What's It Like Going to School the Week After a Tragedy Happened There?

columbine happened 20 plus years ago redditers that were in high school at the time what was the ensuing week like i was in middle school some kid wrote in the bathroom on friday it will be worse here than it was in colorado we showed it to a teacher and she turned to us and said do you think we should tell him he spelled colorado wrong same but hs some edge lord posted on such and such date blah blah columbine eat your heart out and it was like hey if you don't want to come to school cool if you do cool fake bomb threats every friday after lunch so we could go home early someone left campus to call it in from a pay phone across the street it got old real fast switching to clear or mesh backpacks was the worst part those things didn't hold up for more than six weeks the worst part was like any small scratch or anything would slice right through off that cheap clear plastic same for the mesh ones they were terrible i was a senior in high school in the denver area the next week was quiet and somber and everyone was jumpy i went to a school in a rough part of town we made jokes about how it could never happen at central we'd just shoot back i was one of the goth kids our little group all stopped wearing trench coats and toned it down a little out of respect for the other kids i'm glad i have 20 years of distance between myself and high school i still get an ache in the pit of my stomach when this day rolls around though as a third generation or a kid i kinda laughed a little about the weed just shoot back part lol i went to eagler crest that year and i feel your when you talk about the ache in your stomach on this anniversary everybody was just sad there was no one saying everything will be different from now on it was just depressing that this awful thing happened at a school not unlike your own i don't really remember any real policy changes happening until the following year was a trench coat kid didn't hear about it till i got to school the next day got strip searched people were freaked out and wanted something to blame all my friends parents freaked out and wanted them to stay away from me that's weird you'd think you'd want to befriend the potential shooter so they didn't kill you my best friend and i both wore trench coats and listened to heavy metal school administrators asked us to stop and we spent the rest of high school with everyone giving us awkward looks waiting for us to shoot up the school they also took the school keys away from the couple of kids who had them which was a real pain in the butt i was on stage crew and it was fairly normal for us to be on campus after hours or even on weekends working on the plays i was a senior and taking a bunch of shop classes to just tread water as i was done i wore mostly black crap and was into metal but was just waiting to go to the army basically and was never a problem with anyone i had one class digital electronics 3 where we had to make circuit boards and program it to make randomized bird noises they gave us generic black cases and these little red buttons from radio shack anyhow day before columbine my friends and i decided to make them look like bomb switches so instead of drilling holes for the speaker to this contraption we drilled push for explosion or whatever our teacher was fun knew we were harmless and laughed so combine happens and me and my nerd friends are sitting at the lunch table putting these things together before class because assignment was due and this is crap we did all year and cops administration we were told to put the devices down and back away from the table people came and inspected everything lunchroom cleared our parents were contacted and nobody listed to anything we said we were assigned this crap given this crap by the school all confiscated things got weird after that and my mother actually got me a pack of white shirts i switched my black ones out for them and didn't bring my electronics out of the classroom didn't have any more problems nothing i remember specifically that week but it sucked to have campuses shut down prior to columbine people could come onto campus freely for example i came back to my high school to visit after moving to a different city i hung out with friends and went to class with them wasn't a big deal after columbine you had to sign in at the front office declare why you were there etc people just started thinking about safety a little more honestly though i wasn't really afraid of it happening at my school though if run through scenarios in my head just in case it was more seen as a tragedy rather than a trend i want to say columbine also started or helped move along the schoolwide badge i was a freshman the following year and that's when my hs started requiring you to have your photo with badge on at all times or you were given detention when columbine happened there was a lot of talking about what made it happen military school poor mental health etc being canadian it was more of a news story to learn from than something to fear until within a few weeks there was news of attempted copycat incidents that's when it stopped being talked about as something that happened and can't happen anywhere else unfortunately in alberta it became something to fear after the taber school shooting on the 28th of april 1999 i was in middle school and we started having lockdown procedures as a result get down on the floor away from doors and windows and be quiet while teachers roam the halls jiggling doorknobs and checking bathrooms was a scary time that i still vividly remember everyone in our high school generally started being nicer to the kids that were considered outcasts when it happened and hit the news our school went into full lockdown we had tvs in all the rooms and hallways and it was being broadcast live teachers and officials were worried that there was a network of people in this trench coat mafia and were about to execute simultaneous attacks in other schools after it ended at the shock of the event started to subside i noticed popular students were a bit more social with the more unpopular ones even just a high to acknowledge their existence it didn't last forever but it was nice for a while at my school it was no different than usual people talked about it of course but not unlike we'd talk about any other newsworthy event back then school shootings weren't as common or at least not as much in the public conscience so there wasn't any kind of extra security or even an assembly to talk about it or anything i'd imagine some of the more outcast type of kids might have had a different experience though i can't recall if we had any of the trench coat wearing types same here since it wasn't common it was kind of like wow that sucks and that's insane that that happened but it was seen as more of a one-off type of event it was rumored some dumbass student threatened to bring a gun to school while in homeroom the next morning otherwise life continued campus wasn't locked down fears weren't heightened in the kids we were half the country away from columbine there had been a school shooting or two that had made nationwide news at that point but it wasn't an epidemic during spring semester of the year before kids were pulling fire alarms or calling in vague threats seemingly every other day but no one was scared it was just an attempt to get out of class for a few hours i watched a student casually walk over and pull the fire alarm one morning there weren't cameras then and i don't know if she was ever caught or if administration really cared the punishment for that type of thing was 10 days out of school suspension all it meant was you automatically flunked the semester on attendance rules and you could come back to school without any issues during that time in 1999 we were reading hamlet within a week or two of columbine we went over the part where ophelia has columbine flowers the internet are giving it symbolism as unfaithfulness in a relationship i'm pretty the notes in our version referred to it more bluntly as something like flower of sorrow that stayed with me more anything else about hamlet it was rumored some dumbass student threatened to bring a gun to school while in homeroom the next morning the columbine massacre inspired countless copycat shootings the sensationalistic media coverage sent a clear message to the troubled youth of america kill your classmates and you can be famous the day of everyone was scared and quiet the day after they had an assembly to talk about it the principal open up the assembly by saying it's a tragedy that so many young people lost their lives to such senseless violence it's an even bigger tragedy that those kids won't be here to help pay for my retirement this was met by silence the day after that i had an assembly so the principal could apologize i was in 10th grade i vaguely remember conversations about it in english class the next day and rumors flying about anyone who wore excessive black or marilyn manson t-shirts that was about it maybe it wasn't overly concerning because it happened so far from us combined with that mentality of invincibility teenagers often have something like that won't happen here i remember sandy hook feeling like i was punched in the gut for two weeks after though i was a teacher and a parent at that point i was 15 and living in dallas when columbine happened but what alarmed me most wasn't anything that happened around school the worst thing was talk about a backpack band that never came to fruition what really worried me was hearing news reporters talking about how the shooters played doom and listened to marilyn manson because i knew they were going to scapegoat the crap out of mass media and use the shooting as an excuse to try to impose suppose so's seppos so's suppose suppose it wasn't the following week it was the start of the next school year for me i was an incoming freshman in september 1999 i remember about a month and they started rounding up the weirdos calling them to the office for talks i was called in i remember sitting between a gothic kid and a heavy metal kid they both asked why i was there i didn't know when my interview got started it was so you get bullied a lot i was surprised and said no cause i really wasn't he was like come on you wear a sailor moon backpack and have red sneakers i tried explaining i had a large friend group and wasn't an outcast or unpopular didn't matter i had two older sisters that never would have tolerated me being picked on didn't matter he was convinced i was terribly bullied and rageful over it and nothing was gonna change his mind i changed tactics pointing out if he'd talk to anyone who actually knew me he'd know how against killing harming others i was it was deeply bizarre it was like he was trying to talk me into wanting to kill people i never looked at adults the same way after that to this day i'm a bit scared about the fact that a group of adults in authority looked at me and saw color i'm not bullied of course you are look at what you're wearing pretty ironic the counselor being the bully there were some speeches and assemblies about bullying violence and we started doing active shooter drills after that the kids who picked on me left me alone for a few weeks which was kinda nice out of all the stories in this thread i'm glad that one school actually did something good about the situation there was a definite shift in the attitude towards the anti-social kid who all of a sudden became that kid most likely to shoot up the school there was a lot of weird overreaction to trench coats and the idea that this was all part of some sort of subculture trench coat mafia got thrown around a lot of some sort of thing to keep an eye out for i even recall some blow back on the release and marketing of the matrix which featured promotional materials showing neo and other characters in a black trench coats holding guns basically everyone became hypersensitive to the signs that a kid was a possible school shooter which honestly just served to further ostracize kids who were already the unpopular outcast type in retrospect it was similar to the hypersensitivity to arabs and muslims after 9 11. i was in middle school at the time but my sister was a freshman i remember some idiot student thought he was funny and called in a bomb threat to the high school a week after columbine happened it was fake of course and he was subsequently suspended for a while then there was all this obtuse stuff like banning trench coats and marilyn manson shirts as though those were the things that caused kids to want to kill other kids i remember there was lots of talk in the media about blaming heavy metal violent video games and dark colored baggy clothes both in the actual news and those cheap daytime talk shows seemed pretty clear that nobody had any answers so they were looking for the quick and easy budgie man to blame instead of considering that those two kids had real psychological problems that were exacerbated by years of bullying and social isolation it's possible to be both a victim and perpetrator of bullying and it's also possible to have some friends and still have a perception of being isolated especially for a person who is clearly mentally unwell like a mass murderer for example everyone remotely an outcast who wore anything like a trench coat or just didn't look like the cookie cutter of berkumbi kids was brought into the office and interrogated they threatened to suspend people for wearing black or long coats though i don't think anyone actually was and most people continued wearing whatever they wanted to security got a bit tighter but was already pretty tight to begin with so it wasn't much of a change we had several class discussion about it and anyone who was heard pointing out that the perpetrators being ostracized was probably a factor was again brought to the office and interrogated that one happened to me i'd made it clear there is absolutely no excuse for going on a shooting rampage but wondered if a school culture of turning a blind eye toward bullying and a lack of mental health resources was a part of the context repeating this to the administrator interrogating me he basically said well if they would just be normal it wouldn't happen then i got a call home for rolling my eyes at him when he said that someone called a shooting threat into my school it was almost certainly fake and the principal told all the parents listen if you're freaked out your kids don't have to go to school all my friends got the day off and played video games at my friend's house and my parents said no this is bulls you're going to school sorry instead of addressing mental health my school banned backpacks in response it was ridiculous our school was pretty big and going to your locker between each class wasn't always possible one girl put her books in box on a skateboard and pulled it with a rope the next week we could use backpacks again our school had two options mesh or clear backpacks mesh were deemed cool but easily got wet clear were for the nerds although it kept your things dry school was a weird time i used to wear a vintage navy bridger coat that had a bunch of sentimental value it was comfortable and warm and kind of stylish and perfect for the climate i grew up in when i came into school i had no idea about the shootings but the vice principal was waiting for me and gave me the option to give it to him for the rest of the day and not wear it again or to keep it on and face expulsion when he told me about the shootings i gave it up without a fight and he told me to pick it up at the end of the day from the main office end of the day comes and when i picked up my jacket i discovered that somebody had shredded it with scissors that day and the days that immediately followed taught me some valuable lessons about trusting other people sorry to hear that i was a junior at columbine the week after feels like numbness personified the only thing i truly remember is the amount of media the amount of intrusion into our pain the waiting to hear the names and the realization that they were gone forever the nightmares the tearful reunions the realizations that childhood was gone and life would never be the same feels like a thousand years ago and yesterday all at the same time the saddest thing though is that all the bulls that each of you had to deal with after was fruitless it didn't stop it it's hard to feel hopeful that anything will anymore my friend and i were arrested for wearing gorilla masks to the basketball game two days after the massacre we didn't really think there was any correlation so didn't expect the backlash we got 12 months probation and were expelled on the east coast so geographically removed but one of my good friends had moved from columbine where he would have been a freshman at the time even though the whole thing to me was just a story on the news he was devastated because he knew the people impacted it was really tough seeing him watch it all unfold from across the country i never asked him about specifics but it was obvious that he had that dreaded mixture of relief that he was not there to be in danger and regret that he was not there to be helpful i was a sophomore in colorado we had a new girl in my american history class who had just transferred from columbine she was crying in class the principal came to walk her to the office where her parents were she knew several of the kids who died that made it feel more personal the whole country was hit by a wave of moral panic false rumors were spread throughout the then nascent internet i was living in guam and our high school conducted active shooter drills i remember some of my friends parents wanted them to stop playing violent video games because they feared it would turn them into colors i never got the whole violent games bad thing a kid at my school plays nothing but simulation games like planet coaster and the sims and is constantly ready to deck someone in the face meanwhile my friend plays gta and cod constantly and he would never hurt a fly unless the fly was actively looking to hurt him we got called to the office a lot more afterward for every little thing zero tolerance policies got started our group of friends were sort of outcasts but did nothing wrong but drink together on the weekends maybe smoke some weed if someone had some some harmless fun from some kids who had finally found friends etc but one of the friends decided to call us the brotherhood his best friends ever lol makes a logo nothing crazy but starts writing it on everything his notebooks locker etc then columbine happened and all of us get called into the office over gang-related activities what is this brotherhood what do you guys do are you a cult made it worse when i wouldn't tell them crap about what we do and laughed at them no one did this is serious stuff didn't you hear about columbine basically the faculty lost their dang minds over it big issues around students wearing marilyn manson t-shirts i was on student council and i remember admin wanting us to ban the shirts seniors used to play assassins with super soakers and that was banned with the threat of detention of suspension classes did it anyway but it was never near the school i went to college with a girl who survived columbine she didn't talk about it but i don't blame her as it was still fresh in her mind and it was like people labeled her a certain way because of the experience i was in ninth grade and our geography teacher made us write our names at the top of a sheet of paper and then each person's page would circulate around the classroom with everybody writing something nice about them on it and passing it down so eventually you got your paper back with 30 different things people liked about you it seemed so corny and lame at the time but i'll never forget some of the wonderful things that ended up on my page hey we did a similar thing in ninth grade and i also remember the nice things people said about me smart teachers we didn't hear about the extent of the shooting until i was at home couple things stand out one news stations were obsessed with tracing the shooters steps through the school x started in the cafeteria where they killed three students then walked to the library and executed seven more with assault rifles they were also constantly showing helicopter video of the students running away from the school though afield while they were getting shot at pretty explicit and fricked up two people were much more conscious of threats and took them more seriously before we would jokingly say things like i'm going to kill you and then have a laugh someone jokingly said that after columbine and our group of friends got serious and told him that you can't say that anymore that just always stuck out to me as something that made me realize that the world was going to be different after that day i was the goth kid well still am nhs that ran in the social circles of the people that looked like they could do a school shooting my locker got searched so were the lockers of a lot of people i knew i remember in history class my teacher asked the class of they thought it's something that could happen here hs was in nyc so no and people looked at my friends and me i remember scoffing and saying something along the lines of i don't hate you guys enough to spend that much time plotting your murders the rest of the school week was strange but eventually settled down i'd argue that was probably the best response you could give i was a junior in high school this was one of those rare loss of innocence type moments like 9 11 and nothing will ever be the same moment the security camera footage was like a cursed cultural artifact as an adolescent boy i wasn't very emotional or scared but i finally knew what the word chilling meant it was the most haunting image i had ever seen when an adult teacher could muster anything to say which wasn't often we were encouraged to be better to each other i don't know that anyone was looking back something was supposed to change like how could this ever be allowed to happen again i don't know if anyone would have guessed that it would get worse horrifically worse this comment is really eerie they locked all the entrance doors but one and took everyone's pockets knives away it was very annoying i don't think anyone was afraid of a school shooting this was in nebraska where half the students had a shotgun out in their truck in the parking lot i was a freshman i was homesick from school that day so i was watching the news live as it was happening i remember not fully understanding what was going on and then it hitting me like a ton of bricks when i went back to school it was awful i was one of the kids that was picked on mercilessly and i has been in therapy for years already by then some kids knew and the ones that did told the ones that didn't so i ended up getting it from all angles they kept asking if i was out that day because i helped them plan it or if i had been taking notes for what i was going to do when it was my turn i was slowly losing my grip on reality because they were so horrible my junior year i attempted suicide shortly after i went back to school i had to go to a hospital mandated doctor appointment it happened to be on the two-year anniversary when someone had called in an anonymous threat to our school i went to the appointment with my mom and it all came out about how horrible everyone was she didn't make me go back to school that day and the next day she walked in and absolutely laid into the administration for not putting a stop to the endless bullying word got out that i had been hospitalized for an attempted suicide and somehow everyone backed off i was still miserable but they left me alone after that if you are new to the channel you can subscribe i publish new videos every day until then check another video [Music] bye for now

Channel: On Tap Studios

Views: 16,951

Rating: 4.8850989 out of 5

Keywords: school, school stories, school shooting survivor, school shooting columbine, school shooting story time, tragedy, how to cope, #updootst, updoot, reddit, r/askreddit, askreddit, ask reddit, r/, \r, r\, best of reddit, reddit stories, reddit story, top posts, funniest posts, funny, funny posts, funny askreddit, reddit funny, askreddit funny, askreddit stories, sub, reddit cringe, memes, comment awards, dankify, toadfilms, updoot everything, updoot reddit, chill, story, stories, reddit on tap

Id: AZ2tNx-WU1U

Length: 24min 34sec (1474 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 18 2020