[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8923-8924]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         THE LITTLETON TRAGEDY

 Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, all Americans are struggling with 
the meaning of the brutal murders in Littleton, CO, and the question of 
what we should do about school violence generally. As we tackle these 
issues, we need to take advantage of the best thinking and writing 
about them.
  The Columbus Dispatch had a very good editorial on April 22, which 
points out in a very clear way what the specific challenges are--and 
most especially the need for adults to provide understanding and 
discipline to young people. The best way to stop violence is to promote 
the alternative--an effective culture of life and respect.
  I ask that this editorial be printed in the Record.
  The editorial follows:

              [From the Columbus Dispatch, Apr. 22, 1999]

         School Killings Adults Must See Themselves as Solution

       A gunman looked under a desk in the library and said 
     ``Peek-a-boo,'' then fired.--. . . Anyone who cried or moaned 
     was shot again. One girl begged for her life, but a gunshot 
     ended her cries. . . . The shooter turned his attention to a 
     black student, saying, ``I hate niggers.''--AP report out of 
     Littleton, Colo.
       Black trench coats. Hitler's birthday. Gothic Web sites. 
     Guns and homemade bombs. Hatred.
       Can any sense be made of the pieces emerging from the 
     bloody halls of Columbine High School? Can the overwhelming 
     why be answered?
       The issues seem so broad and numerous that a bewildered 
     nation expresses its inability to comprehend it, one of the 
     deadliest school massacres in U.S. history.
       Counselors propound; experts proclaim. The news media 
     shifts focus from gun control to dress codes, violent movies 
     to police in schools, materialism to racism.
       Before a coherent thought forms, the lens shifts again.
       Police who searched Harris' home said they found bomb-
     making material. Students said the group was fascinated with 
     World War II and the Nazis and noted that Tuesday was Adolf 
     Hitler's birthday.
       But the real question is not why. Deep down, though we may 
     not articulate it very well, we really do know why.
       We may not know the exact circumstances that led juniors 
     Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to gun down their classmates, 
     but we do know that the past three years have produced a 
     series of school killings: Two dead in Pearl, Miss., three in 
     West Paducah, Ky., five in Jonesboro, Ark., two in 
     Springfield, Ore. And from this, we know that it will happen 
     again. We know why.
       We have produced a generation of children given too much 
     freedom, too little direction; too much money, too little 
     love.
       The segment of society least capable of handling 
     empowerment has been empowered within the rule of law but 
     beyond common sense.
       A litigious population demands that schools maintain 
     discipline and instill values but sues teachers and 
     administrators who dare tread upon a student's rights, be it 
     searching a locker or insisting on proper attire.
       Teenagers demand and are granted their own ``space,'' 
     Bedrooms become inviolable domains where the wild frontier of 
     the Net can be browsed at will and every type of perversion 
     checked out. If the child's character is far enough cracked, 
     bombs can be made or guns can be stashed.
       The so-called Trench Coat Mafia had boasted of its gun 
     collection. Its members wore black everyday. They even wore 
     black trench coats in class. When did parents and school 
     officials descend to such levels of indifference? And 
     ``nobody thought'' these kids were capable of killing in cold 
     blood.
       ``They were laughing after they shot. It was like they were 
     having the time of their life.''
       The question is not why but, ``What do we do?''
       Like recovering alcoholics, we first have to admit that 
     we--all of us--have a problem. Not just our neighbors, not 
     just Paducah and now Littleton, not just big cities or rural 
     towns.
       The good folks who have to live in crime-ridden 
     neighborhoods used to rally around the cry, ``Take back our 
     streets!'' Now, it's time to take back our children. Even the 
     most dysfunctional families have aunts, uncles and cousins 
     who can help.
       Churches, mosques, synagogues, libraries and numerous 
     civic- and social-service networks offer havens that too few 
     people see as important enough to spend their time and money 
     on. Much easier to give the kids some money and drop them and 
     their cell phones off at the mall.
       ``Finally I started figuring out these guys shot to kill 
     for no reason. . . .  When he looked at me, the guy's eyes 
     were just dead.''
       We are killing our children by insisting that they don't 
     have to be children if they don't want to. We talk values to 
     them but fail, on the whole, to live those values. We lead by 
     example, often unaware that our example is pathetically 
     shallow and certainly poor competition for the pervasive 
     voice of the youth culture where simply buying khakis holds 
     the promise of sex.
       Littleton is an affluent suburb. This is an affluent 
     nation. We have time and money to

[[Page 8924]]

     spend on our children. Individually, we must ask how our 
     money and time is being spent. Collectively, we must decide 
     to spend it more wisely and to share it with the larger 
     neighborhood, the grand nation of the United States of 
     America and its most valuable asset, the youngsters who will 
     someday be the neighborhood.
       Most of all, we must teach our children that freedom and 
     independence are earned and that the rites of passage amount 
     to more than clipping on a pager.
       Neglect and indifference are forms of child abuse. Before 
     we are shocked again by the next school shooting, we should 
     devote more than a moment of thought to how much we overlook 
     deviance and alienation; how so many of us are so little 
     involved in providing direction.
       Parents and all adults must provide understanding and 
     compassion, discipline and clarity in a world of neglect, 
     obfuscation and self-absorption.

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