OK, I have total sympathy with the parents of the victims. They sued the Sheriff (?), the parents of the shooters (the parents were victims also), the people who got the guns (who are now in prison), now they’re suing the Principal of the school and other officials because they should have known about the shooters’ violent tendencies. Is this going too far? Is this a waste of the taxpayers’ money? So they hope to get some money from the school district? What’s going on here?
What’s going on here is a bunch of folks lost their kids… and they want restitution, hot-dammit!
I do think that they’re going too far. Sue the sherrif? Why? Because they didn’t pull a Bruce Willis-type rescue, sending in a single gung-ho cop to go blow away the bad guys?
Sue the Principal? Because he “should have known”? Why should he have known? There’re hundreds of students in that school. Maybe dozens of them fit the “profile” that the shooters did.
It’s very easy to say “you should have known” or “you should have acted faster” in retrospect. So, yes, it is going too far, it is a waste of taxpayers’ money.
I disagree with the two of you. You’re more or less right about the sherrif, but these people sent there children to school with the assurence that they’ll be safe. The school failed at this responsibility, and should pay for it.
As for the parents of the killers - like hell they’re victims. They are more responsible than anyone else in this whloe sorry affair, including their progeny. Everybody keeps blaming the media, the government, society, but face it - when a kid screws up, it’s almost always the parent’s fault. Those people are not victims, they’re murderers.
If you can’t raise your children properly, don’t have kids.
Alessan,
But what did the school do wrong? Should they have hired teachers with Commando training and have janitors who carry M16’s while scrubbing toilets???
The school provided a safe healthy environment in which students could learn. Their responsibility was to educate the students and make them better people.
Just because someone provides a safe environment does not mean they can gauruntee that nothing wrong will happen. It means they will do their best, and take reasonable precautions. Is the owner of the Oklahoma Murray building responsible and liable because some nutjob dropped off a truck bomb there? Sure the school could have had tight security and made every student pass through inspection at the front gate before passing through the automatic gate in the razor wired electric fence. But is that reasonable?
Even if the school had all that, and some creative student stole a Hummer and drove it through the fence and shot up a few people, there would be people ready to sue the fence manufacturer for not making it strong enough and the school because they did not make it safe enough. C’mon People!!
I agree that a school is supposed to provide a reasonable amount of protection. But predicting that a couple of kids will come in to gun everyone down? It’s rather unreasonable to assume that a school can foresee this happening, much less provide protection from it.
Two kids come in with guns… there are only two defenses: Supply every other student with a bullet-proof vest, or station armed guards at sentry points about the campus. Want kids to feel like they’re in a prison?
I agree.
I don’t know about “more responsible”. In any situation like this, there’d be dozens, if not hundreds, of causes. “Bad Parenting” could be one… but who knows? Maybe they had a perfect “Brady Bunch” type of family life… and they just happened to be mentally deranged or sociopathic or something…
On the other hand, if I was part of the Brady Bunch, I’d be driven a bit coo-coo, too… and NOT for Coacoa Puffs.
While I am glad that we live in a country where the legal system makes it available for civil use, I do wish some people would show some restraint and common sense about these things once in a while.
Ultimately, the only two people really responsible for this are dead. I feel that if their parents were proven to be shittty in soome way, they sharee in accountability, but I think this should not be a civil matter - too many worms open up because of that.
And everyone else on the list above? I was unaware that psychic powers were a prerequisite for being a principal and that a sheriff should be Rambo…
Yer pal,
Satan
[iTIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
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4090 cigarettes not smoked, saving $511.31.
Life saved: 2 weeks, 4 hours, 50 minutes.*
It didn’t just come out of the blue though . I saw a documentary about this incident which showed that the police where warned in advance about these kids . One of the killers had posted on his/their website that he dreamt about going into school and kill people , on the web site there was also death threats against a specific student who used to be a friend of one of the killers . These pages where printed out by the parents of the student and brought to the police but they said that they could not act on the threats as there was no actual law broke .
If the above is true ( and I’ve no reason to believe it not as the documentary was a BBC producton which usually are pretty reliable but please correct me if I was mis-informed ) then I don’t have any problem with the police being sued .
As to the school and the parents being sued I’m still not convinced .
Well, like you said “there was no actual law broke”. People can threaten your life all they want. As long as the threat does not present an immediate danger and the person does not have an immediate ability to carry out such threat, there is no crime.
For example:
I look you dead in the eyes and with the scariest, meanest voice, I tell you “I am going to kill you, tomorrow”. I have not committed a crime because I did not say I was going to do anything to you at that time.
Also, if I was say, wearing spandex and you saw that I had nothing on my person but I said “I am going to shoot you right now and blow your head off!”, this is not a violation of the law because it is obvious I could not blow your head off becuase you can see I do not have a gun! No bulge jokes please!
Anyway, my point here is that you cannot sue the sheriff because they had no authority to do anything. Yes, someone should have done something! To me, this puts more liability on the parents. If your son made a death threat on his website to my son, I would call you up and bring it to your attention. If you do nothing, then you are a shitty parent and partially responsible for what your child does next!!
That was a very good point about the website thing, I had forgotten about it until you brought it up. But I really think this makes the parents more at fault. I am starting to wonder if the school should have maybe sent the student to a counselor or had the Resource Deputy talk to the student or something… if they didnt, are they at fault. Is it their job to raise the child. Well it is the Resource Deputy’s job to make sure everything is safe at the school (short of invasion by lunatic students), maybe he should have done something about the threats. Who knows, maybe he did do something but just not enough. He would really be limited to just lecturing the student though. (No law broken)
Maybe the school should have suspended the students for the threats and recommended expulsion. If the school took them seriously, I bet they would have. Looking back, they probably could have done more. But I still hate to blame everyone for what little thing they did or did not do. Students say and do stuff like that all the time. Even draw sick violent pictures. Who could have known what they would do.
I still cannot blame the school for this in any way though. But you did get me thinking.
And you got me thinking . That was a really good post and you have made me look at it from another angle , thanks.
Now , I’m not slagging of your country but I’m so glad I grew up in little old Dublin. If that’s common in your school system it’s truely scary. 
I lived about 10 minutes from Columbine. A friend of mine that lived next door had several kids in her church that were caught in this hell. I find it outrageous that anyone should be considering financial damages against anyone.
I watched the whole thing, live. I cried with my friend while all this was unfolding because of the kids that were in the school during all of this. My self will forever be altered by the events that occured and I can’t imagine that the families of those that died or were wounded will ever think about life the same again.
The thing is, this was a horrific act by two teens that felt the world sucked beyond belief. It has been proven that the sheriffs dept. did not warn anyone about their stealing items from a van and the probation, the threatening web site etc. – the school was apparently not informed on this. The principle is not a prison warden and should not be expected to act as such. This is a huge high school by my standards and you can’t possibly keep tabs on each individual student.
Damnit, those boys were intent on inflicting harm. I think, and this is speculation, that they had a suicide pact and wanted to take as many out with them as they could.
But there is no room for a lawsuit against a principle, or a school district as it stands, who can’t know everything that is going on with each kid in a school as large as that.
I find it sad when people don’t look past the lawsuits to really grieve over the ending of a life. My dad could have easily pushed a lawsuit against the doctor that let my mother deal with cancer for years. She was in pain and I hate the doctor more than anyone in my life. But no amount of finacial reward will bring her back.
When a loved one dies, they die. We keep them in our hearts and hope to meet them again. Financial gains off a person’s death does nothing but fuel the fire. In this case the families need to step back, realize the principle is not God and keep tabs on the two boys that are feeling as though life is a shitty place.
I find it sad really. I wish the victims families would take a step back and quit putting blame. It was a horrible scene. I was terrified for those kids. I wouldn’t wish a scenerio on my worst enemy. But there is a time when you have to step back and realize that no amount of money, trial time or anything will make the pain go away. It follows you and will do so for more years than you can imagine.
Damn, this really bugs me for some reason.
I mean, one authority figure that handles well over 1000 students. I don’t remember the total but I think it falls in the 2000 range. How the heck can he keep tabs on that many kids?
The Denver metro area has a lot big schools. 3000 plus students in some cases if memory serves me right. Even in my city of C Springs we have schools with approx 2000 students.
How the hell can one person keep tabs on each and every student?
I wish that the families would accept that their loved ones are gone. No amount of praying or suing will bring them back.
We live in such a way that the moment we wake up life is a hazard. We are not guaranteed survival for any specific time in our lives.
Those kids and the teacher that died, to me it had to be their time. I feel that about all those that die prematurely (sp), for some reason it was their time. But in my eyes, we can investigate and work together to figure out if mistakes where made.
If there were mistakes, then let us all learn from it and hope we can prevent this from happening again. That’s not too much to ask I don’t think.
We are all human and we work every day to not repeat the past. But to continually bring up the violence never solves a damn thing.
If it were my druthers, my mother’s doc woulda been sued so horribly that he would no longer have a medical practice. Well, this solves nothing. Maybe his mistakes have helped another person live because he found a symptom or a description of a problem that was the same as my mother’s.
Anyhow, I am against this lawsuit and would rather see the families work together to get the word out that “goofy” kids in school are pretty much no different than any other kid they know. I was one of those goofy kids so I know.
Shit, my brain is running overtime on this.
I am sorry, really.
But as I sat back and started thinking, there is a particular case I bring up that really gets to me.
Mr. OJ Simpson.
The families, to this day, continue to bitch and whine about OJ. You know all the stuff they talk about.
Well, come on.
Maybe not locally here, but I have not once seen a reference to them using OJ money, that they 'sposedly received, for the betterment of women who are being abused.
If there are donations, then fine, but I haven’t seen it.
What I am getting at is. If the families really give a rat’s butt about this whole issue, get money or assets as compensation for a wrong doing, then why the hell don’t they use this money to better further the community. They keep their faces in the media only referencing OJ and their belief of guilt. I can’t say yeah or nay about OJ because I was not a jury member. But personally I have never seen them once refer to helping women going through the same problems.
I don’t believe there has been one time I have ever seen them work against the forces they believe killed their sister/daughter/aunt etc…what they claim is physical violence and nothing more.
That’s what scares me about all of this. It seems to be less about the families pain and the events that lead to this than the blame. Blame that turns into finacial rewards.
Call me silly but if my mother’s doctor had been taken to court and we won, I would have asked that that money be donated to our local cancer society.
In any case, if I were a jury member I would vote against financial damages, in this case, if I knew it wasn’t going to better schools and helping kids learn that the world isn’t black and white.
As a Libertarian, that’s a hard thing to state however I have to consider the govt. as it is. But if financial rewards are expected out of a man that is a public employee — particularly in this situation – then the financial rewards should go to the kids that may follow in the footsteps of this tragedy. Intervention folks.
**
I don’t think they have a legal leg to stand on with regards to the sheriff. Although I think there is a problem when you call 911 and it takes them 6 hours to respond to the situation. I don’t want their heads to roll but I think we need to examine police strategy in these kidns of situations.
On the other hand it seems fair to sue the parents of the suspects.
Marc
Couple of minor comments to add…
I think the parents share fault in what happened, but not responsibility. For one thing, money will not bring back anybody’s kids. Neither will greed. Lawsuits are not being filed to make any sort of productive change, but just to pad pockets and stay in the spotlight. After all, are they suing for better security in schools, or for money? How can you assign monetary value to deaths of children? You can’t. It’s greed, plain and simple. The whole concept of money for “pain and suffering” offends me. Will your pain go away if you have a million dollars? Will you miss your kids less if you’re driving a Ferrari instead of a Toyota? I seriously doubt it. When your friends come over to see your new mansion, are you going to tell them “My kids made this all possible…my son’s blood paid for this wing, and my daughter’s paid for the pool”? Realistically, how much money can you squeeze from those kids’ parents? And should you? Granted they had no clue what their kids were doing, but they aren’t the ones who shot anybody. Being a shitty parent isn’t against the law.
Also, schools are not there to provide “protection”. They exist to educate, not to guard. There is nothing that could have stopped those two psychopaths from causing harm to people other than for their parents to be aware of WTF is going on in their homes (I don’t understand how they could be stockpiling guns and bombs in the house without a parent being aware of it–NOT that I have a problem with kids owning guns. I’ve owned at least a rifle or a pistol since I was 10, but my parents damn well knew about it…), and as a rule, if somebody is determined to cause harm, they will and there is nothing anybody can do to stop it.
To the parents of Columbine:
We already feel sympathy for you. We already know you’ve been through a terrible ordeal. Don’t cheapen it with greed and make us feel contempt for you as well. Mourn your kids with dignity, not a pathetic display like trying to sue the universe for allowing humankind to evolve, eventually producing those kids.
Let it drop and quit trying to get your faces on tv.
**
Since when was the primary purpose of a lawsuit to make productive changes? Most lawsuits are filed because one party has been damaged and they want compensation.
**
My mother is on vacation and she was planning on going deep sea fishing. Instead she was in an auto mobile accident which resulted in many bruises, scrapes, and a broken arm. Through no fault of her own her vacation was ruined and she won’t be able to return to work in August. I think she deserves to be compensated for having her vacation ruined. I’d say that falls under the umbrella of pain and suffering.
**
Personally I don’t think I’d bother to sue either.
**
I agree. The school can only provide so much reasonable protection.
Marc
Well, the OJ comparison actually isn’t a good one here. In the OJ case, you have (in theory) the individual directly responsible for the crime. In the Columbine case, the individuals who are directly responsible are dead or in prison.
My main problem is that that the wrong parties are being punished. It’s not like the school district was making money off of a dangerous product. No, their money comes from taxpayers. It’s money they need to run and serve the community. So in a round about way, the community is also being punished. The same with the police. Who funds the police force? Taxpayers. The police and the school didn’t pull the trigger and it seems kinda of iffy that they could have picked up on danger.
Personally, I don’t think going to court isn’t going to heal any wounds. It’s not going to make the world better. It’s only going to cause further rifts in the community.
I was surprised to see the lawsuit pop up into the news and bring Columbine into the spot light again. Why? Had I files it away as over and done with? I’m not sure. But exactly what has happened since Columbine? Better gun control? Better restrictions on Teens? Appointing one principal per 1000 kids so principals would know their students? A weekly teachers summit to discuss and make plans for the most frightening students? Most threatening students? Have we even learned how to identify and report the most dangerous students?
What I really noticed was copy cat activity due to the extreme exposure.
I don’t know what the laws in OK have to say about civil suits but if I’d been one of those parents and I saw that nothing had changed I’d be tempted to make whatever kind of noise I could to keep the public focused on Columbine until better precautions and safety measures were in place.
What troubles me about the situation is that there were so many opportunities for someone to intervene with Dylan and Eric and perhaps steer them away from their destructive course or see them diagnosed as pathologically deranged and get them out of that environment.
Is this a failure we can pin on any one person or entity? No, I don’t think so. Obviously the parents missed something, but was their lack of supervision so different from most parents? If, in discussion with them before the incident, would you have been appalled and demanded action if they had said “we really don’t intrude on Eric’s privacy. He keeps his door locked, and we respect that.”
As for the school and school administration, their lack of response and lack of knowledge is, I think, an endemic problem in the way our schools are set up today. There is still a very hierarchical structure to schools where teachers and administrators only bother with the kids who make the school look good and the few kids who are outright annoyances. Unless we start to engender a “whole school” approach where all students matter, which dismantles the “status” valuation of children, and which creates a culture of inclusion, we’re going to see more and more of the alienation and isolation that created Eric and Dylan.
A “whole school” philosophy would mean that student, teacher, parent, administrator, staff, and community all play vital roles in the school, and that a web of communication between all the factors is continually supported. That way, a report of the threatening website wouldn’t stop at the sherrif’s office - who could do nothing because no law was broken - but would be relayed to school counselors, teachers, and also the parents. From there, everyone could work together to ascertain what exactly was going on, and intervene in a manner that would a) get instigators the help they needed to socialize in a more constructive manner and b) protect the other children from any possible violent outburst.
The violence in schools that we’re seeing isn’t a result of guns being handy. That’s just a catalyst that makes the incidents that much more deadly. The cause is a fundamental alienation and separation of the child (or other person) from the very resources necessary to get them into adulthood safely.
Oh my. I’m surprised that one of my good conservative friends hasn’t stepped in and slapped this down yet? THE PARENTS? WHAT ABOUT PERSONAL FUCKING RESPONSIBILITY! I guess we should blame Charlie Manson’s parents too. In fact let’s just make it easier, since they are murderers, we should chemiclly castrate them so they can never bring another murderer into the world. IF they have any other kids, the state should confiscate them.
I say we sue the real perpetrators. The other kids that tormented those poor souls. (Note so I don’t get flamed to badly. Yes my tounge is firmly in my cheeck) I mean they were the ones that forced those poor kids to extract revenge.
On a serious note, it does sicken me how the people can go and try to make the two out to be inhuman monsters, completely ignoring the fact that they were somewhat victims too. What really pissed me off is when parents went and ripped up the trees that were planted to memorialize all who died. They tore out two of them.
One of the more insightful and funnier columns writen on the whol incident was penned by Ted Rall. It’s not too long so I’ll include it.
[Sorry, had to edit down the article due to copyright concerns. Remember–post a link and/or minor excerpts, not the full text (or significant portions thereof) of copyrighted works. --Gaudere]
[Edited by Gaudere on 07-27-2000 at 10:09 AM]
Just another reason we will homeschool.