Columbine Tragedy Impact Still Strong 10 Years Later

On April 20, 1999, two student gunmen opened fire on Columbine High School, a suburban school in Jefferson County, Colo., before taking their own lives. Twelve classmates and one teacher were killed and 16 other people were wounded in the nation’s deadliest high-school shooting.

The tragedy prompted the nation’s universities, including the University of Cincinnati, to reexamine their own safety plans, including an emphasis on recognizing warning signs for potential violence.

The University of Cincinnati also houses a center in the College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services (CECH) that provides resources and training for safe and drug-free school programs across the state of Ohio.

Recent events internationally reflect the terror of Columbine. In March, two British teens were arrested in an alleged plot to blow up a school on the anniversary of the Columbine massacre. On March 11, a teen gunman opened fire on a high school in Winnenden, Germany, killing 15 people before shooting himself to death. And, in 2007, just four days before the eighth anniversary of the Columbine massacre, 32 people died in the worst mass shooting in the nation’s history at Virginia Tech.

For concerned parents, the number of school-associated deaths is significantly low. In the 2007 report, Indicators of School Crime and Safety, published by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Institute of Education Sciences (IES), and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the number of school-associated deaths was about one per 3.2 million students. Fourteen homicides and three suicides among the five-to-18 age group were reported from July 2005 to June 2006. The report found that students were more likely to be victims of theft – 868,100 thefts at school were reported in 2005 among students aged 12 to 18.

“To be quite honest, school is one of the safest places that kids can be. Many of them use schools as their safe haven,” says youth violence and suicide prevention researcher Keith King, a UC associate professor of health promotion and education in CECH.

“We have seen increases in violence prevention programming, in anger management types of programming and in conflict resolution programming. Parents talked with their children about school violence, especially after Columbine. The challenge is to keep addressing these issues in the years following these tragic events.”

Here are some of the reflections of UC’s researchers, prevention specialists and counselors on the decade since the Columbine tragedy.

SCHOOL SECURITY SINCE COLUMBINE – Bob Canning, assistant director of the Ohio Resource Network for Safe and Drug Free Schools, housed in UC’s College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services, says state house bill 422 was a direct result of the Columbine tragedy, and mandates was passed and requires the principal of each public and non public school to conduct – once each school year – a school safety drill to instruct staff in procedures to follow when students need to be secured in their school building rather than evacuated. UC’s prevention professionals expand on their K-12 violence prevention efforts at this link: http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.aspx?id=9968

BULLYING GOES HIGH-TECH – Ten years ago, cell phones were not on a belt or in the backpack of virtually every teenager. No Twittering tweets traveled back and forth and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace were not in existence. Keith King, a UC associate professor of health promotion and education in CECH, explores these trends and other issues affecting adolescents today at this link: http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.aspx?id=9967

SUFFERING IN SILENCE – Gary Dick, a UC associate professor of social work, has counseled victims of bullies and has also reviewed national research on bullying trends. The devastating effects include low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, physical ailments and falling behind at school. Despite the anguish of bullying, Dick says the behavior often remains hidden because of the target’s hesitancy to expose the attacker. Dick has information on how parents can broach that conversation at this link: http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.aspx?id=9969

COME TOGETHER, RIGHT NOW – Carol Yoken, director of the Counseling Center at UC, says there’s an increasing emphasis in the mental health field of delivering support after tragedies such as Columbine. On the state level, Yoken is supporting efforts for campus counseling centers to work with communities on training for delivering psychological first aid. Details at: http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.aspx?id=9965

PREVENTION THROUGH INTERVENTION – At the University of Cincinnati, a new program aims to head off the risk of campus violence before it happens. Get details at this link: http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.aspx?id=9662

PREVENTION PLAN PREPARES UC POLICE FOR THE UNTHINKABLE – UC Police and public safety officials last summer staged the largest drill yet to respond to a violent situation like Columbine. Details at: http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.aspx?id=8710