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For the past three years, I have attended a small private school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The school has a very liberal attitude as far as dress, school conduct, and curriculum are concerned. The other students tend to be, as I am, misfits in the world of public school. It was a welcome environment. It was a necessary environment as well. If I had not left my former public school, I might have caused one of the first of a recent rash of high school shootings.
When I first heard about the massacre in Littleton, Colorado, on 20 April, I was neither surprised nor shocked. Over the past two years, these tragedies have become commonplace. As the day of the shootings went on, more information about the Trenchcoat Mafia came to light. They were kids who were outsiders at Columbine High School. Not just outsiders but misfits who were teased by the more “acceptable” majority of the students: the football players, the future military recruits, the religious children who had a perfectly normal life in which they were not only accepted but embraced. The more I hear about how Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris listened to “goth” music and how they often cited lyrics from the industrial band, KMFDM, the more disgusted I became at how our country reacts to this sort of thing. It was not the music that caused this or the lack of metal detectors at the school. And even though the Nazism that these kids were reportedly involved in more than likely played a part, the real problem lies deeper.
I think the root of Eric and Dylan's rage lay in how their peers reacted to them—the mocking and the teasing that they endured. Thirteen deaths weren't caused because someone made fun of them once but because they were psychologically tortured by other students every day. When you are forced to live in a society that rejects you in all forms, all the time, and never lets you forget that you are different, in your mind the only solution to these problems is to rid these people of their lives. You