Afterword: The Columbine Effect on Culture, Policy, and Me

Abstract

This afterword considers the cultural effect of the 1999 Columbine High School shootings. I bring together the aspects of a traditional academic review with my personal reflections as a scholar who spent the past two decades researching its cultural and policy ramifications. Columbine is a noted milestone in the American cultural lexicon, and one that has become an important reference point for discussions of school violence and other social problems concerning youth. Columbine often serves as an inaccurate exemplar of the broader problem of youth violence, and this so-called “Columbine Effect” means that extreme cases exert a disproportionately strong influence on public discourse about the problem. Over the past 20 years, the net effect has been the acceleration of punitive anti-violence school policies that include policing, surveillance, and zero-tolerance policies. I consider my experience as a researcher in this area and conclude with modest suggestions for guiding policy development to mitigate the problem of violence in schools.