North American Rumble - 

and How to Avoid It

On 20 April 1999 two Unites States teenagers, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, shot thirteen fellow students and then themselves at their high school in Littleton, Colorado. It was their aim to kill more people, but that did not happen. There have been more school shootings, a sad list - North American rumble.

The Motives of Dylan and Eric 
The United States Schools 
School Shootings in US Are Especially Happening at the Start of a Semester 
Kids Speake Out  
Schools Need Smaller Classes 
Counter Balance 

The Motives of Dylan and Eric 

The boys have explained their motives on videotape. A Dutch magazine (De Nieuwe Revu, 19 January 2000) gave a report.

They were not against their parents. 

The tapes show that their parents are the only people to whom Eric and Dylan express their regret. 'It's shit I had to cause them this grief', says Harris about his parents. 'They will go through hell when we have done it.' He says directly to his parents: 'There is nothing you could have done to prevent this. Klebold tells his parents that they have been 'great parents' who taught him 'self-consciousness and independency'. 'I have always appreciated this.' He adds: 'I apologize for my temper tantrums'. (De Nieuwe Revu, p. 29)

The motive is mainly revenge on their fellow students. Eric and Dylan felt themselves humiliated, nagged and excluded, especially by the jocks on the football team. The school principal denies this, but one of the football players confirms it. He said,

School is a good place for normal people, but not for zombies like Klebold and Harris. Most kids would have nothing to do with them. They [Klebold and Harris] were busy with black magic and voodoo dolls, and such kind of things. Of course, we fucked with them now and then. Don't you ask for it if you come to school with crazy haircut and goat horns on your cap? They were targets; the whole school hated them. 
And they were a queer pair; they continually touched each others' asses. 
If you want to isolate someone, you start pestering him. Thus, everybody said they were queer, and if they did something sick, everybody said that.
(De Nieuwe Revu, p. 29)

Both boys belonged to a minority group at school. This group was called "Goths", "Geeks", as well as "Nerds" or "Freaks". This refers to a more or less 'female' style of living, and it refers to special styles of music and opinions. They wear black clothes, tattoos and piercing, and the read Sartre, Shelley and Poe. They frequently roam the Internet, where they play games, among which also violent games like Doom, but in real life they are not violent.

The United States Schools 

Kids Speake Out

Internet journalist Jon Katz posted an article on slashdot (http://slashdot.org/). He received 4,000 reactions in a couple of days. We cannot include them all, but we have prepared a summary.

There appear to be many thousands of people who play the same games as Harris and Klebold, but who are able to differentiate between fantasy and reality. None of the reactions called up for violence, although some people acknowledged sometimes fantasizing about committing violent acts. One youngster mentioned this during a religion class - he was immediately removed from school.

About school, not any of the reactions we read was positive. Instead, there were a lot of accounts of physical or verbal violence against anyone who differed, even slightly, from the norm. Subcultures are not acknowledged as such, not respected, but are only suppressed. Students don't experience any rights or respect, only a zero tolerance and an enormous pressure to conformity.

The security guards at the schools are diligent in sending everyone with deviant clothes or caught playing certain games to the school principal. The latter forbids them to attend computer classes or use the Internet, and orders a psychological evaluation. In other words: the student is declared to be sick. 

Remarkably, many of the accounts said the same security guards are absent a 'deviant' is attacked. The principals do not know such incidents occurred and when they do, they view the attacked person as the problem, not the attackers, who tend to be the school jocks.  

To quote only one reaction: 

"Given: The killers were motivated in no small part by alienation. Reducing a person's contact with like-minded people increases their alienation. Reducing a person's sense of identify increases their sense of alienation. Geeks tend to communicate with each other via the Internet and online games.

"Conclusion: Cutting geeks off from each other (Internet access) and their identity (choice of clothing) will increase rather than decrease the likelihood of violence."

Counter Balance