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Adriana Onita
Interdisciplinarity 222
1 December 2009
Motivations Behind Rampage School Shootings as Determined by the Media:
An Interdisciplinary Study
Step One: Defining the Problem
School rampage shootings have horrified, disgusted and morbidly fascinated people worldwide. The events of April 20th 1999 at Columbine High School caused the community of Littleton, Colorado to be unfortunately forever associated with the names of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. A decade after the Columbine rampage school shootings, scholars and civilians still hash over the same word: why? Why did Harris and Klebold plan their attack on Columbine High for over a year? Why didn’t anybody try to stop them? Why did the media blame everything and everybody, from parents to psychiatric drugs?
Attempts to understand the motivations behind school rampage SR shootings have gathered a plethora of scholars from different disciplines to try to piece together research, and to eventually arrive at a consensus that can put a nation at rest. Most of our information and explanations regarding school shootings comes from the analysis of discourse from the media, namely newspapers, radio, television, and the Internet. This can be very problematic because the media offers us fragmented versions of the reasons for which kids kill, running the gamut from individual (psychological) problems, dysfunctional family issues, community (school issues such as bullying, ostracizing) and national/cultural issues (gun control and culture of violence).
School shootings, according to psychologist Jonathan Fast, are “terrorist attacks with no ideological core [that] throw people’s lives out of kilter and convince them that the world is a menacing place” (Fast 1). People have indeed come to believe that schools are no longer safe when in fact, government studies show that school remains among the safest places a child can be. In a national poll of 409 teenagers conducted following the Columbine High School shootings, a third believed that a similar incident would occur in their own high school. In reality, the number of adolescent deaths attributable to SR shootings is less than a hundredth of a single percent (Fast 1). Given this statistic, there must be a medium that encourages, or even drives the fear behind public perception.
Based on this premise, I have developed the following interdisciplinary research question:
How does the media in North America, specifically instant coverage news, affect the public's opinion of the motivations behind rampage school shootings?
This question is complex and researchable, its clarity and lack of bias is demonstrated through the lack of disciplinary jargon, and the sufficiently narrow focus on the media in the context of the Columbine shootings makes it manageable within the specified limits of the essay. Although important insights have been produced by many disciplines, no single discipline has been able to explain comprehensively school shootings or resolve the problem. Using Allan Repko’s book “Interdisciplinary Research” and Rick Szostak’s guidance and expertise, I strived to do so myself.
Step 2: Justify using an Interdisciplinary Approach
Defining the Problem of School Shootings
In the analysis of school shootings, there is a tendency for observers to define the problem narrowly and focus blindly on single-causal motivations. By spotlighting factors such as the shooter’s psychological or developmental problems, or interpersonal violence like bullying, the media feeds fragmented viewpoints to satisfy the public’s curious nature and desire for quick explanations. This simplistic framing does not suffice. An integrated definition of the motivations behind school shootings is needed, especially within the media to avoid misinformation and confusion among viewers and readers. Using the most recent and comprehensive study of school shootings by Princeton sociologist Katherine Newman, we will define rampage school shootings by three main characteristics:
1) they are institutional attacks that take place on a public stage before an audience
2) they are committed by a member or a former member of the institution
3) they involve multiple victims, some chosen for their symbolic significance, or at random
This final condition demonstrates that it is the organization, not the individuals, who are important. By analyzing theories across different disciplines, such as sociologist Katherine Newman’s 5 step theory of rampage school shootings, psychologist Jonathan Fast’s Ceremonial Violence Theory and “Trigger theories” derived from sociology and
psychology but supported by journalism and the media, I will examine how the media affects public perception of SR shootings and how accurate the theories are today.
Step Three: Identify Relevant Disciplines
Social problems cannot be studied from a disciplinary standpoint (Henry 1); a wide interdisciplinary lens needs to be taken in order to account for all possible elements that could have led Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to commit the Columbine crime. Identifying relevant disciplines was easy: psychology, sociology, criminology, cultural studies, journalism, political science, education and media studies all illuminated a certain aspect of the problem of school shootings. Identifying the disciplines I was to use, however, proved to be a problematic task because they were all somehow interrelated.
Due to the time and space constraints of this project, I chose to highlight insights from psychology and sociology, more specifically regarding how an individual's predisposition towards criminal acts interacts with societal pressures and influences. These two disciplines proved to be the most helpful in determining how the media affect's people's perception of school shootings like Columbine because they already had well-defined, particular perspectives on the problem. However, I realized that all my disciplines already provided me with all the answers and since "the process of searching, more than the process of finding, if exceedingly important in stimulating cognitive development" (Hursh et al. 1983 qtd in Repko), I decided to include journalism also as one of the three disciplines. Thus, Dave Cullen’s book Columbine, became another important tool for this project because of his extensive research as an investigative journalist on the Columbine massacre.
Step Four: Conduct a Literature Search
Step Five: Develop Adequacy in Each Relevant Discipline
Step 4, the literature search, was when I realized that all of the steps overlapped, demonstrating that it's a very fluid process. I began conducting my literature search as early as Step 1, and I continued reading the literature during the later steps of the research process. I also discovered that the whole interdisciplinary process was nonlinear: it was more like a feedback loop than a ladder. Therefore, I went back to step one and revised my initial question, which was: "What are the most important factors that motivate an individual to use extreme violence against their school?”. I realized that I defined this question too broadly. I read about many different rampage school shootings, but for the purpose of this term paper, I limited myself to the Columbine school shootings. The different parts of the problem included school shootings, the media, and public perception. I developed adequacy in the disciplinary perspectives by indulging in
textbooks of introductory university courses regarding my subjects and reading broad selection of the literature about school shootings. This prepared me for my significant task.
Methods: Qualitative or Quantitative?
Before analyzing the problem and evaluating each discipline’s insight into it, I must first establish the main method used by scholars to analyze rampage school shootings: qualitative analysis. When looking at a phenomenon such as a rampage school shooting, it is almost impossible to use quantitative measures. SR shootings are sufficiently rare that statistical analysis, for example, is meaningless.
Statistical formulas are likely never to be useful for predicting infrequent instances of targeted violence such as school or workplace homicides, because the base rate is so low that, mathematically, high rates of accuracy are nearly impossible.
-Fast Ceremonial Violence pg. 14
Therefore, qualitative methods are often used when little is known about a phenomenon. Data is gathered from sources such as reading the SR shooters’ journals, interviews with victims, and analysis of media discourse. Much of this analysis is based on the interpretation of meaning behind symbols. Also, I have to note that "surveys deal with numerous people, interviews with fewer, and observation...with yet fewer" (237). The inherent problem behind each of these methods is bias. Also, because of the unpredictable nature of school shootings, it is difficult to profile a potential school shooter without dipping into stereotypicality. The epistemology of scholars plays a big role in what is being studied. One of the problems with disciplinary perspectives is that disciplinarians choose methods that support their own theory. The Luvox case study demonstrates that scholars may use qualitative analysis to support their own idea, even if their idea is narrow and biased. The interdisciplinarian has the tools, and therefore responsibility, to debunk myths that the disciplinarian created[1].
Step 6: Analyzing the Problem and Evaluating Each Insight into It
Popular explanations for rampage school shootings include: media violence, bullying, gun culture, family problems, mental illness, peer relations, demographic change, culture of violence, copycatting, and psychiatric drug use. Princeton sociologist, Katherine Newman, and her graduate research assistants put forward the question: what combination of these factors is necessary to produce these violent rampages? Based on their research, they proposed five “necessary but not sufficient conditions” for rampage school shootings. They claim that when taking away any of these elements, rampage school shootings will not happen[2]. Let’s see how her theory fares in analyzing Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold:
Factors that a rampage school shooter must meet
Eric Harris
Columbine
Dylan Klebold
Columbine
1) Perceives himself as extremely marginal in the social worlds that matter to him
- in his journal, Eric says: "I hate you people for leaving me out of so many fun things." demonstrating his marginality
- in the videos the two boys made before the attack, Dylan complained about the “stuck-up” kids who hated him, going all the way back to feeling mistreated since daycare
2) Must suffer from psychosocial problems that magnify the impact of marginality
- psychopathic: lacks empathy, morality
-sadistic, narcissistic, antisocial personality traits
-anger management problems
-psychotic, schizotypal personality traits
-avoidant personality disorder, social anxiety, dependency issues
3) “Cultural scripts” or prescriptions for behaviour must be available to lead the way toward an armed attack.
- Natural Born Killers was their cultural script
- often referred to their attack in their journals as “going NBK” as “when we go NBK…”
4) Failure of surveillance systems that are intended to identify troubled teens before their problems become extreme
- Jefferson County Police failed to investigate when Eric was reported to the police for having death threats on his website about Brooks Brown, a student from Columbine High
5) Gun availability: a youth can attain unsupervised access to a weapon
- since they could not buy weapons themselves, Robyn Anderson, a friend of Dylan’s who was 18 at the time, bought their guns for them
It seems as if Newman’s theory is comprehensive and covers a variety of disciplines, including psychological causes, societal and “cultural” causes, and educational school surveillance systems. However, it is still not enough o explain the acts behind Columbine. Throughout this paper I will analyze Newman’s 5 step theory while considering the conflicts with other scholars’ research.
The Theory of Ceremonial Violence
While studying school rampage shootings, the two conclusions that Jonathan Fast repeatedly went back to included: even if the boys were mentally ill or the product of abusive neglectful parents, so were many tens of thousands of other teenagers, none of whom had found it necessary to commit such a theatrical, tragic, and pointless crime (Fast 5). Secondly, the SR shooters must have been motivated by a variety of different factors; any causal explanation had to be multi-dimensional. This idea is not new in itself: Hans Eysenck suggested a multi-dimensional theory of criminal behaviour over 40 years ago. However, this theory is often ignored by people who prefer to single out factors, such as playing excessively violent video games, or listening to a certain type of music, to blame for school rampage shootings. In the Columbine massacre alone, fingers were pointed at movies such as Natural Born Killers, the music of Marilyn Manson, the Gothic culture, the Trench Coat Mafia, many of which were falsely accused.
In order to analyze what preconditions might have caused Eric and Dylan to commit mass murder, we must consider what makes the shooters different from normal teenagers. As described by Fast, school rampage shootings are “acts of terrorism without an ideological core”: This “hazy, poorly-wrought chain of reasoning that justifies the killing of an innocent by those who have convinced themselves that they are somehow superior” (Fast 3).
Fast created his own theory: ceremonial violence. The candidate, as he refers to the potential SR shooter is an "unhappy child, facing circumstances like childhood abuse, neglect, mental illness, parental separation, or frequent relocations”. A poor fit between a child and his family, or between a child and his community, will exacerbate the situation. The candidate's problem reaches a boiling point in adolescence, Fast argues, where teenagers are faced with questions such as: "What kind of person will I be? By which ideals will I navigate the seas of adulthood?...In which social milieu will I find comfort and friendship?", questions that help them develop their adult identity. One of the most important dimensions of identity formation is that of integration in the social milieu. Ironically, Newman is a sociologist but left identity formation out of her theory, one of the central aspects of adolescence. And as R. F. Baumeister has pointed out, the adolescent who has failed to form an identity often becomes self-destructive and suicidal (qtd in Fast 17). We need to expand Newman's theory to include the vulnerability of a teenager as they form their identity in a social milieu. Another part of the ceremonial theory will be discussed later in concordance with Dylan Klebold's personality disorders.
Consequences of Instant Media Coverage: The Blame Game
The oversaturated coverage of Columbine led the American public to form confused conclusions about the causes of the attacks, many of which were not supported by research. The media frenzy began almost immediately: during the actual shooting spree itself), when the local Denver news stations picked up reports on the police wires that something “major” was happening at Columbine High School. Afterwards, national networks such as MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News Channel got local feeds to broadcast the story live (Fryman 1392). NBC sensationalized the already dramatic “Columbine” tale by getting interviews with student witnesses and asking for instantaneous descriptions of the carnage. “From the very beginning, the media spectacle of Columbine revolved around the quick passage of the desperate, anxious search for explanations into a serious of simplified answers, answers that soon became objectified myths about the motivations behind the shootings” (Fryman. 1393). This resulted in a complete disregard for the social and historical complexity of what was taking place.
Dave Cullen, an investigative journalist and the author of the book Columbine, has been reporting on the tragedy since the day that it happened, spending years gathering research and debunking the mythology surrounding Columbine. When asked in an interview with Time Magazine about why he thought that the media was so quick to jump on pat narratives, he responded:
The problem with Columbine was we felt the need to explain it right away. It was so horrifying, and the public wanted to know why it happened. We in the media wanted to know why too, and we thought we had to answer them. What we should have said was, "We don't have any good information, and it would be irresponsible of us to say why." When you speculate in a case like this, it very quickly morphs into "fact." We started with the assumption that school shooters tend to be loners, outcasts and bullied. That turned out to be a myth: some are bullied, but not even 50%. The majority are not any of those things.
-Dave Cullen, interview with Alex Altman, Explaining Columbine, April 20, 2009 Time
Indeed, Carolyn Kitch and Janice Hume, both professors of Journalism and the authors of Journalism in a Culture of Grief examine the cultural meanings of death in American journalism, such as “how does the press tell “potent and provocative…death stories” (Kitsch 5). They refer to Jonathan Fast, the psychology scholar that pointed to “sudden deaths” as a set of cultural responses, including “heightened feelings of guilt and the need to assign blame for a crisis (Fast qtd. in Kitch), with most of the literature on “sudden deaths” focusing on human-caused tragedies, like the 1999 murders at Columbine High School.
Sociologically influenced strain and subcultural theory explains crime as the result of cultural and structural strains in society (Henry). In the following two cases, analyzing
bullying and the psychiatric drug Luvox, as a motivation for Columbine, I will provide evidence and criticism of this theory.
The Blame Game: Bullying and Trench Coat Mafia
How random were the murders at Columbine?
After Columbine, the pecking order of high schools was brought under scrutiny. Bullying and alienation, leading to rage and revenge, provided easy motives for the public, thirsty for explanations (Fast 239). Zero tolerance policies were instated in schools: schools seemed like airports, like prisons. On April 20, 1999, many myths were created by the media, and supported by students, parents, even scholars. Columbine High was portrayed on television as a toxic and horrible place “terrorized by a band of reckless jock lords and ruled by an aristocracy of snotty rich white kids…” (Cullen 254). The “Trench Coat Mafia” myth was one that emerged on the first day of Columbine. News stories circulated such as:
“Students are beginning to describe how a long-simmering rivalry between the sullen members of their clique [the TCM] and the school’s athletes escalated and ultimately exploded in this week’s deadly violence”
While police have not given a motive, several students said Harris and Klebold were members of a group calling itself the "Trenchcoat Mafia," outcasts who bragged about guns and bombs and hated blacks and Hispanics, as well as student athletes.
April 21, 1999 Web posted at: 10:50 a.m. EDT (1450 GMT)
Television journalists were careful. They used attributions and disclaimers like “believed to be” and “described as”. They were careful about how they phrased the rumours, but not about how often they uttered them. Consequently, the repetition on the news had a feedback effect that made the students at Columbine High believe that Harris and Klebold were part of the TCM: “Kids knew the TCM was involved because witnesses and news anchors had said so on TV. From 1:00PM to 8:00PM, the number of [Columbine] students citing the group went from almost none to nearly all. They weren’t making it up, they were repeating it back” (Cullen 150). Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle: by observing an entity, you alter it. Heisenberg was a quantum physicist observing electron behaviour, but social scientists began applying his principle to humans.
Despite the press’ obsession with bullying and misfits, Dave Cullen asserts that’s not how the boys presented themselves. Dylan laughed about picking on the new freshmen and “fags”. Neither one complained about bullies picking on them – they boasted about doing it themselves. Eric had a grand vision, alluding to a wider slaughter: killing everything, destroying the human race. There was no singling out people who bullied him to kill in the attack, just as there was no liaison supporting the subculture theory. Reading his journal provides proof of that.
Nevertheless, scholars still argue about whether or not bullying was a cause or not in the Columbine shootings, or rampage shootings in general: “In the case of rampage school shootings, evidence supports the claim that forms of violent victimization such as bullying and exclusion, for considerable time produced an inner sense of hopelessness and vulnerability.” (Newman et al., 2004). Dave Cullen however, says that there’s no evidence that bullying led to murder, but considerable evidence that it was a problem at Columbine High (Cullen 158). This can be surely contradicted by an excerpt from Eric Harris' journal: “Whatever I do people make fun of me, and sometimes directly to my face. I'll get revenge soon enough”, (Harris 11/22/98) This clearly represents signs of bullying.
Tom and Sue, Dylan Klebold’s parents, were among the people convinced that jocks and bullying had been behind it. But jocks and bullies are everywhere and few kids are trying to blow up their high school. An FBI reports states that:
Bullying may have played a role:…71% of attackers had experienced persecution, bullying, threats, or injury. Initially that sounds dramatic, but the study did not address how many nonattackers suffer that sort of experience; it’s pretty commonplace for a high school kid. Several of the shooters experienced severe or long-term bullying, though, and in some cases,
it seemed to be a factor in the decision to attack.
- qtd in Cullen, 384n[3]
How do we resolve such a conflict?
It appears that the conflict in these insights could have arisen from a problem with the definition of bullying. I argue that the question should not be: did bullying play a role in the Columbine High Shootings, but rather to what extent did bullying play a role in the
shootings? By providing a continuum of bullying, to see then, how the boys match up to normal teens that also experience bullying but do not exert extreme violence on their schools.
Furthermore, even if Dylan was bullied, high school was almost over. The nightmare would have ended for him; he went to visit his future college with his family (Cullen). There are still pieces missing: what psychosocial factor, or person, could have changed his fate?
Psychological Illnesses: Personality Disorders
“I chose to kill…so get over it! Its MY fault! not my parents, not my brothers, not my friends, not my favorite bands, not computer games, not the media.”
- Eric Harris 7/29/98
We cannot assess Eric and Dylan’s motives through a “normal” lens, because Eric and Dylan were not normal kids. We must consider their personality disorders to further evaluate their motivations, as explained in full detail by Peter Langman in his book Why Kids Kill. Eric killed for two reasons: to demonstrate his superiority and to enjoy it. Although strong evidence exists that may have been racist, and had been bullied, he did not discriminate when he murdered his classmates at Columbine High, as seen through his journals. Eric was a born psychopath; he possessed narcissistic, sadistic and antisocial personality traits. But Eric cannot be examined without examining his influence on Dylan.
It is most interesting to note that Dylan Klebold did not start out as a rageful, bloodthirsty villain. He was a shy kid who gushed about love in his journal before his attack, but had social difficulties regarding friendship and female companionship (Langman 52). Dylan's journal, released in 2006 to the public, displayed preoccupations with loneliness, depression, finding love, as opposed to Eric's journal, which is full of narcissism, condescension and rage. Eric's journal was filled with drawings of weapons, swastikas and soldiers; Dylan's was filled with hearts. There is no part of Newman's 5 step SR shooting theory that would explain this. We need to look back at Fast's ceremonial violence theory to explain the impact Eric had on Dylan, and tie it back to the theory on bullying.
"The candidate might commit suicide at this point [of culmination] were it not for two factors: first, he is a narcissist...a person who craves attention and lacks empathy, two factors which unfortunately operate synergistically in turning a suicide, a private event, into a mass murder, a public event," Fast states. This insight must be added to the 5 step
theory of rampage school shootings. Through combining the psychological predispositions and bullying we have the first two steps of Newman’s theory, but Fast implies that "finding a best friend or a soulmate...a person through whom he can experience homicide vicariously" or a "violence coach" can be the determining factor in Dylan's decision jump from suicide to homicide. In other words, if Eric had not found Dylan, he may not have committed a school rampage shooting. Somehow in the bullying spectrum, there must be another external factor, a "violence coach" that "convinces the candidate to channel his rage into an SR shooting, agrees to participate, and [even makes] a suicide pact with the candidate so that they both die at the end of the shooting." (Fast) Further research must be done to determine whether Dylan's social struggles were a result of his lack of confidence and social skills, not rejection or harrassment, as the bullying theory holds.
How much can we really know?
How much can be really known about what happened the morning of April 20th, 1999 is of great dispute also, and varies with the different epistemologies of the scholars who study Columbine. A postmodernist skeptic can say: even though we may have 25 000 pages of police evidence, countless hours of video and audiotape, hundreds of interviews and the extensive work of many journalists, we may still never know what went through Dylan and Eric's minds on that dreadful day. Indeed, the killers wrote and taped themselves extensively; any researcher of Columbine must engage in textual analysis. The gaps that the killers left in their thinking, researchers and journalists, like Dave Cullen have attempted to fill in with the help of experts in criminal psychology who have also spent years on the case. I have not found much postmodernist uncertainty among scholars (most think that all the evidence is trustworthy and conclusions can be reached from it), rather media reports that somehow imply that "we will never know the real answer". This epistemological belief allowed the media to get away with a lot of their false theories, because they always had the "it may be true" ideology to support them. Benjamin Frymer alludes to cultural theorist Guy Debord when he states: “Following the shootings, media accounts did not simply report what had happened or search for answers for a fearful population; they generated a full-blown postmodern spectacle of alien youth” (Frymer 1389). But Dave Cullen strongly believed that he finally "set the story right" in his author's note on sources, saying that "in the great media blunders during the initial coverage of the [Columbine] story, where nearly everyone got the central factors wrong, [he] was among the guilty parties [also]". Certainly, most scholarly work nowadays about the rampage school shootings at Columbine has been positivist influenced and advancing our knowledge of the phenomenon.
The Blame Game: Psychiatric Drugs
Eric and Luvox
“There is no doubt in my mind that Luvox caused Eric Harris to commit [the Columbine shooting spree].”
– Ann Blake Tracy PhD Biological psychology
“Murder has occurred throughout human history without any psychiatric medications to push people over the edge.”
– Peter Langman PhD psychology
Eric Harris was taking an antidepressant called Luvox when he attacked Columbine High School. Some people have argued that this medication, associated with psychotic and manic side-effects, pushed him over the edge, leading him to commit mass murder (O’Meara). Mark Taylor, a Columbine High School student who was shot between seven and thirteen times by Harris, filed suit against Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc., the manufacturer of Luvox.[4] Taylor believed Harris would have not gone on his rampage had he not been under the influence of the drug: "I don't have ill feelings against him since I don't think you can hold him accountable, because he did not know what he was doing" (qtd. in Hunnicott). Ann Blake Tracy, a consultant in Taylor’s lawsuit and the director of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness, has a background in biological psychology and is a specialist in what she believes are the adverse reactions to SSRI[5] medications. She singles out Luvox to be the cause for Eric Harris’ actions: “All you have to do is read the Luvox package insert to see that Eric’s actions were due to an adverse reaction to this drug…There is no doubt in my mind that Luvox caused [Columbine school shooter] Eric Harris to commit these acts” (Hunnicott). Peter Breggin, the author of Talking Back to Prozac, also suggested that the shooting was a result of an SSRI inspired mania.
Conflicting this notion is psychologist Peter Langman, whom in his book, Why kids kill: inside the mind of the school shooter, states that there is no reason to believe that Eric Harris could not have committed murder without the side effects of his medication: “Eric was not a typical teenager who became a grandiose, raging and homicidal monster after taking Luvox…he was grandiose and homicidal without it” (Langman). Harris’ rage and destructive nature were evident in his journal and website months prior to the massacre, before he even started taking Luvox. Indeed, the more we know about Eric's history and personality, the more we realize that he did not need the medication side
effects to commit mass murder. Jonathan Fast agrees with this argument and says that Eric’s plan to assault his school predates his use of the medication (Fast 192). In other words, Luvox did not trigger his rampage.
Analysis of the Method dealing with Luvox
Although qualitative analysis is a very useful method that provides us with in-depth information about issues like school shootings, the testimony of Mark Taylor shows us a fundamental weakness of this method: people can misinform you, as even first-person accounts can be false. Taylor states: “I did not personally know Eric, but I know him as one of the "Trench Coat Mafia" (Hunnicutt). It is widely known now that the Trench Coat Mafia was not associated with neither Eric Harris, nor his counterpart Dylan Klebold, but the fact that Eric and Dylan wore trench coats on the day of the massacre would be a choice of tremendous confusion.
As witnessed in the case with Luvox, people tried to create a “trigger theory”, by pinning down what they thought the factor was that sent Harris over the edge. Consequently, the public gave to the media possibly made-up information to support their own theories about Columbine. Even unnamed friends of Eric said that “they believe that he may have tried to stop taking the drug, perhaps because of his rejection by the Marines, five days before [the Columbine Massacre]”(Cullen 209). This statement puts forward a plausible, convenient argument for the audience to digest: the Marines rejected Eric, he quit the Luvox to fuel his rage, he grabbed the gun and started killing. Because Eric’s body hadn’t initially been screened for Luvox, this was easy to put forward as an explanation. Later it will be proved that Eric remained on a full dose, right up to his death and also that Eric was ineligible to join the Marines, but he had not yet known. There had been no trigger (Cullen 234).
Even if Ann Blake Tracy’s assertion may have a grain of truth (Luvox may have further exacerbated Eric’s already aggressive behaviour), it is overly simplistic to choose a drug’s side effects to explain such grandiose actions. It also suggests that Blake, as the director of International Coalition for Drug Awareness, is biased by her own goals of anti-SSRI advocating. Disciplines such as psychology tend to pay more heed to individuals rather than groups, and this can be evident in their methods. Her bias is furthermore evident in her statement to the press: “Suing Solvay for the injuries Mark Taylor suffered is one of the biggest SSRI suits we’ll ever see. It’s a pivotal case because what happened at Columbine was so big. It’s crazy when you think about it...” (Hunnicott). In addition, many news stories had begun to surface about adolescents who had committed suicide while taking an SSRI-type medication, despite the fact that most psychiatrists consider them among the safer and more effective medications for depression (Langman).
Furthermore, it is interesting to note that while psychiatric drugs have been blamed for rampage school shootings, little attention have been paid to street drugs, even though they were used more by school shooters than medications [6](Langman, 7). There must be other factors to take into consideration; other motivations surrounding school rampage shootings.
Integration:
Create or Find Common Ground to Integrate Insights
Produce an interdisciplinary understanding of the problem and test it
“The search for common ground is the fundamental element of all [interdisciplinary] investigation” (Kockelmans 1979 qtd in Repko).
The main goal of interdisciplinary analysis is to yield a more comprehensive understanding of a particular problem, such as school shootings, that a single-discipline could not have come up with on its own. The integration of different insights from different disciplines is crucial to this research process. A nonintegrative way would be to say that answers are either right or wrong, for example: Luvox either caused, or played no role in Harris’ rampage shooting at Columbine; bullying was either a factor, or had no influence in Harris’ and Klebold’s murderous plan. As I’ve argued, a more plausible way of analysis would be that: Luvox did not cause, but exacerbated Harris’ already violent nature, leading him to carry out his plans at Columbine; bullying did not create, but had a role in the perpetrators’ lives, much like it plays a role in almost all teenagers’ lives, therefore pre-existing personality disorders must be in place in order for the SR shooter to exaggerate bullying in his mind.
Arguing a narrow point of view is also a nonintegrative way of handling a controversial topic such as school shootings. When confronting conflicting perspectives, the interdisciplinarian’s job is not to deem one view correct and reject the other, but rather to find the common ground, or the pieces of truth in both views. In other words, it’s not about who can win the argument, but who can bring together the best integrated ideas to solve the problem at hand. Allan Repko stresses this point: “the interdisciplinary enterprise is not like prosecuting a case, defending a client, or just adding another scholarly opinion to the many opinions already offered on the problem” (277). I would add to that: the interdisciplinary enterprise is not like reporters in the media, who highlight the newest development at hand and provide faulty evidence to get the highest ratings.
I chose to analyze the media particularly because reporters are often guilty of the fragmentation and compartmentalization of insights, much like disciplinarians are guilty of insisting that their own theory is right, and using that a method that will support their theory. Following Columbine, there was a lot of information out there, some of which was true, some of which was false, most of which was both true and false. It took a few hours for TV reporters to start flocking to Littleton, Colorado and come up with explanations for what was happening at Columbine High School. It took ten years for Dave Cullen, leading expert on Columbine, to research and come up with the accepted facts and debunk the myths surrounding the school shootings, many of which the media relentlessly put forward.
The trigger theories the media introduced were the flavour of the hour, their method was qualitative and often erroneous, and their assumption was that the public will tune in to see the instant coverage news for answers. And the media was right. On the day of Columbine, leading TV networks such as CNN had more than 2 million viewers, nearly 3 times the amount they usually had on the previous Tuesday (Chicago Tribune, April 25, 1999). People wanted answers. They “snapped” was not an answer: “Non violent people do not ‘snap’ or decide on the spur of the moment to meet a problem by using violence,” an FBI report said. The planning for Columbine was a year in advance. Did people care they were getting the right answers? Reporters wanted to provide people with relief and knowledge, but often they were wrong. The worst part is that by the time the truth came out, the media had already moved on, and people’s opinions regarding Columbine had already calcified.
I have tried to counteract this by expanding Newman's 5 aspect theory of rampage school shootings to include certain aspects of Fast's ceremonial violence theory, such as identity crisis, we are able to cover ground that the media failed to mention in their hasty reports. By debunking myths, like the trigger theory, as witnessed in the case study of Eric and the Luvox suit, we are able to remain critical in discourse and advance our cognitive understanding of school violence. Finally, through redefining and organizing certain theories, such as bullying, we are able to see more clearly exactly how much what part each factor played in the Columbine school shootings. There is still a long way to go in mapping out other factors in relation to one another, but I do hope my research has provided some enlightenment regarding the Columbine school shootings.
Conclusion
It is no news that we obtain much of our information about the world through the news and other forms of media; however, it is crucial to keep in mind that the media is anything but objective. As Dave Cullen states, “it is an axiom of journalism that disaster stories begin in confusion and grow clearer over time. Facts rush in, the fog lifts, an accurate picture solidifies. The public accepts this. But the final portrait is often furthest from the truth (Cullen 150). It is the public’s responsibility to seek out the most up-to-
date research to engage in meaningful discourse. It is also the public’s job to hold reporters accountable for what they say and who they blame for tragedies.
The media’s sensationalism behind rampage school shootings has influenced the public to perceive that such incidents are on the rise. Future research on university shootings such as at Virginia Tech might provide new explanation on how the media coverage at Columbine aided in the future construction of the deadly fantasies of school shooters.
Taking it Further: Reflection of my Challenges and Difficulties
Since the interdisciplinary research process requires constant decision making and step taking, I always revisited my earlier work. There was a very important lesson for me in the fact that I could not move from point "A" to point "B" via point "C" and on to a conclusion. It was more like this: I got to point "B", realized I must go back to point "A" but that was hard because point "C" overlaps with point B and I already dipped into point "D" to make my conclusion. Consequently, I read a lot of material that I did not use in my paper, even though I would have liked to. Nevertheless, I included all the references in my bibliography because they probably influenced my thought and decision process.
Reflecting on my own biases:
Throughout the research process, I was self-conscious and self-aware of my personal biases and I kept them in check so that they would not influence my evaluation of insights, and thus my product of integration. These biases included: (a) school shootings are bad and we must look at ways to prevent them (b) a negative bias of the way reporters report school shootings and (c) there is a link between the way school shootings are brought to the public’s attention and future school shootings. I also started thinking that finding common ground is possible. This is a good bias to have, as even Repko states that it is “unlikely” that a student does not find a point of commonality that will allow integration of at least some insights (Repko 276). Nevertheless, at times it took an endless amount of imagination and creativity to see what two different disciplinary perspectives had in common. Also, I had read that “too much integration can lead to theoretical mush”, so I had to be careful with that too.
What I would have done had I more time:
Cultural studies would have provided a very unique perspective of how the public reacted and subsequently created artistic and literary representations of school shootings like songs and books that reflected their perception of the events (probably also influenced by the media). I would have enjoyed taking a look at music and contemporary books that have school shootings at their core, for example the song Little Weapon by Lupe Fiasco, or the novel 19 Minutes by Jodi Picoult. The extent to which violent video games impact school shootings would also be an interesting topic to develop.
Cognitive Advancement:
Allan Repko discusses how school learning is like rote learning, a process that occurs when the learner memorizes new information without relating it to prior knowledge, which involves no effort to integrate new knowledge with existing concepts, experience, or objects (Novak qtd in Repko 140). This is what the interdisciplinary research process attempts to defy. Haynes stated that the interdisciplinary research process "is a tall order for even the best of learners"(qtd in Replo 140). I am not claiming that I am the best of learners, but I found this project to be extremely difficult. Prior to this course, I was indoctrinated in the disciplinary perspective, a school system focused on specificity, duality, analysis, and reductionism. By taking courses ranging across a wide array of disciplines, I developed adequacy in understanding different disciplinary perspectives, but was never taught how to integrate knowledge in a holistic way while developing disciplinary depth and breadth. So even though the process was hard, it was extremely rewarding and I feel that it resulted in cognitive advancement. I will use the tools gained in this course for the rest of my scholarly career.
[1] in this case it was the media that disciplined us into believing their fragmented truth
[2] information for this table was gathered and synthesized from Why Kids Kill by Peter Langman, and not from The Social Roots of School Shootings
[3] The loner myth was the single biggest misconception, as some of the attackers were loners, but two thirds were not.
[4] The family of Dave Sanders, Mark Taylor and three other Columbine families sued Solvay. All but Mark withdrew their claims. Solvay settled with $10 000 dollars donated to the American Cancer Society.
[5] Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors: a class of medications that includes Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil.
[6] Two out of the ten shooters analyzed in Langman's book were on medication, whereas eight out of the ten used alcohol, marijuana and possibly other drugs
