This is a project that was completed and submitted for review the day before the events at Virginia Tech. It is focused on theory and situational forces on middle and high school adolescents since that is where the majority of school shooters have come from. In that respect it is less applicable to Cho but many will find that some of the underlying factors in this case and school shootings in general are more understandable in light of this paper. I highly recommend viewing the original and complete piece with pictures here. This was a team project and the other two members prefer to remain anonymous.
Once again, keep in mind that this was written before the events at Virginia Tech, but we think you will find it useful none the less.
Before going on, please read part1. This is the second of 3 parts and is a tough piece emotionally since it looks directly at horrifying cases of school shootings. The next and last part tomorrow will cover research and proven practical solutions.
Cross-posted elsewhere.
Warning, some of the media links in this document contain adult language and graphic images.
Kip Kinkel
The case of 15 year old Kip Kinkel is somewhat different from others but illuminates the importance of loss of hope as a driving factor in extreme school interpersonal violence. Kip grew up in a fairly nurturing home but felt intense distress trying to cope with pressure from his older sister’s reputation at home and at school. He was smart but frequently had trouble coping academically and to the consternation of his parents developed an affinity for guns. They gave in and bought him one as well as giving him access to others. On May 20, 1998, after being expelled for bringing a gun to school he murdered both his parents and the next morning drove back to Thurston High School and killed two students and wounded 25 others. The idea that an irrational yet profound frustration drove him is clear from his audio taped confession(Real audio) (PBS Frontline 2000). When asked why he killed his parents, he repeatedly asserted, “My head! It doesn’t work!” “I had to kill them because I loved them!” He said that he killed his parents to “spare them the shame” of suffering his failures. He told his mother he loved her just before shooting her and tried to arrange it so she wouldn’t know who had killed her. He stayed awake all night listening to the soundtrack from William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, tried to commit suicide several times but couldn’t and then headed to school where he shot 27 more people, several of whom he viewed as being responsible for his expulsion and exposing his failures to his family (PBS Frontline 2000).
There are clearly multiple problems that lead to Kips actions and bullying did play a part according to later interviews with Kip and other of his surviving school mates, but the theme of desperation and suicidal ideation that runs through most cases is simpler to see here. At the very least it is easier after listening to Kips confession to understand despair, the extreme form of frustration, even if only for actions that cannot be undone. In fact, after it was over and he was sitting handcuffed in the police station he pulled out a knife taped to his leg that was missed when he was searched and charged the arresting officer. Later when asked why he said it was because he had been unable to commit suicide and “I wanted you to kill me…My parents were good people. They didn’t deserve to die…More than anything else right now I need to die.” (PBS Frontline 2000). This was more than just instrumental aggression and when viewed in context of his interviews illustrates quite clearly a strong frustration leading directly to a violent aggressive act.
Michael Carneal
The case of Michael Carneal is particularly vivid in highlighting the contribution of not only bullying and despair, but of social exclusion leading to aggression (Twenge, J.M., Baumeister, R.F., Stucke, T.S., 2001). On December 1, 1997 in Paducah, Kentucky, 14 year old Michael Carneal shot and killed 3 students at Heath High School and wounded 5 others.
Sibling rivalry pressures seem to have played an early part in frustrating him. Dr Kathleen O’Connor who counseled him for 4 years after the shooting at Northern Kentucky Correctional Facility said that Michael, despite being quite bright, decided at about age 7 that he was not going to be as successful as his older sister Kelly and so “…started going on a diversion path.” (Newman, Rampage, pg 24)
Bullying played a major part in priming him for violence, isolating him, and destroying his self-esteem. According to the defense psychiatrist, “Michael had repeated experiences of being harassed and humiliated by peers at school. He had the impression that everyone felt they could take advantage of him. He usually did not challenge kids who harassed him and passively accepted the abuse.”(Newman, Rampage, pg 26) One incident did particular damage to his self-esteem and haunted him; the school newspaper in a gossip column implied that he had a homosexual relationship with another boy. This went unchecked and unnoticed by school staff and “…precipitated an avalanche of bullying, teasing, and humiliation that followed Michael for the rest of middle school.”(Newman, Rampage, pg 27) A good day was when the violence was only threatened but not carried out.
All of this combined with Michael’s deteriorating mental state in which he saw demons targeting him as well as anyone else who came to his aid (Newman, Rampage, pg 25). Michael was ostracized, unstable and traumatized. He craved acceptance and tried to get it from other outcasts, a group of Goths, by ingratiating himself by giving them CD’s and other gifts and trying to conform to what he thought they would like. But even the Goths rejected him. Testifying in his own defense Michael said, “I regret what I did. I know I killed people. It wasn’t right. I took people’s lives. Their family cares for them. I have no explanation for what I did…I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know why I wasn’t bluffing this time. I guess it was because they ignored me. I had guns, I brought them to school. I showed them to [the Goths] and they were still ignoring me. I didn’t expect to kill anyone. I was just going to shoot. I thought maybe they would be scared and then no one would mess with Michael.”(Newman, Rampage, pg 33) Both social exclusion and deep frustration seem to have played major parts in triggering this tragedy.
Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold
Of course one cannot fail to include the most infamous school shooting of all that happened in Littleton, Colorado, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School. This is a difficult case to analyze because of conflicting media coverage and hype surrounding the incident. What is clearer is the effects on and attitudes of the many of the rest of the students there, both before and after.
Dylan Klebold was depressed and about a year before the Columbine shooting bought his first gun to kill himself then shortly afterward wrote in his journal about going on a killing spree. The attack a year later was meticulously planned by both Eric and Dylan as a grandiose suicide mission from the start although they did play with the idea of escaping to Mexico before rejecting it (JSCO, 2000). According to FBI psychologists, Eric Harris likely had a severe cognitive disorder as well as depression but the two of them had a wide circle of friends and there were little if any signs of being ostracized from groups they cared about (Cullen, Dave, 2004). Of school shooters as of 2002, “41 percent appeared to socialize with mainstream students or were considered mainstream students themselves” (Vossekuil, B., Fein, R., Reddy, M., Borum, R., Modzeleski, W., 2002, pg 29), and although they wouldn’t be called mainstream, they were popular enough. The media at first reported that bullying was one of the primary reasons for the attack and then later reversed course and followed the Jefferson County Sheriffs Office in declaring that there was no appreciable bullying at all.
On deeper inspection however the two did experience direct abuse yet were still part of other social groups; what seems to have affected them the most according to their writings was witnessing the rampant physical and verbal abuse by school athletes that was ignored by school officials (Adams, Lorraine, Russakof, Dale, 1999). It’s a blatant theme of their home movie mentioned in the introduction, “Hitmen For Hire”. The media wrongfully implicated the “Trenchcoat mafia” and Goths for the murders and made note of their “uniform” or “look” to profile and vilify them.
Interestingly, there was a group at Columbine that did have a “uniform” and “look”, roving through the school unimpeded, physically assaulting and taunting other students, sometimes in full view of teachers who turned away or took no action. The school athletes, centered around state wrestling champion Rocky Wayne Hoffschneider, were known as “the steroid poster boys”. They wore white baseball caps and terrorized all they pleased as reported in the Washington Post(Adams, Lorraine, Russakof, Dale, 1999), even getting the police to drop criminal charges at times. This atmosphere permeated the school and was reportedly encouraged by the school administrator, Rich Long.
Evan Todd, the 255 pound defensive lineman who was wounded in the library during the shooting, describes his take on the climate this way: “Columbine is a clean, good place except for those rejects,” Todd says of Klebold and Harris and their friends. “Most kids didn’t want them there. They were into witchcraft. They were into voodoo dolls. Sure, we teased them. But what do you expect with kids who come to school with weird hairdos and horns on their hats? It’s not just jocks; the whole school’s disgusted with them. They’re a bunch of homos, grabbing each other’s private parts. If you want to get rid of someone, usually you tease ’em. So the whole school would call them homos, and when they did something sick, we’d tell them, ‘You’re sick and that’s wrong.'” (Gibbs, Nancy, Roche, Timothy, 1999).
The Rocky Mountain Newsreported that at the Governors Columbine Review Commission, “Speakers who recounted the bullying also said that students and others are unwilling to come forward with their stories for fear of retaliation.” Also,”The commission at one point went behind closed doors to discuss holding a closed meeting to take testimony from such people. But chairman William Erickson said the commission decided to keep the meetings public and said the panel would search for other ways to take testimony from reluctant witnesses.” (Klass, Jeff, 2000)
Columbine had a culture of fear and abuse even after the shootings that reached deep in to the community. Predation and terrorization by in-group members of out-groups and individuals was a particular problem at this school and goes some way towards explaining the defense by other students of Eric and Dylan. In an article by Jon Katz, the phenomena of widespread scapegoating of nerds, Goths, and anyone who didn’t seem to fit in that occurred in the aftermath of Columbine is documented in a outpouring of emails from despondent students around the country. (Katz, Jon, 1999)
The next and last part tomorrow will cover research and proven practical solutions.
Original paper along with bibliography and other useful links here