-Caveat Lector- http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,53%257E21741,00.html "Columbine effect": Fear over reality By Kevin Simpson Denver Post Staff Writer Sunday, April 15, 2001 - In 1999, the year the word Columbine became synonymous with school violence, the chances of a child being killed on campus were 1 in 2 million. The following year, harrowing headlines about subsequent shootings fueled a national preoccupation with an apparent epidemic of violence in the classroom. The odds in 2000? One in 3 million. The Justice Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based criminal justice think-tank, offers those numbers to support its contention that facts about school violence - that it's actually declining - have been swimming against an overwhelming current of media coverage and public opinion. Many facets of life in America have been pulled into Columbine's powerful slipstream during the two years since the suicidal attack by two high school boys who killed 13 and injured 23. Police procedure, school policy, the Internet, academia, the gun debate - all have been fundamentally affected by the event and its myriad aftershocks. One school administrator calls it simply "the Columbine effect": Police now respond more aggressively to school shootings. Courts in some states have mandated information sharing between schools and law enforcement, leading to close coalitions with local police that some hail as potentially lifesaving, but others see as uneasy alliances that threaten student freedoms. Schools have stepped up basic programs for bully-proofing and conflict resolution, although, in many cases, improved safety has come with the side effects of zero tolerance and a more repressive environment. Cyberspace served as an outlet for the Columbine shooters' rants and ultimately a vehicle for copycat threats and even Web sites lionizing the killers. Now it has come under closer scrutiny by Internet watchdogs, industries and lawmakers as they re-examine thorny free-speech issues around such unfettered communication. Echoes of Columbine also resound through the language; the word itself has achieved almost generic status in the nation's lexicon, connoting a specific brand of school violence. And almost two years ago, the American Dialect Society recognized the phrase "trench coat mafia" - the clique initially identified with the Columbine shooters - among its "Brand New" entries, in the same breath as "Pokemania." Fallout from the shootings still pervades academia, as college applicants ruminate on its meanings in their essays on entrance exams. "It's a lens through which they can express who they are, how they see the world differently," says Evan Forster, president of EssaySolutions, a New York company that coaches students. "That's what a lot of these kids are writing about." Columbine remains a fulcrum for change. Ziedenberg Ziedenberg"The tenor of discussion was underway before Columbine," says Jason Ziedenberg, senior researcher at the Justice Policy Institute. "There was a context for Columbine to happen in - the latest in a series of school shootings. But Columbine took what was happening and amplified it. "Exponentially." Educators have little choice but to crack down The rural Kansas school administrator had just spent more than $200,000 on new counselors and programs in the wake of the Columbine massacre. "Will it make a difference?" asked Paul Houston, executive director of the Virginia-based American Association of School Administrators. "No." Of course, the Kansas administrator certainly hoped it would make a difference. But despite the expense, what he really couldn't afford to do was nothing. "For education leaders and school administrators, the world shifted after Columbine," Houston says. "Like the Kennedy assassination, it was a seminal event that changed the rules." Copycats abound. Within a few weeks of the April 1999 violence, at least 3,000 similar bomb threats poured in - about five times the usual number, according to the National School Safety Center in Westlake Village, Calif. That summer, during a meeting of about 250 suburban school superintendents, someone asked how many had experienced bomb threats the previous spring. Houston recalls that every hand shot into the air. In such a climate of fear, did administrators have any choice but to crack down, install metal detectors, formulate crisis plans, work more closely with police, pour money into violence prevention? In recent months, more school violence - and some plans that were defused before they could be acted upon - reinforced the perception of schools as danger zones. "Sadly, schools are a bit more repressive than even before, and less tolerant because the second-guessing is just too significant," Houston says. "As an administrator, you can't afford to have that on your head: "I ignored it and, by golly, it's another Klebold and Harris.'" For years, the conventional metaphor for American schools was assembly-line education - the factory, Houston says. Now it is the prison - with guards called teachers, a warden called a principal, metal detectors, uniforms, cops euphemistically called "school resource officers," close collaboration with law enforcement and the courts. Houston backed some of those measures, even at the expense of student liberties, in the immediate aftermath of Columbine. But two years later, he's uncomfortable with the decidedly adult response to adolescents. "There's a certain mismatch with zero tolerance, moving to adult court, a lot of measures that are just punishment," Houston says. "There's an attitude of, "We're just going to get the little bastards before they do something to us.' "Long before Columbine, I thought America was afraid of its children. All Columbine did was magnify the fear." Polls describe epidemic despite dip in juvenile crime Despite statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Center for Education Statistics showing declines in juvenile violence during the '90s, public opinion polls describe an epidemic. In one survey, a majority of Americans believed not only that youth crime is on the rise, but that a shooting was at least "somewhat likely" in their school. The Justice Policy Institute report details legislative initiatives and policy responses such as anti-bullying programs, improved mental health services, conflict mediation and anger management. But the study also notes that roughly two-thirds of state legislatures have eroded confidentiality provisions regarding juvenile crime, and several states require communication between schools and law enforcement regarding kids who may have committed crimes. Zero-tolerance policies, metal detectors and video cameras, profiling that seeks to identify dangerous kids before they go off - all of these have found a place in the classroom. The report suggests that some measures taken in reaction to highly publicized cases of school violence may be overly restrictive and more likely to "turn our schools into appendages of the courts" than enhance safety and education. Jean Johnson of Public Agenda, a public-opinion research organization in New York, points to a Gallup poll that asked the question: Thinking about your oldest child, when he or she is at school, do you fear for his or her physical safety? In the summer of 1998, only 37 percent said yes. The day after Columbine, that number spiked to 55 percent before plummeting to 26 percent last summer. This spring, amid reports of several copycat attacks, the figure jumped back up to 45 percent. The media, Ziedenberg says, have provided Columbine with context. The voracious hunger for content to feed 24-hour news channels, talk-radio airwaves, Internet Web sites and newspapers resulted in idiosyncratic spasms of violence being strung together, sometimes with the thinnest of threads. "It's the way our nation looks at crime now - we'll connect them," Ziedenberg says. "You can tell people there's a 1 in 3 million chance (of being killed at school) until you're blue in the face. They've got the image of the kid sitting down in front of the school crying with a bloody face." Columbine rewrote the book on police response Glick GlickLast month, Larry Glick opened the newspaper to an image of the school shooting in Santee, Calif., and noticed two SWAT officers and two deputies, some with shoulder-fire weapons, actively searching buildings in team formation. Glick teaches that tactic to cops across the country. Columbine taught him. The active pursuit of a shooter represents a major philosophical departure from the helpless perimeter formed by hundreds of officers at Columbine while people died inside. "Never has one agency been criticized like Jefferson County," says Glick, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association. He adds that while communications were problematic, law enforcement followed the book on active-shooter situations. But Columbine changed the book. "There was an awakening in the law enforcement community," says Glick. "If the first responding patrol officers know there's an active shooter, they can't wait for SWAT, they may need to take action. I liken it to a revolution in police training." Several states are enacting measures on school safety When news of Columbine hit, Ron Stephens was advising about 400 people on how to mark the first anniversary of the day a 14-year-old student shot and killed a science teacher and wounded two others in Edinboro, Pa. "We threw away our notes and did a heart-to-heart debriefing," says Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center. For Stephens, Edinboro has particular resonance with respect to Columbine. The shooter had robbed two students at gunpoint in the school parking lot the night before - and neither victim had reported the incident to the school or police. If they had, Stephens believes, the Edinboro shootings never would have happened. At Columbine, both shooters had been on probation for a van break-in, and one was reportedly under investigation concerning bomb-making allegations. But school authorities were either unaware or decided not to take action. "I have often used that incident as a teachable moment for students when they're considering whether to break the code of silence," he says. Stephens now helps train 3,800 federally funded officers earmarked for schools, but notes that many states are enacting school safety measures. Michigan passed a law, post-Columbine, calling for mandatory 180-day expulsions of students sixth-grade and older who make threats against other students or staffers. In Texas, police must tell schools of a student arrest within 24 hours - and inform them in writing within seven days. Similar laws have been enacted in California, Virginia and Indiana. "A number of states now say, "Look, we want to make certain school officials are informed when Charlie Manson Jr. is in school,'" Stephens says. Political climate in D.C. shifts gun-control efforts In the aftermath of an attack in which every victim died from gunshot wounds, one aspect of American life remains relatively unchanged since Columbine. Guns. Two states, Colorado and Oregon, passed laws that closed the so-called "gun-show loophole" that allowed some firearm sales without a background check - including some weapons used at Columbine. But while those measures passed by wide margins, virtually no gun legislation has made its way through Congress. "I would have expected a lot more would have happened by now," says Michael Barnes, a former U.S. congressman and now president of the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence. "When voters are given the chance to express opinions, as they did in Colorado and Oregon, they do so by very large numbers. But politicians don't seem ready to follow." The more conservative political climate in Washington has prompted gun-control efforts to be redirected to the state level, where the push is on in 20 states to persuade attorneys general to issue gun regulations in the name of product safety. Meanwhile, a measure to close the gun-show loophole on a national level will be reintroduced in the U.S. Senate later this month. Last year's effort squeaked through the Senate but stalled in the House. Barnes said Columbine will remain a flashpoint in the debate. "The very word evokes the tragedy of children dying because of our nation's failure to get serious about gun violence," Barnes says. "We lose a Columbine of young people every day in America to gun violence, on average. But when they all fall in one tragic incident like that, it draws attention in a way nothing else can." Parents taking closer look at kids' Internet use There are more hate-mongering Web sites today than when Columbine's suicidal shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, surfed the 'Net - in fact, some of the newer sites were inspired by Harris and Klebold. But there are also more parents who understand that the Internet is not a babysitter. For all the concerns about downloadable bomb instructions or Satanic music sites or murderous video games, Columbine has instilled equal concern over what computers can't provide. Human contact. "No parent can ever say again, "We didn't know,'" says Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, which monitors Web sites and technology's impact on society. "Dylan and Eric used the digital world to create and control their reality. They had no connection to real life." The center's report on "Digital Hate" was published 19 days before the Columbine massacre, and it wasn't a popular message among those who looked upon the Internet as the ultimate melding of free speech and unfettered distribution. After Columbine, things changed. Debate has intensified over just how free Internet communication should be. Filtering software has emerged as a parental tool to shield kids from certain material, and online chat has been taken seriously as a means for communicating threats. "Technology itself is neutral," Cooper says. "People have to figure out a way to empower kids to make good decisions, to draw their own lines." 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