Community Corner

Fears from the Columbine Generation

The Columbine shooting happened when I was in fifth grade. The Dean Rusk rumored threats yesterday brought back the same fears I had when I entered middle school.

On Sunday night, I got several emails from concerned parents that a student at had threatened to bring a gun to school on Monday. There were no guns at school that day and everyone is safe.

But it brought back some old fears for me.

I was in fifth grade when the Columbine shooting happened. We learned what the word “goth” meant and became suspicious of anyone wearing a trench coat.

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The shooting happened in April and I was set to enter sixth grade—middle school in Alabama—in August. When I walked into Mountain Gap Middle, I was convinced that I was going to get shot. I remember the fear. I remember the jumpiness that we all had as we went into school. We never knew which kids were going to be the next Eric Harris or Dylan Kelbold.

Looking back, it was probably one of the safest times to be in school. We had to have clear or mesh backpacks. We had to tuck all of our shirts in (this was a public school without uniforms, too.)

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It makes me sad and a little sick that kids are still having these same worries and that they’re probably even more frequent than they were when I was in school. After it happened, we thought Columbine was a fluke, a one-time thing that could never happen in our own towns.

Then it did.

In 2010 a student at Discovery Middle School, a middle school in my hometown in Alabama, was shot in the head and killed while he was at school.

Then it happened again.

A few days after the Discovery Middle School shooting, a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville allegedly shot several other teachers during a meeting.

And we realized that this could happen anywhere.

What makes me even sicker is that we actually have a name for this. We call them "school shooters" like it's a type of personality that regularly occurs in American schools.

I remember what it was like to jump when you heard a loud noise when you were walking down the hall, but my heart also goes out to the parents. I can't imagine trying to be at work and unable to reach your child when you were worried about something like this. I'm a worrier. I always have been. I can't imagine the not knowing.

There has to be a way for kids to be able to study without ever worrying about this. There has to be.

What do you think needs to be done to end school shootings?


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