describing such severe trauma and grief.
The project in Germany highlights how this direction of research has taken its toll on me emotionally. I am not the only sociologist to experience the emotional challenge of studying a troubling topic, and it is comforting to know that my personal struggles to persist are shared by many of my colleagues. Each researcher has his own coping strategy. Mine appears to be the fact that I have somehow developed the ability to compartmentalize my academic work from my personal life. I suspect this is the outgrowth of experiences earlier in life where I was exposed to levels of dysfunction in my environment, during which I developed the ability to move forward with mundane life without being derailed. I also have made a conscious effort to learn better self-care and to put limits on how much of my energy and heart I put into the work. In particular, I have engaged in academic projects that are outside the topic of school violence, and I have thrown myself deeply into diversions such as following baseball, engaging in community service, studying foreign languages, or consuming science fiction. Without these other interests, I might not have been able to persist with my work exploring school shootings. Nevertheless, in recent years, I have found myself less engaged with school shootings research. I am phasing out my involvement in research regarding school shootings and mass violence. This is a conscious decision on my part to hand off the torch to others who perhaps have more enthusiasm than I do at this point in my career.
Concluding Reflections for Future Policy Considerations
Other contributions to this special issue consider specific policy recommendations in more depth, so the following are a few additional suggestions based on my work in this area. Although the scholarly, policy, public, and political debates about Columbine-style attacks will undoubtedly continue, it seems unlikely that any of these discussions will alter the tendency to rely on punitive policy responses that are not based on empirical support. Future policies need to reconsider these norms. Three examples of how such change could occur illustrate this point. One is the need to reevaluate the increasing reliance on police or security officers and policies that promote their deployment in schools. Another is to increase the attention to mental health and need for counselors in schools. Finally, the media response to mass shootings needs to reconsider the publicity that generates the attention that some offenders seek.
My first suggestion is for schools to reconsider their reliance on police and security officers. In the years since Columbine, the default reaction to addressing crime has been one of crime control and increased security measures. This change is not only due to Columbine but other mass tragedies including the 9/11 terrorist attacks (Simon, 2009). In the wake of Columbine and subsequent school shootings, many schools have responded by hiring police and security officers or adding to the staff already in place (see King & Bracy, this issue, for a discussion). I appreciate that asking schools to reconsider their use of police is a challenge. Given the sufficient vested interests in this status quo, it is likely that schools will keep police and surveillance measures for many years to come. In addition, the normalization of police in schools reinforces this investment. Specifically, it is challenging to think of schools operating without police and difficult to suggest alternative responses when well-publicized school shootings occur. For example, in the public school district in Ohio where I had lived from 2003 to 2018, it was clear that following the Sandy Hook shooting (2012) placement of a school resource officer in the schools was inevitable. On various occasions, I asked many school resource officers, school administrators, and concerned citizens whether they could conceive of an “exit plan” for the use of punitive control measures in schools. That is, I asked them to describe the circumstances in which schools would no longer need school resource officers, and therefore, would effectively remove them from the nation’s schools. Invariably, the respondents have no response. Clearly, they have not considered a resolution of the current regime of control in schools. This reaction is despite the fact that many of these officials are individuals who can recall times where police were rarely in schools, and it had not occurred to anyone that schools needed to be policed. In the years since Columbine, the reverse is true. Few are able to imagine a school that does not have police or security personnel. This orientation also reflects a changing view of students, who are now viewed as targets for violence and sources of violent behavior in themselves.
My second recommendation focuses on the premise that an increased investment in the psychological and sociological wellness of school institutions would do more to alleviate the problem of mass violence in schools than would any increased investment in police and surveillance technologies. This position is supported by the quite clear finding in the Madfis (2014) study of averted school shootings that nearly all averted school shootings were thwarted by administration and police responses to threats gathered through reporting channels available to students in the school for reporting rumors of potential attacks. The propensity to report, although, was increased in schools with positive social dynamics, including those with inclusive social environments and positive relationships among faculty, administration, staff, students, and community members. When students felt that those responsible for evaluating threats to school safety had their better interests at heart, then they were more likely to report rumors, which led to investigation, which ultimately led to the increased likelihood of averting a planned school attack. To put it simply, it is the collective efficacy of the school community that is the strongest protective factor in averting violence. Investment in the psychological and social well-being of a school would promote this type of collective efficacy.
A related recommendation is the need to advocate for greater investment of resources for school social workers and school psychologists and to advise school districts to consider hiring more of these professionals, rather than placing additional security measures (personnel and surveillance systems) in any given school. Psychologists and sociologists of education already know that the sources of school violence emerge from the psychological and social lifeworld of schools. To improve the psychological wellness of individuals in schools, and to improve the social dynamics in schools have the effect of reducing violence through the reduction of the underlying personal, inter-personal, and sociological causes of violence in schools (see, Henry, 2009; Muschert, 2007b). Thus, it is important to emphasize that community building and other efforts to create positive social environments may be subtle yet powerful antidotes to the social disease of violence in schools, at the same time that they risk fewer unintended negative consequences than punitive measures (see Henry, 2009).
My final recommendation of a feasible policy to reduce the incidence of school shootings would be for mass media to reduce or eliminate their use of naming the shooters in school rampage attacks. This change would involve news media’s avoidance of highlighting the names of the shooters, posting their pictures, and offering stories about their life histories. This change would deny rampage shooters the infamy many seem to crave, and it would avoid the copycat effect (Lankford & Madfis, 2018). Research indicates that there is a noted copycat effect in which some small proportion of individuals are motivated to valorize and emulate infamous school shooters. The copycat effect in school shootings appears similar to that of media coverage of suicide. The World Health Organization has provided guidelines for media coverage of suicides, in which they recommend similar guidelines, which are designed to reduce the copycat effect in suicides (World Health Organization, 2008). Such guidelines could be adopted by mainstream news media in all forms (print, broadcast, online) without compromising their journalism, and the effect would likely effectively reduce frequency of recurrence of school shootings. It is time for media outlets to stop their focus on the perpetrators, and instead to focus on the victims affected, their families and communities, and on those who respond to school shootings. For example, one group that advocates for this type of coverage is No Notoriety (www.nonotoriety.com).
Columbine as a collective memory has evolved beyond the details of the incident that occurred two decades ago. Its reach continues to be powerful as it remains a cultural milestone in the American collective memory and culture of crime. My work has focused on conveying the cultural meaning of Columbine, which is important to consider as it arguably has skewed the way we think about school violence. One of its most powerful legacies as a reference point is to typify school violence (although inaccurately), and this noted “Columbine Effect” has been a driver of policies about school violence, specifically the overreliance on punitive measures such as police, surveillance, and zero-tolerance policies. This afterword ends with a call to think beyond these punitive implications of Columbine as well as to develop ways to rely on evidence-based programming. The specific examples I gave as well as those recommended by the other pieces in this special issue provide needed insight into policy developments and trends regarding this problem.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.