Columbine Primary Source Packet

The discussion assignment for Week 3 includes this packet of primary sources about the Columbine school shooting of 1999, in addition to the film Little Children and your written response as outlined in Discussion Project #1 in the Resources/Discussion Projects folder on CTools.

On April 20, 1999, two high school seniors, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered twelve students and one teacher at Columbine High School, in the predominantly white and upper-middle-class Denver suburb of Littleton, Colorado, before killing themselves. They also set bombs, which failed to detonate, with the intention of killing hundreds more students.

Doc #1) Columbine Report by ABC News, Nightline

Six-minute clip from Nightline segment broadcast the evening of the shootings (note: the shooters were not actually members of a 'Trench Coat Mafia' gang or Goths, the two rumors circulated most widely in the initial TV news coverage)

Doc #2) "Lessons of Littleton"
Article by Andrew Phillips in Maclean's, May 3, 1999, providing a speculative narrative of the events and also analysis of "why?"

Doc #3) "Learning from Littleton"
Salon.com article by Fiona Morgan, April 27, 1999, includes interviews with experts and pundits

Doc #4a) "How Well Do You Know Your Kid?"

Doc #4b) "The Secret Life of Teens"
From Newsweek cover story, May 10, 1999 (in two parts)

Doc #5) "The Media Distorts Teens"
By Gohar Galan, 18 year old high school student in California, in LA Youth magazine

Doc #6) "Littleton, Then and Now"
Column by Stephen Schiff, who grew up in Littleton, in New York Times, April 22, 1999

Doc #7) "Levittown to Littleton: How the Suburbs Have Changed"
By Christopher Caldwell, in The National Review (conservative weekly magazine), May 31, 1999

Doc #8) Federal Trade Commission Report: "Marketing Violent Entertainment to Children"
Press release of the FTC report, requested by President Bill Clinton after the Columbine shootings, released Sept. 11, 2000

Doc #9) "Columbine: Whose fault is it?"
Marilyn Manson's response, reprinted from Rolling Stone, June 24, 1999

Doc #10) "School Shootings and White Denial"
Column by Tim Wise in Alternet.org, March 5, 2001

Doc #11a) "Grownups, Get a Grip" (June 1999, Youth Today)
Doc #11b) "Why Demonize Healthy Teen Culture?" (May 9, 1999, Los Angeles Times)
Two Editorials by Mike Males, sociology professor at UC-Santa Cruz

Doc #12) "Kill Mankind. No One Should Survive"
Salon.com article by Dave Cullen, Sept. 23, 1999, discussing the diary of shooter Eric Harris

Doc #13) "I Will Never Know Why"

Article by Susan Klebold, Dylan's mother, in O Magazine (Nov. 2009)