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Last fall, just seven months after the incredible tragedy that left 15 members of their school community dead and 23 wounded, the Columbine High School Rebels won the Colorado state football championships for the first time. All of the players wore the number 70 on their helmets, in honor of their teammate Matt Kechter, who was one of the students killed in the April 20, 1999 tragedy. Matt himself should have worn the number 70 this fall in what would have been his senior year. The crowd chanted “We are Columbine” as the Rebels played the Bruins of Cherry Creek (“Columbine Wins”). It became a slogan of victory and reclamation.
Mike Sheehan, president of the Columbine High School student body in the year following the massacre, greeted a gathering of 2,700 students and parents on the first morning of school at a “Take Back our School Rally:” “Good morning, Columbine! It's so great to see so many of you out here today to take back our school.” He drew the crowd's attention to a sign restored over the entrance to the school that reads: “Through these halls pass the finest kids in America, the students of Columbine High School” (Olinger et al. 8A). At the same rally, principal Frank DeAngelis said, amidst cheers from the crowd, “I have waited for months to say this, and I say it with great pride: Columbine, we are back” (Janofsky 21).
Re-entry to the school in September was framed as reclamation: “We are Columbine” and “We are back.” What does that mean? What were they as a school and as a community prior to the tragic massacre on April 20? What are they now? “How could it happen here?” is a question often asked in communities like Columbine where school violence seems unthinkable. Clearly, many factors contributed to the crimes: some unique to Eric and Dylan and the Littleton community and others more broadly representative of boys and school communities.
In this paper, we will focus on the gender components that may have contributed to the crimes. There is an incontestab