Legitimated Adolescent Violence: Lessons from Columbine

Abstract

On April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris perpetrated the largest rampage shooting in history of American education. The shootings initiated a debate about the causes. Sociological research indicates that the shootings were the consequence of predatory violence by student elites. Such violence is often visited upon outcast student groups who reject the values or worldview of the dominant elite. Viewed by the dominant majority as occupying a degraded moral position, their harassment and intimidation by elite students tends to be legitimated in the hegemonic ideology of the school. A detailed analysis of the Columbine shootings indicates that the massacre represented the culmination of conflict between elite and outcast students. Adolescent bullying and violence is often defined out of existence because it is perpetrated by student elites organized around sports exploits, especially football. Such violence is dangerous because it establishes a norm in which predatory behavior is acceptable, especially when visited upon those who are different, weak, and vulnerable. Many school rampage shootings before Columbine were vengeance for bullying and humiliation; nearly all post-Columbine school rampage shootings and thwarted plots were retaliations by outcast students for the predatory violence visited upon them by their higher-status peers.