The Columbine-Type Student
by Jay Dubya

Don’t "kid" yourself. There’s trouble in paradise that escapes the vision of 
folks wearing rose-colored glasses. I’m not a contemporary Chicken Little 
running around screaming "The sky is falling!" And I’m not a little boy crying 
out "Wolf!"

I am a former English teacher with thirty-four years classroom experience. I’ve 
taught through wars, recessions, political assassinations and public anti-war 
protests. I’ve seen and broken-up hundreds of bloody "student" fights. I’ve been 
threatened by enraged "students" and by their irate "parents." Been there; done 
that!

Columbine-type "students" attend most high and middle schools across the 
country. They attend Hammonton High, Hammonton Middle, Edgewood, Oakcrest and 
even Beverly Hills High. They might not always wear trench coats and carry 
concealed guns and grenades. But the Columbine "student" mindset is definitely 
present.

These troubled Columbine-type youths are scarier than the obnoxious wise guys 
that daily defy teacher authority and they are more frightening than the 
"student" bullies that terrorize weaker peers and start brawls in the school 
cafeteria or hallways. The tacit behavior of Columbine-like students makes them 
a formidable challenge to school authority.

Sure, high schools have "peer mediation." The basic problem is that these 
"Columbine-like" students don’t want to communicate with representatives of 
standard academic school society. The sinister-minded teens often don’t even 
communicate with each other. That’s what makes them walking and sitting time-
bombs ready to detonate. They prefer having an insular existence that does not 
want to be disturbed. They don’t express themselves until it’s too late.

The "Columbine student mentality" has a certain behavioral "profile." That’s 
right all you politically correct critics out there, I emphatically stated the 
improper word "profile." The kids say little or nothing at all. They keep their 
feelings and thoughts mainly to themselves while sitting in their desks, often 
seething beneath cool external façades.

Columbine-type kids seldom participate in classroom discussions or volunteer to 
do constructive things in school. To them athletics, school clubs and awards are 
not worth pursuing. Their rebellion is silent, stealthy, cold, cunning and 
calculated. Their ongoing rage is adroitly camouflaged; they could erupt and 
explode at any minute. These kids, probably around five percent of any middle or 
high school’s student body, are individual sticks of dynamite ready to be lit. 
Not even the "students’" guidance counselors have any psychological handle on 
what these wily youths are thinking, feeling or plotting.

The Columbine-type kid often feels picked-on, frustrated, alienated and 
persecuted. Bigger, tougher teens, maybe football jocks, track stars or biker-
type kids take pleasure in badgering physically weaker "students." Sooner or 
later there comes the straw that ruptures the camel’s spinal cord. That’s the 
dreadful kindling point where resentment and despair instantly transform into 
tragedy. Columbine-type kids don’t relish their lowly perch in the school 
pecking order and suddenly reach the Popeye syndrome, "That’s all I can stands, 
I can’t stands no more!"

Columbine-type kids covertly perceive weapons are equalizers that could quickly 
neutralize and extinguish the overt power exhibited by peer bullies. In his and 
her cerebral dynamics, the Columbine-like student needs to empower himself’ or 
herself to stand-up to insensitive, arrogant peer adversaries. A gun or a knife 
could easily accomplish that objective and instantaneously narrow the gap.

Parents should discourage bullying, especially in this treacherous and 
unpredictable day and age. The hazing all-too-frequently results in lethal 
situations. Bullies have got to learn that a weakling’s concealed gun could 
discharge bullets that travel a lot faster than fists do. This is the risk that 
a bully now faces when he or she antagonizes a Columbine-type kid; dishing out 
humiliation might literally trigger your own elimination.

Columbine-type "students" are often lone wolves. The disturbed kids don’t like 
themselves, don’t like school, don’t like normal kids, don’t like normal 
activities and certainly don’t like authority figures like teachers and 
policemen giving them directions or making demands that seem contrary to their 
wills. When their fuses reach their ignition point, their solution to their 
torment is to blow up the school and take everybody (or as many as possible) to 
the Eternity Hotel with them. That is their quick and violent answer to the 
emotional anguish that they perpetually silently feel.

I recall a particular eight grade’ student I had taught in the early 1980s. I 
remember walking up and down the aisles of Room 103 of the middle school while 
monitoring an English literature silent reading activity. I looked down and 
detected a bulge underneath the student’s lightweight jacket. Beneath the jacket 
was a vest, and under the vest my eyes glimpsed a holster with a gun nestled 
inside. ‘I have to do something in a hurry!’ I nervously thought.

I bent over and quietly told the "student" that one of the office secretaries 
wanted to give him a message. I didn’t say "principal" or "assistant principal" 
because those designations might have transformed the "student’s" mental 
condition into a panic-state.

I gingerly escorted the "student" out the back classroom door and then across 
the hall to the Main Office. Hastily I reached inside his jacket and grabbed 
under his vest, roughly removing the gun in a short scuffle. Then I wildly 
tossed the object onto the office counter (not thinking that it might 
discharge). The very surprised office secretaries gasped in shock and horror.

"Don’t worry, it’s only a toy," the "student" apologetically remarked.

Upon closer inspection the gun was indeed a toy, but its barrel was made out of 
metal and the thing had an authentic-looking wooden handle. The false pistol 
looked and felt like the real McCoy.

The "student" was suspended for his bad decision of bringing the object to 
school. I believe that this is where our schools and our "educational 
psychology" fail us. Punishments for flagrant violations are too lenient and too 
moderate. Events like fighting and taking weapons to school should be handled as 
if they were "felonies." Police should be called in, charges presented, and the 
"student" or "students" ought to be removed permanently from the normal middle 
and high school and sent to alternative schools.

When boards of education have the courage to stand up for what’s right and when 
administrators finally have the guts to state to "students" that schools are 
sanctuaries of learning where policy does not tolerate fighting or weapons under 
penalty of expulsion (and not suspension), and until those things happen, the 
status quo will remain the rule. Fights and weapons will continue to flourish in 
public schools as long as administrators treat the events as "business as 
usual." Fighting and weapons should not be dispensed with as if they are normal 
everyday occurrences, but that’s exactly how they are addressed and treated.

The eighth grade "student" protested to the principal about the rough treatment 
he had received because I had assertively disarmed the toy gun from his 
possession in the main office. The lad complained that I had "manhandled" him. 
Fortunately, the school authorities placed no credence in his grievances. I had 
nearly suffered a coronary over the very tense "false alarm."

The eighth grader had brought the toy gun to school for the expressed purpose of 
impressing other students that he could be a threat to bigger kids that would 
daily harass him. His scheme was that he would scare them off in front of 
witnesses with his fake pistol, empowering himself before his peers. That event 
I have just described transpired over twenty years ago.

The principal difference between now and two decades ago is that "the gun" would 
probably be real and loaded in 2005. So you see, the Columbine-student’ 
mentality really existed in my school over twenty years ago.

Whoever says that middle and high schools don’t need policemen patrolling the 
corridors, bathrooms and cafeteria has never had to disarm a "student," break-up 
a combat between several two-hundred-pound kids or take control of a dangerous 
school hostage situation in a hurry (without any police training).

The school population has to be protected from these Columbine-type kids and 
these Columbine-type kids have to be protected from themselves and from each 
other. Teachers and students must be safeguarded from whatever covert turmoil is 
swirling around within their confused adolescent fantasy-oriented minds.

The Columbine-type student is "out there" right now in every American community, 
but when he or she attends school with your son, daughter, nephew or niece, the 
"student" is "in there."

Disclaimer: The author realizes that the majority of the students who attend 
Columbine High School are good kids. Unfortunately, the terrible incident that 
had occurred at that institution has led to the media’s usage of the 
stereotypical term "Columbine-type student."

The author does not intend to disparage the school’s fine faculty and student 
body in this article. The author recognizes that Columbine High School has 
always been an excellent educational place of learning. I believe that all 
reading this article should feel the same way. 

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