weapon in a middle school. Luckily, no one was hit. “As far as I can tell, more guns in school have not amounted to greater safety,” Reed said. “Quite the opposite.”
Reed described a former student lovingly, and read a letter she had written before she died. Rachel Scott was the first person murdered at Columbine. Following her tribute, Reed broke a Columbine taboo: discussing victim and attacker in the same speech. Survivors still found it offensive for their memories to cross. But Reed had taught both Rachel and Dylan Klebold, she said. “I cared about both of them, because I care about all of my students. I know that many people have terrifying memories of Dylan, and I am genuinely sorry for what they went through. But the only Dylan I ever knew was a sweet, shy sophomore. I think it’s important to understand that when we talk about arming teachers you’re not just asking me to protect the Rachels of this world. You’re asking me to kill the Dylans. Maybe that sounds easy to you, and I’m not saying I wouldn’t have protected Rachel if I could have, but I really can’t imagine shooting Dylan either. Not the Dylan I knew, anyway. I suppose I would have if I could have, and if I had to, but do you understand what you’re asking of me? You’re asking me to kill one of my students. It’s too much to ask. And so instead, I’m asking my elected leaders to make sure that no teacher ever has to lose a student to a school shooting again. Not any student at anyone’s hands, each other’s or mine. I’m asking our elected leaders to pass meaningful legislation to keep guns out of the hands of children and teenagers, and I hope that everyone here will do the same.”
17
Setbacks
1
The most exciting phase of this movement was watching seven hundred semiautonomous groups take off. Self-propulsion, amazing to behold. The downside was lack of control. The second National School Walkout caused some blowback. It was timed to commemorate the nineteenth anniversary of the Columbine massacre, and Columbine refused to participate. The victims it sought to revere were furious. The national media never got wind of the controversy, but it happened at the scene of the original crime. Columbine is part of the Jefferson County School District, with 86,000 students in 155 schools. All boycotted the walkout.
The problem was the date. The failure to grasp the solemnity of the Combine anniversary was generational. The Parkland generation had no idea that the lockdown drills, now ubiquitous, barely predated them. They were sick of hiding as a strategy, and tragedy meant response, anniversaries demanded action.
The Columbine survivors had never been trained in lockdown drills. They had never heard the term. They didn’t rise up against the epidemic of school shooters, because they had no idea it had begun. The surviving students were in their late thirties now. The faculty were retired or approaching it. A great number of them supported the Parkland uprising. But their emotional response to April 20 was conditioned by a different experience, and that would never change.
“April twentieth is a sacred day,” Emmy Adams said. “It is the most horrible day of the year.” She was a senior at Golden High, and now the copresident of two of the groups organizing the Columbine rally for April 19. Adams got wind of the walkout in mid-February, and sensed it would horrify the Columbine community. So she checked in with prominent survivors, including Frank DeAngelis. Pick any other date, they said—the eve of the anniversary was fine. “When the people who were in that building nineteen years ago say ‘Please don’t do this,’ you should listen to them,” Adams said. Many of the survivors battle PTSD symptoms that day. The community has turned it into a day of service and kindness, and reserve politics to the other 364 days of the year.
DeAngelis and the current Columbine principal, Scott Christy, quietly lobbied for the Connecticut organizers to change the date. About a week before the event, the principals released a gently worded statement to the media. It did not name the organizers or denounce the walkout, but explained why they would not participate, and it extended an invitation to join them in service projects. All the schools in Jefferson County revamped or rescheduled their events.
Adams herself met the organizers at the march in DC and pleaded with them. She sent a letter from the Columbine principals. Columbine’s lead