Obscanity: You'll know it when you see it

In the midst of everybody’s comments and posts and jokes about the significance of today being “420,” let’s not forget that something else happened on this day 10 years ago.

Take a moment to reflect, if you care to.

The killers at Columbine were bullied relentlessly for years before getting to the point they were at when they murdered their classmates and teachers, and finally themselves. After Columbine, schools all over the country seemed to be in competition to be the most quick to take swift action… against the victims of bullying.

I like to think about how schools could have handled the aftermath differently.

Perhaps after seeing the damage wrought by both perpetrators AND victims of bullying and torment, schools could have actually taken efforts to end school bullying rather than turning a blind eye, or worse, executing a witch hunt for anybody wearing a black trench coat or pale makeup.

And perhaps they could crack down on the vicious anti-gay slurs being lobbed at outcasts regardless of sexual orientation. Homophobia kills, and it is blind to your true sexual orientation.

And maybe, just maybe, schools could start holding bullies accountable instead of blaming the victims for their own persecution.

(If you want some deeper insight to this – or if you just want to read a good book – I suggest the novel Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. It’s not a perfect book, but it does tell a story that is too often overlooked.)

I was a senior in high school when the Columbine shootings took place. No, I wasn’t in Colorado – I was several states away, in southern California. You would think we would have been a little more enlightened than that sheltered little town of Columbine, right?

Not so much. The day after the shootings, a 10th grader came to school in a black trench coat – as he had every day for at least the past year or two – and the school took it away from him. They confiscated his jacket, like that was somehow going to fix the world’s problems. I’m sure they gave it back eventually, but they wouldn’t let him wear it, and for the rest of that day, they had him walking around in one of the administrators’ letterman jackets. No joke. And that was extraordinarily mild compared to what happened at some schools.

I don’t mean to minimize the suffering caused by Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. Lifes were destroyed, and families taken apart. Bullying is no excuse for that. But it is a reason. Not the only one, but a major one. So armed with that knowledge, what are schools going to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again?

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