No Easy Answers (7 page)

I'd been into computers since I was a little kid, when my dad bought a Commodore. Most people don't even remember it, but it was a small, simple computer that you could learn programming on. So as a kid, I would sit and learn syntax code. I read books on computer programming, then tried to do it myself. As newer computers came out, like the Apple IIE, I got experience on them, and then in fourth grade my parents bought our first IBM.

Computers were one of the things that bonded us in our freshman year of high school. Nick was really into graphic design and working on Macintoshes. Eric was a video game nut who talked sometimes about designing games for a living. All of us lived for playing Sega Genesis or Nintendo, and we loved computer games like
Duke Nukem
and
Doom
.

Most people looked at computers then as a “nerd” thing. We were proud to be nerds. We could relate to the logical simplicity of a computer. It made sense.

What we saw happening at Columbine didn't make sense.

It seems like once you get to high school, all of the social groups are decided within the first few weeks. Once they've solidified, the cruelty begins.

Sometimes kids would just ignore us. But often, we were targets. We were freshmen, and computer-geek freshmen at that. At lunchtime the jocks would kick our chairs, or push us down onto the table from behind. They would knock our food trays onto the floor, trip us, or throw food as we were walking by. When we sat down, they would pelt us with candy from another table. In the hallways, they would push kids into lockers and call them names while their friends stood by and laughed at the show. In gym class, they would beat kids up in the locker room because the teachers weren't around.

Seniors at Columbine would do things like pour baby oil on the floor, then literally “go bowling” with freshmen; they would throw the kid across the floor, and since he couldn't stop, he'd crash right into other kids while the jocks pointed and giggled. The administration finally put a stop to it after a freshman girl slipped and broke her arm.

One guy, a wrestler who everyone knew to avoid, liked to make kids get down on the ground and push pennies along the floor with their noses. This would happen during school hours, as kids were passing from one class to another. Teachers would see it and look the other way. “Boys will be boys,” they'd say, and laugh.

The problem was that the bullies were popular with the administration. Meanwhile, we were the “trouble kids,” because we didn't seem to fit in with the grand order of things. Kids who played football were doing what you're supposed to do in high school. Kids like us, who dressed a little differently and were into different things, made teachers nervous. They weren't interested in reaching out to us. They wanted to keep us at arm's length, and if they had the chance to take us down, they would.

The bullies liked to propel paper clips at us with a rubber band. If a teacher saw you get hit, he or she did nothing. But as soon as you threw it back, or did something to defend yourself, you were done. The teacher would grab you and you would be in the office. We were the “undesirables,” and the teachers were just waiting for an excuse to nail us. The bullies knew it.

Usually we didn't fight back. One thing we learned early on was that if we responded at all to what the bullies did, they'd do it more. Bullies want power. They want boosts to their self-esteem, and they think that if they can make you fear them, they've won something. That's the mentality that bullied kids have to deal with on an everyday basis. We knew that there was nothing we could do to stop them, but at least they wouldn't get anything out of it if we just ignored them.

Even so, the pain of bullying was taking its toll on us. Eric, especially, was a target. He had two strikes against him; the first was that he had a slight chest deformity. It wasn't that noticeable—it was just sunken in a bit—but when Eric would take his shirt off in P.E. class, the bullies were ready and waiting to mock him. Mocking a guy for a physical problem he can't control is one of the most humiliating ways to bring him down.

On top of that, Eric was the shortest of our group. The rest of us, as we got older, became well over six feet in height; Eric never did. He was small, he was a “computer geek,” and he wasn't even from Colorado to begin with. He was as prime a target as the bullies at Columbine could have asked for.

Brooks's experiences were not unique. A year after the Columbine tragedy, research into the school's atmosphere was conducted by Regina
Huerter, Director of Juvenile Diversion for the Denver District Attorney's Office. Huerter's findings paint a disturbing picture of cruelty and indifference in Columbine's halls
.

From October 14 to November 29, 2000, Huerter conducted interviews with twenty-eight adults and fifteen current or past students regarding their experiences with bullying at Columbine and how administrators responded to it
.

Huerter's nine-page report was presented to the Governor's Columbine Review Commission on December 1, 2000. It contained numerous examples of assaults, racism, and other forms of bullying that witnesses say went on in the years before the Columbine murders
.

“All students with whom I spoke, independent of their status at school, acknowledged there was bullying,” Huerter wrote. “One identified the unwritten rules of survival in the school as: ‘Don't screw with anyone who can beat you up, don't look at jocks in the eye, bump them, or hit on their girlfriend, and don't walk in the wrong area . . .’”

At the same time, Huerter noted “a strong perception from nearly everyone I spoke with that there was ‘no reason to say anything about the bullying—no one was going to do anything.’ Some students were just ‘untouchable.’”

Huerter described an “overwhelming” sense that teachers responded only to bullying they had personally witnessed—and that when “certain parties” were involved, even these incidents were overlooked
.

Students and parents who did report bullying often met with an unsatisfactory response. Among the examples Huerter mentioned in her report:

• Two students repeatedly bullied a fifteen-year-old classmate in Physical Education class two years before the shooting. “The victim was repeatedly subjected to ‘twisters,’ a form of pinching and twisting the skin,” Huerter wrote. “Although the class was in session,
  the teacher didn't acknowledge knowing what was taking place. Another form of bullying against this student, a practicing Jew, involved racial slurs and ethnic intimidation, including threatening by the bullies to ‘build an oven and set him on fire.’ Each time a basket was made during P.E. basketball, the bullies would state, ‘that's another Jew in the oven.’ They also wrote a song to torment the victim.” The boy reported the bullying, and initially administrators confronted the bullies over their actions. However, the report states, the victim continued to be harassed for the next year and a half—and each time the new incidents were reported, “The counselor would bring the bully in to question him, the bully would deny the behavior, and they would let it go, telling the family, ‘we're doing everything we can,’” Huerter wrote. “The victim states that ‘they (the administration) did everything but call me a liar.”
  
• One student told his parents he wouldn't go back to Columbine after an incident with “four or five football players shoving and pushing him, harassing him verbally and following him to his car.” The boy's father called school officials, who did not return the call for six weeks. When an administrator did finally call back, he was very short and rude, the father recalled. The family pulled the student from Columbine and enrolled him in Heritage High School nearby. The student told Huerter that he still refuses to enter Columbine property to this day.
  
• “I was told by adults working in the district that they were afraid to speak up about school issues, including school culture and bullying behavior, because they feared losing their jobs,” Huerter wrote. “All said bullying behavior was going on, that they did tell APs (associate principals), and nothing was done.”
  

According to Huerter, several of the individuals she interviewed pointed out that deans, assistant principals, and principals were “often, if not always, coaches, or had a coaching background. This feeds a further perception that athletes were given preferential treatment by those deans or APs.”

Students who weren't the main targets of the bullies did not always realize the extent of the problem. One former student Huerter interviewed “felt the cliques and bullying were just part of being in school. She doesn't believe that now.”

When this young woman's sister started at Columbine, she went from straight A's to failing. The family didn't know about it for months, until finally a physics teacher called. The girl reported being unhappy in Columbine's atmosphere, so her parents chose to enroll her in another school instead. There, “she is again flourishing,” and notes that kids at her new school are friendly regardless of what “cliques” they're in.

The older sister now works with teens from several different schools. “As they talk about their school experiences it has become apparent that bullying is not present in all schools—at least not to the degree she witnessed at Columbine,” Huerter noted.

As for students like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Huerter wrote that everyone she interviewed described the pair as “loners” and “often the brunt of ridicule and bullying. Although no one had specifics about when and the degree of bullying they received, most often it was about shoving, pushing and name-calling.”

Even those who associated with Eric and Dylan were punished. A female student told Huerter that she was talking to Dylan Klebold in the school hallway during her freshman year. “After their conversation was over, one of the notorious bullies slammed her against the lockers and called her a ‘fag lover,’” Huerter wrote. “Many students were in the area, but no adults. She did not report this to the administration. When I asked
her why, she said that everyone told her ‘it wouldn't do any good because they wouldn't do anything about it.’”

Some kids take refuge from bullies through their schoolwork. This wasn't a solution for me.

I found myself at odds with the teachers on almost everything. I remember when we were studying the book
Animal Farm
, by George Orwell. The book deals with animals that rise up against their oppressive owner and take over their own farm. From there, they try to establish rules that give all animals equality, but the power-hungry pigs eventually take over until, by the end of the book, they are every bit as oppressive as the humans that came before them.

I felt that Orwell wrote the book as a criticism of socialism. However, our teacher at Columbine wanted us to look at it as “socialism gone wrong.” She argued that the entire book is great, up until the point where the pigs became dominant. In my opinion, the point of the book is that things went wrong the moment the animals opted for socialism, and we were being taught the exact opposite of the author's intent.

Ideally, in a place where free exchange of ideas could happen, I could have argued that point without fear of repercussions. Instead, I kept my mouth shut. I had already been taught what happens when students went against the flow at Columbine.

On test days in my American Civics class, those of us who finished early were allowed to use the rest of the class period for reading. One day, after I'd finished a test, I pulled out a copy of
Atlas Shrugged
, by Ayn Rand.

The teacher approached me and picked up the book from my desk.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“I don't like Ayn Rand,” she said. “I don't want her being read in my classroom.”

“You can't do that,” I said. I was actually laughing. I couldn't believe it. “You're going to take away a book in American Civics class?”

She responded that I was disrupting other students who were taking the test. I just shrugged, knowing I wasn't going to change her mind. A few days later, I got my book back. But I never forgot. For kids who wanted to think for themselves and go outside the lines, Columbine High School was not the place to be.

Because Eric was riding the bus with me every day, we hung out quite a bit during freshman year. I liked him; not only was he smart, he had a twisted sense of humor. He also had unique ways of showing off his feelings.

There was a girl named Tiffany Typher who rode the bus with us, and Eric took her to Homecoming our freshman year. Unfortunately for Eric, it wound up being their only date; she didn't want to go out with him again after that. Eric was pretty bummed out, because he had liked her a lot. So he decided to play a prank on her as revenge.

We decided to use some fake blood left over from Halloween to give Tiffany a scare. As the three of us were walking past Eric's house, I started talking to Tiffany to distract her while Eric set his plan in motion. Then, once he was ready, he let out a scream.

Both of us turned in time to see Eric lying on the ground with a bloodied rock in his hand. His head and neck were covered in fake blood, and he was no longer moving; it looked like he'd bashed his own head in.

For a few seconds I played along, acting all concerned for my friend. Then I couldn't hold it back anymore and I burst into laughter. Eric did too, chuckling hysterically as he picked his bloodied self up off the ground. Tiffany told him that he was extremely immature, and stormed
off to her house. Needless to say, Eric wasn't any closer to getting another date with her after that.

We were an obnoxious group of kids sometimes. We liked to rebel against the establishment, against our peers, and against our parents. We found that there was an enjoyment to be had in doing things differently, and shocking people. Obviously I would never cover myself in fake blood today. But at the time, we saw it as a funny way for Eric to get back at one more person who had rejected him.

All of us were finding ways to rebel, whether it was our clothes, our music, or our attitudes. For me, it was reading. I would spend class time reading books I had brought with me instead of paying attention to the teacher. Often I would get yelled at in class for doing this, but I didn't care. Other kids would make fun of the fact that I carried books around with me; for a while, my nickname became “Books” instead of “Brooks,” as if reading for pleasure was somehow improper. I didn't care about that, either.