Now, I’m generally not one to bring back tragic memories of the past and write about them. However, given the Virginia Tech massacre earlier this week, everyone has a renewed awareness about the other major school-related tragedy in recent history – the Columbine High School shootings.
As I blogged about earlier this week, what I remember from the Columbine situation was coming home from school and sitting down in horror as I watched kids literally jumping out of windows to escape from the two maniacs who began shooting up the school. At the time, I was a Senior in high school and my other vivid memory was going to class the next day and (in Mr. Wilkens’ class) making sure that the doors to the classroom were both closed and locked – if possible. That day in school there was absolutely no education curriculum covered, just people talking about the Columbine shootings. Even the teachers were a little uneasy – and rightfully so.
It turns out that the day after Columbine, one of the less popular kids in my high school went to school wearing a black trench coat which, if you’ll remember, was what the killers at Columbine wore – calling themselves the Trench Coat mafia. As if this wasn’t scary enough, the bastard kid at my high school was found with a list of names of people he’d like to see die. Not many people from my high school know about this situation even today. I had a small degree of access given my position as the Student Body President, but all our Principal would tell me (a few weeks after the fact) was that there was a student who was expelled for bringing that list to school and some type of weapon…never found out what that weapon was, though.
The collective consciousness of the country has got to be saddened today. Even these far-left, socialist-minded liberals out there who are trying to ruin our country have got to stop and say, “Damn, this sucks.” I single out this cohort of people specifically because there has been no greater group of protagonists preaching the need for less rigid social structures. Part of their battle has been fought in the education arena, where they fight for lower standards to make everyone feel included. This is exactly what happened at Virginia Tech. A kid who should have been put away or at least taken out of regular society was allowed to be in the same area as the thousands of normal kids because of the progressive mindset of reintegration.
And late word out of Columbine is that the two bastards who killed all of those people 8 years ago showed similar anti-social attitudes. In fact, the word coming out of Columbine is so strong that people are calling for all of the sealed documents from the days after Columbine to be re-opened. Whether or not that will happen, I’m not sure.
What I do know is that everyone should be a little saddened today that one of America’s traditional strongholds is under attack. If our schools are not safe any more, then just what IS safe these days?
