The document discusses motivations behind rampage school shootings as determined by the media through an interdisciplinary lens. It begins by defining rampage school shootings and outlining an interdisciplinary research question on how media coverage affects public perception of motivations. It then justifies an interdisciplinary approach, identifies relevant disciplines including psychology, sociology, and journalism, and conducts a literature review. Finally, it analyzes the problem by evaluating insights from different disciplines and theories on school shooting motivations.

1. Adriana Onita
Interdisciplinarity 222
1 December 2009
Motivations Behind Rampage School Shootings as Determined by the Media:
An Interdisciplinary Study
Step One: Defining the Problem
School rampage shootings have horrified, disgusted and morbidly fascinated people
worldwide. The events of April 20th 1999 at Columbine High School caused the
community of Littleton, Colorado to be unfortunately forever associated with the names
of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. A decade after the Columbine rampage school
shootings, scholars and civilians still hash over the same word: why? Why did Harris and
Klebold plan their attack on Columbine High for over a year? Why didn‟t anybody try to
stop them? Why did the media blame everything and everybody, from parents to
psychiatric drugs?
Attempts to understand the motivations behind school rampage SR shootings have
gathered a plethora of scholars from different disciplines to try to piece together research,
and to eventually arrive at a consensus that can put a nation at rest. Most of our
information and explanations regarding school shootings comes from the analysis of
discourse from the media, namely newspapers, radio, television, and the Internet. This
can be very problematic because the media offers us fragmented versions of the reasons
for which kids kill, running the gamut from individual (psychological) problems,
dysfunctional family issues, community (school issues such as bullying, ostracizing) and
national/cultural issues (gun control and culture of violence).
School shootings, according to psychologist Jonathan Fast, are “terrorist attacks with
no ideological core [that] throw people‟s lives out of kilter and convince them that the
world is a menacing place” (Fast 1). People have indeed come to believe that schools are
no longer safe when in fact, government studies show that school remains among the
safest places a child can be. In a national poll of 409 teenagers conducted following the
Columbine High School shootings, a third believed that a similar incident would occur in
their own high school. In reality, the number of adolescent deaths attributable to SR
shootings is less than a hundredth of a single percent (Fast 1). Given this statistic, there
must be a medium that encourages, or even drives the fear behind public perception.

2. Based on this premise, I have developed the following interdisciplinary research
question:
How does the media in North America, specifically instant coverage news, affect the
public's opinion of the motivations behind rampage school shootings?
This question is complex and researchable, its clarity and lack of bias is
demonstrated through the lack of disciplinary jargon, and the sufficiently narrow focus on
the media in the context of the Columbine shootings makes it manageable within the
specified limits of the essay. Although important insights have been produced by many
disciplines, no single discipline has been able to explain comprehensively school
shootings or resolve the problem. Using Allan Repko‟s book “Interdisciplinary Research”
and Rick Szostak‟s guidance and expertise, I strived to do so myself.
Step 2: Justify using an Interdisciplinary Approach
Defining the Problem of School Shootings
In the analysis of school shootings, there is a tendency for observers to define the
problem narrowly and focus blindly on single-causal motivations. By spotlighting factors
such as the shooter‟s psychological or developmental problems, or interpersonal violence
like bullying, the media feeds fragmented viewpoints to satisfy the public‟s curious
nature and desire for quick explanations. This simplistic framing does not suffice. An
integrated definition of the motivations behind school shootings is needed, especially
within the media to avoid misinformation and confusion among viewers and readers.
Using the most recent and comprehensive study of school shootings by Princeton
sociologist Katherine Newman, we will define rampage school shootings by three main
characteristics:
1) they are institutional attacks that take place on a public stage before
an audience
2) they are committed by a member or a former member of the institution
3) they involve multiple victims, some chosen for their symbolic significance, or
at random
This final condition demonstrates that it is the organization, not the individuals, who are
important. By analyzing theories across different disciplines, such as sociologist
Katherine Newman‟s 5 step theory of rampage school shootings, psychologist Jonathan
Fast‟s Ceremonial Violence Theory and “Trigger theories” derived from sociology and

3. psychology but supported by journalism and the media, I will examine how the media
affects public perception of SR shootings and how accurate the theories are today.
Step Three: Identify Relevant Disciplines
Social problems cannot be studied from a disciplinary standpoint (Henry 1); a wide
interdisciplinary lens needs to be taken in order to account for all possible elements that
could have led Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to commit the Columbine
crime. Identifying relevant disciplines was easy: psychology, sociology, criminology,
cultural studies, journalism, political science, education and media studies all illuminated
a certain aspect of the problem of school shootings. Identifying the disciplines I was to
use, however, proved to be a problematic task because they were all somehow
interrelated.
Due to the time and space constraints of this project, I chose to highlight insights
from psychology and sociology, more specifically regarding how an individual's
predisposition towards criminal acts interacts with societal pressures and influences.
These two disciplines proved to be the most helpful in determining how the media
affect's people's perception of school shootings like Columbine because they already had
well-defined, particular perspectives on the problem. However, I realized that all my
disciplines already provided me with all the answers and since "the process of searching,
more than the process of finding, if exceedingly important in stimulating cognitive
development" (Hursh et al. 1983 qtd in Repko), I decided to include journalism also as
one of the three disciplines. Thus, Dave Cullen‟s book Columbine, became another
important tool for this project because of his extensive research as an investigative
journalist on the Columbine massacre.
Step Four: Conduct a Literature Search
Step Five: Develop Adequacy in Each Relevant Discipline
Step 4, the literature search, was when I realized that all of the steps overlapped,
demonstrating that it's a very fluid process. I began conducting my literature search as
early as Step 1, and I continued reading the literature during the later steps of the research
process. I also discovered that the whole interdisciplinary process was nonlinear: it was
more like a feedback loop than a ladder. Therefore, I went back to step one and revised
my initial question, which was: "What are the most important factors that motivate an
individual to use extreme violence against their school?”. I realized that I defined this
question too broadly. I read about many different rampage school shootings, but for the
purpose of this term paper, I limited myself to the Columbine school shootings. The
different parts of the problem included school shootings, the media, and public
perception. I developed adequacy in the disciplinary perspectives by indulging in

4. textbooks of introductory university courses regarding my subjects and reading broad
selection of the literature about school shootings. This prepared me for my significant
task.
Methods: Qualitative or Quantitative?
Before analyzing the problem and evaluating each discipline‟s insight into it, I must
first establish the main method used by scholars to analyze rampage school shootings:
qualitative analysis. When looking at a phenomenon such as a rampage school shooting,
it is almost impossible to use quantitative measures. SR shootings are sufficiently rare
that statistical analysis, for example, is meaningless.
Statistical formulas are likely never to be useful for predicting infrequent instances of targeted
violence such as school or workplace homicides, because the base rate is so low that, mathematically, high rates of
accuracy are nearly impossible.
-Fast Ceremonial Violence pg. 14
Therefore, qualitative methods are often used when little is known about a
phenomenon. Data is gathered from sources such as reading the SR shooters‟ journals,
interviews with victims, and analysis of media discourse. Much of this analysis is based
on the interpretation of meaning behind symbols. Also, I have to note that "surveys deal
with numerous people, interviews with fewer, and observation...with yet fewer" (237).
The inherent problem behind each of these methods is bias. Also, because of the
unpredictable nature of school shootings, it is difficult to profile a potential school
shooter without dipping into stereotypicality. The epistemology of scholars plays a big
role in what is being studied. One of the problems with disciplinary perspectives is that
disciplinarians choose methods that support their own theory. The Luvox case study
demonstrates that scholars may use qualitative analysis to support their own idea, even if
their idea is narrow and biased. The interdisciplinarian has the tools, and therefore
responsibility, to debunk myths that the disciplinarian created[1].
Step 6: Analyzing the Problem and Evaluating Each Insight into It
Popular explanations for rampage school shootings include: media violence, bullying,
gun culture, family problems, mental illness, peer relations, demographic change, culture
of violence, copycatting, and psychiatric drug use. Princeton sociologist, Katherine
Newman, and her graduate research assistants put forward the question: what
combination of these factors is necessary to produce these violent rampages? Based on
their research, they proposed five “necessary but not sufficient conditions” for rampage
school shootings. They claim that when taking away any of these elements, rampage
school shootings will not happen[2]. Let‟s see how her theory fares in analyzing Eric
Harris and Dylan Klebold:

5. Factors that a rampage Eric Harris Dylan Klebold
school shooter must meet
Columbine Columbine
1) Perceives himself as - in his journal, Eric says: - in the videos the two
extremely marginal in the "I hate you people for boys made before the
social worlds that matter leaving me out of so attack, Dylan complained
to him many fun things." about the “stuck-up” kids
demonstrating his who hated him, going all
marginality the way back to feeling
mistreated since daycare
2) Must suffer from - psychopathic: lacks -psychotic, schizotypal
psychosocial problems empathy, morality personality traits
that magnify the impact
of marginality -sadistic, narcissistic, -avoidant personality
antisocial personality disorder, social anxiety,
traits dependency issues
-anger management
problems
3) “Cultural scripts” or - Natural Born Killers was their cultural script
prescriptions for
behaviour must be - often referred to their attack in their journals as
available to lead the way “going NBK” as “when we go NBK…”
toward an armed attack.
4) Failure of surveillance - Jefferson County Police failed to investigate when
systems that are intended Eric was reported to the police for having death threats
to identify troubled teens on his website about Brooks Brown, a student from
before their problems Columbine High
become extreme
5) Gun availability: a - since they could not buy weapons themselves, Robyn
youth can attain Anderson, a friend of Dylan‟s who was 18 at the time,
unsupervised access to a bought their guns for them
weapon

6. It seems as if Newman‟s theory is comprehensive and covers a variety of disciplines,
including psychological causes, societal and “cultural” causes, and educational school
surveillance systems. However, it is still not enough o explain the acts behind
Columbine. Throughout this paper I will analyze Newman‟s 5 step theory while
considering the conflicts with other scholars‟ research.
The Theory of Ceremonial Violence
While studying school rampage shootings, the two conclusions that Jonathan Fast
repeatedly went back to included: even if the boys were mentally ill or the product of
abusive neglectful parents, so were many tens of thousands of other teenagers, none of
whom had found it necessary to commit such a theatrical, tragic, and pointless crime
(Fast 5). Secondly, the SR shooters must have been motivated by a variety of different
factors; any causal explanation had to be multi-dimensional. This idea is not new in itself:
Hans Eysenck suggested a multi-dimensional theory of criminal behaviour over 40 years
ago. However, this theory is often ignored by people who prefer to single out factors,
such as playing excessively violent video games, or listening to a certain type of music,
to blame for school rampage shootings. In the Columbine massacre alone, fingers were
pointed at movies such as Natural Born Killers, the music of Marilyn Manson, the Gothic
culture, the Trench Coat Mafia, many of which were falsely accused.
In order to analyze what preconditions might have caused Eric and Dylan to commit
mass murder, we must consider what makes the shooters different from normal teenagers.
As described by Fast, school rampage shootings are “acts of terrorism without an
ideological core”: This “hazy, poorly-wrought chain of reasoning that justifies the killing
of an innocent by those who have convinced themselves that they are somehow superior”
(Fast 3).
Fast created his own theory: ceremonial violence. The candidate, as he refers to the
potential SR shooter is an "unhappy child, facing circumstances like childhood abuse,
neglect, mental illness, parental separation, or frequent relocations”. A poor fit between a
child and his family, or between a child and his community, will exacerbate the situation.
The candidate's problem reaches a boiling point in adolescence, Fast argues, where
teenagers are faced with questions such as: "What kind of person will I be? By which
ideals will I navigate the seas of adulthood?...In which social milieu will I find comfort
and friendship?", questions that help them develop their adult identity. One of the most
important dimensions of identity formation is that of integration in the social milieu.
Ironically, Newman is a sociologist but left identity formation out of her theory, one of
the central aspects of adolescence. And as R. F. Baumeister has pointed out, the
adolescent who has failed to form an identity often becomes self-destructive and suicidal
(qtd in Fast 17). We need to expand Newman's theory to include the vulnerability of a
teenager as they form their identity in a social milieu. Another part of the ceremonial
theory will be discussed later in concordance with Dylan Klebold's personality disorders.

7. Consequences of Instant Media Coverage: The Blame Game
The oversaturated coverage of Columbine led the American public to form confused
conclusions about the causes of the attacks, many of which were not supported by
research. The media frenzy began almost immediately: during the actual shooting spree
itself), when the local Denver news stations picked up reports on the police wires that
something “major” was happening at Columbine High School. Afterwards, national
networks such as MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News Channel got local feeds to broadcast the
story live (Fryman 1392). NBC sensationalized the already dramatic “Columbine” tale by
getting interviews with student witnesses and asking for instantaneous descriptions of the
carnage. “From the very beginning, the media spectacle of Columbine revolved around
the quick passage of the desperate, anxious search for explanations into a serious of
simplified answers, answers that soon became objectified myths about the motivations
behind the shootings” (Fryman. 1393). This resulted in a complete disregard for the
social and historical complexity of what was taking place.
Dave Cullen, an investigative journalist and the author of the book Columbine, has
been reporting on the tragedy since the day that it happened, spending years gathering
research and debunking the mythology surrounding Columbine. When asked in an
interview with Time Magazine about why he thought that the media was so quick to jump
on pat narratives, he responded:
The problem with Columbine was we felt the need to explain it right away. It was so horrifying, and the public
wanted to know why it happened. We in the media wanted to know why too, and we thought we had to answer
them. What we should have said was, "We don't have any good information, and it would be irresponsible of us to
say why." When you speculate in a case like this, it very quickly morphs into "fact." We started with the assumption
that school shooters tend to be loners, outcasts and bullied. That turned out to be a myth: some are bullied, but not
even 50%. The majority are not any of those things.
-Dave Cullen, interview with Alex Altman, Explaining Columbine, April 20, 2009 Time
Indeed, Carolyn Kitch and Janice Hume, both professors of Journalism and the
authors of Journalism in a Culture of Grief examine the cultural meanings of death in
American journalism, such as “how does the press tell “potent and provocative…death
stories” (Kitsch 5). They refer to Jonathan Fast, the psychology scholar that pointed to
“sudden deaths” as a set of cultural responses, including “heightened feelings of guilt and
the need to assign blame for a crisis (Fast qtd. in Kitch), with most of the literature on
“sudden deaths” focusing on human-caused tragedies, like the 1999 murders at
Columbine High School.
Sociologically influenced strain and subcultural theory explains crime as the result
of cultural and structural strains in society (Henry). In the following two cases, analyzing

8. bullying and the psychiatric drug Luvox, as a motivation for Columbine, I will provide
evidence and criticism of this theory.
The Blame Game: Bullying and Trench Coat Mafia
How random were the murders at Columbine?
After Columbine, the pecking order of high schools was brought under scrutiny.
Bullying and alienation, leading to rage and revenge, provided easy motives for the
public, thirsty for explanations (Fast 239). Zero tolerance policies were instated in
schools: schools seemed like airports, like prisons. On April 20, 1999, many myths were
created by the media, and supported by students, parents, even scholars. Columbine High
was portrayed on television as a toxic and horrible place “terrorized by a band of reckless
jock lords and ruled by an aristocracy of snotty rich white kids…” (Cullen 254). The
“Trench Coat Mafia” myth was one that emerged on the first day of Columbine. News
stories circulated such as:
“Students are beginning to describe how a long-simmering rivalry between the sullen members of their clique [the
TCM] and the school‟s athletes escalated and ultimately exploded in this week‟s deadly violence”
While police have not given a motive, several students said Harris and Klebold were members of a group calling itself the
"Trenchcoat Mafia," outcasts who bragged about guns and bombs and hated blacks and Hispanics, as well as student athletes.
April 21, 1999
Web posted at: 10:50 a.m. EDT (1450 GMT)
Television journalists were careful. They used attributions and disclaimers like
“believed to be” and “described as”. They were careful about how they phrased the
rumours, but not about how often they uttered them. Consequently, the repetition on the
news had a feedback effect that made the students at Columbine High believe that Harris
and Klebold were part of the TCM: “Kids knew the TCM was involved because
witnesses and news anchors had said so on TV. From 1:00PM to 8:00PM, the number of
[Columbine] students citing the group went from almost none to nearly all. They weren‟t
making it up, they were repeating it back” (Cullen 150). Heisenberg‟s uncertainty
principle: by observing an entity, you alter it. Heisenberg was a quantum physicist
observing electron behaviour, but social scientists began applying his principle to
humans.

9. Despite the press‟ obsession with bullying and misfits, Dave Cullen asserts that‟s not
how the boys presented themselves. Dylan laughed about picking on the new freshmen
and “fags”. Neither one complained about bullies picking on them – they boasted about
doing it themselves. Eric had a grand vision, alluding to a wider slaughter: killing
everything, destroying the human race. There was no singling out people who bullied him
to kill in the attack, just as there was no liaison supporting the subculture theory. Reading
his journal provides proof of that.
Nevertheless, scholars still argue about whether or not bullying was a cause or not in
the Columbine shootings, or rampage shootings in general: “In the case of rampage
school shootings, evidence supports the claim that forms of violent victimization such as
bullying and exclusion, for considerable time produced an inner sense of hopelessness
and vulnerability.” (Newman et al., 2004). Dave Cullen however, says that there‟s no
evidence that bullying led to murder, but considerable evidence that it was a problem at
Columbine High (Cullen 158). This can be surely contradicted by an excerpt from Eric
Harris' journal: “Whatever I do people make fun of me, and sometimes directly to my
face. I'll get revenge soon enough”, (Harris 11/22/98) This clearly represents signs of
bullying.
Tom and Sue, Dylan Klebold‟s parents, were among the people convinced that jocks
and bullying had been behind it. But jocks and bullies are everywhere and few kids are
trying to blow up their high school. An FBI reports states that:
Bullying may have played a role:…71% of attackers had experienced persecution, bullying, threats, or injury.
Initially that sounds dramatic, but the study did not address how many nonattackers suffer that sort of experience; it‟s pretty
commonplace for a high school kid. Several of the shooters experienced severe or long-term bullying, though, and in some cases,
it seemed to be a factor in the decision to attack.
- qtd in Cullen, 384n[3]
How do we resolve such a conflict?
It appears that the conflict in these insights could have arisen from a problem with the
definition of bullying. I argue that the question should not be: did bullying play a role in
the Columbine High Shootings, but rather to what extent did bullying play a role in the
shootings? By providing a continuum of bullying, to see then, how the boys match up to

10. normal teens that also experience bullying but do not exert extreme violence on their
schools.
Furthermore, even if Dylan was bullied, high school was almost over. The nightmare
would have ended for him; he went to visit his future college with his family
(Cullen). There are still pieces missing: what psychosocial factor, or person, could have
changed his fate?
Psychological Illnesses: Personality Disorders
“I chose to kill…so get over it! Its MY fault! not my parents, not my brothers, not my friends,
not my favorite bands, not computer games, not the media.”
- Eric Harris 7/29/98
We cannot assess Eric and Dylan‟s motives through a “normal” lens, because Eric
and Dylan were not normal kids. We must consider their personality disorders to further
evaluate their motivations, as explained in full detail by Peter Langman in his book Why
Kids Kill. Eric killed for two reasons: to demonstrate his superiority and to enjoy it.
Although strong evidence exists that may have been racist, and had been bullied, he did
not discriminate when he murdered his classmates at Columbine High, as seen through
his journals. Eric was a born psychopath; he possessed narcissistic, sadistic and antisocial
personality traits. But Eric cannot be examined without examining his influence on
Dylan.
It is most interesting to note that Dylan Klebold did not start out as a rageful,
bloodthirsty villain. He was a shy kid who gushed about love in his journal before his
attack, but had social difficulties regarding friendship and female companionship
(Langman 52). Dylan's journal, released in 2006 to the public, displayed preoccupations
with loneliness, depression, finding love, as opposed to Eric's journal, which is full of
narcissism, condescension and rage. Eric's journal was filled with drawings of weapons,
swastikas and soldiers; Dylan's was filled with hearts. There is no part of Newman's 5
step SR shooting theory that would explain this. We need to look back at Fast's
ceremonial violence theory to explain the impact Eric had on Dylan, and tie it back to the
theory on bullying.
"The candidate might commit suicide at this point [of culmination] were it not for two
factors: first, he is a narcissist...a person who craves attention and lacks empathy, two
factors which unfortunately operate synergistically in turning a suicide, a private event,
into a mass murder, a public event," Fast states. This insight must be added to the 5 step
theory of rampage school shootings. Through combining the psychological

11. predispositions and bullying we have the first two steps of Newman‟s theory, but Fast
implies that "finding a best friend or a soulmate...a person through whom he can
experience homicide vicariously" or a "violence coach" can be the determining factor in
Dylan's decision jump from suicide to homicide. In other words, if Eric had not found
Dylan, he may not have committed a school rampage shooting. Somehow in the bullying
spectrum, there must be another external factor, a "violence coach" that "convinces the
candidate to channel his rage into an SR shooting, agrees to participate, and [even makes]
a suicide pact with the candidate so that they both die at the end of the shooting." (Fast)
Further research must be done to determine whether Dylan's social struggles were a result
of his lack of confidence and social skills, not rejection or harrassment, as the bullying
theory holds.
How much can we really know?
How much can be really known about what happened the morning of April 20th,
1999 is of great dispute also, and varies with the different epistemologies of the scholars
who study Columbine. A postmodernist skeptic can say: even though we may have 25
000 pages of police evidence, countless hours of video and audiotape, hundreds of
interviews and the extensive work of many journalists, we may still never know what
went through Dylan and Eric's minds on that dreadful day. Indeed, the killers wrote and
taped themselves extensively; any researcher of Columbine must engage in textual
analysis. The gaps that the killers left in their thinking, researchers and journalists, like
Dave Cullen have attempted to fill in with the help of experts in criminal psychology who
have also spent years on the case. I have not found much postmodernist uncertainty
among scholars (most think that all the evidence is trustworthy and conclusions can be
reached from it), rather media reports that somehow imply that "we will never know the
real answer". This epistemological belief allowed the media to get away with a lot of
their false theories, because they always had the "it may be true" ideology to support
them. Benjamin Frymer alludes to cultural theorist Guy Debord when he
states: “Following the shootings, media accounts did not simply report what had
happened or search for answers for a fearful population; they generated a full-blown
postmodern spectacle of alien youth” (Frymer 1389). But Dave Cullen strongly believed
that he finally "set the story right" in his author's note on sources, saying that "in the great
media blunders during the initial coverage of the [Columbine] story, where nearly
everyone got the central factors wrong, [he] was among the guilty parties [also]".
Certainly, most scholarly work nowadays about the rampage school shootings at
Columbine has been positivist influenced and advancing our knowledge of the
phenomenon.
The Blame Game: Psychiatric Drugs

12. Eric and Luvox
“There is no doubt in my mind that Luvox caused Eric Harris to
commit [the Columbine shooting spree].”
– Ann Blake Tracy PhD Biological psychology
“Murder has occurred throughout human history without any
psychiatric medications to push people over the edge.”
– Peter Langman PhD psychology
Eric Harris was taking an antidepressant called Luvox when he attacked Columbine
High School. Some people have argued that this medication, associated with psychotic
and manic side-effects, pushed him over the edge, leading him to commit mass murder
(O‟Meara). Mark Taylor, a Columbine High School student who was shot between seven
and thirteen times by Harris, filed suit against Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc., the
manufacturer of Luvox.[4] Taylor believed Harris would have not gone on his rampage
had he not been under the influence of the drug: "I don't have ill feelings against him
since I don't think you can hold him accountable, because he did not know what he was
doing" (qtd. in Hunnicott). Ann Blake Tracy, a consultant in Taylor‟s lawsuit and the
director of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness, has a background in
biological psychology and is a specialist in what she believes are the adverse reactions to
SSRI[5] medications. She singles out Luvox to be the cause for Eric Harris‟ actions: “All
you have to do is read the Luvox package insert to see that Eric‟s actions were due to an
adverse reaction to this drug…There is no doubt in my mind that Luvox caused
[Columbine school shooter] Eric Harris to commit these acts” (Hunnicott). Peter Breggin,
the author of Talking Back to Prozac, also suggested that the shooting was a result of an
SSRI inspired mania.
Conflicting this notion is psychologist Peter Langman, whom in his book, Why kids
kill: inside the mind of the school shooter, states that there is no reason to believe that
Eric Harris could not have committed murder without the side effects of his medication:
“Eric was not a typical teenager who became a grandiose, raging and homicidal monster
after taking Luvox…he was grandiose and homicidal without it” (Langman). Harris‟ rage
and destructive nature were evident in his journal and website months prior to the
massacre, before he even started taking Luvox. Indeed, the more we know about Eric's
history and personality, the more we realize that he did not need the medication side

13. effects to commit mass murder. Jonathan Fast agrees with this argument and says that
Eric‟s plan to assault his school predates his use of the medication (Fast 192). In other
words, Luvox did not trigger his rampage.
Analysis of the Method dealing with Luvox
Although qualitative analysis is a very useful method that provides us with in-depth
information about issues like school shootings, the testimony of Mark Taylor shows us a
fundamental weakness of this method: people can misinform you, as even first-person
accounts can be false. Taylor states: “I did not personally know Eric, but I know him as
one of the "Trench Coat Mafia" (Hunnicutt). It is widely known now that the Trench Coat
Mafia was not associated with neither Eric Harris, nor his counterpart Dylan Klebold, but
the fact that Eric and Dylan wore trench coats on the day of the massacre would be a
choice of tremendous confusion.
As witnessed in the case with Luvox, people tried to create a “trigger theory”, by
pinning down what they thought the factor was that sent Harris over the edge.
Consequently, the public gave to the media possibly made-up information to support their
own theories about Columbine. Even unnamed friends of Eric said that “they believe that
he may have tried to stop taking the drug, perhaps because of his rejection by the
Marines, five days before [the Columbine Massacre]”(Cullen 209). This statement puts
forward a plausible, convenient argument for the audience to digest: the Marines rejected
Eric, he quit the Luvox to fuel his rage, he grabbed the gun and started killing. Because
Eric‟s body hadn‟t initially been screened for Luvox, this was easy to put forward as an
explanation. Later it will be proved that Eric remained on a full dose, right up to his death
and also that Eric was ineligible to join the Marines, but he had not yet known. There had
been no trigger (Cullen 234).
Even if Ann Blake Tracy‟s assertion may have a grain of truth (Luvox may have
further exacerbated Eric‟s already aggressive behaviour), it is overly simplistic
to choose a drug‟s side effects to explain such grandiose actions. It also suggests that
Blake, as the director of International Coalition for Drug Awareness, is biased by her own
goals of anti-SSRI advocating. Disciplines such as psychology tend to pay more heed to
individuals rather than groups, and this can be evident in their methods. Her bias is
furthermore evident in her statement to the press: “Suing Solvay for the injuries Mark
Taylor suffered is one of the biggest SSRI suits we‟ll ever see. It‟s a pivotal case because
what happened at Columbine was so big. It‟s crazy when you think about it...”
(Hunnicott). In addition, many news stories had begun to surface about adolescents who
had committed suicide while taking an SSRI-type medication, despite the fact that most
psychiatrists consider them among the safer and more effective medications for
depression (Langman).

14. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that while psychiatric drugs have been blamed for
rampage school shootings, little attention have been paid to street drugs, even though
they were used more by school shooters than medications [6](Langman, 7). There must
be other factors to take into consideration; other motivations surrounding school rampage
shootings.
Integration:
Create or Find Common Ground to Integrate Insights
Produce an interdisciplinary understanding of the problem and test it
“The search for common ground is the fundamental element of all [interdisciplinary]
investigation” (Kockelmans 1979 qtd in Repko).
The main goal of interdisciplinary analysis is to yield a more comprehensive
understanding of a particular problem, such as school shootings, that a single-discipline
could not have come up with on its own. The integration of different insights from
different disciplines is crucial to this research process. A nonintegrative way would be to
say that answers are either right or wrong, for example: Luvox either caused, or played
no role in Harris‟ rampage shooting at Columbine; bullying was either a factor, or had no
influence in Harris‟ and Klebold‟s murderous plan. As I‟ve argued, a more plausible way
of analysis would be that: Luvox did not cause, but exacerbated Harris‟ already violent
nature, leading him to carry out his plans at Columbine; bullying did not create, but had a
role in the perpetrators‟ lives, much like it plays a role in almost all teenagers‟ lives,
therefore pre-existing personality disorders must be in place in order for the SR shooter to
exaggerate bullying in his mind.
Arguing a narrow point of view is also a nonintegrative way of handling a
controversial topic such as school shootings. When confronting conflicting perspectives,
the interdisciplinarian‟s job is not to deem one view correct and reject the other, but
rather to find the common ground, or the pieces of truth in both views. In other words,
it‟s not about who can win the argument, but who can bring together the best integrated
ideas to solve the problem at hand. Allan Repko stresses this point: “the interdisciplinary
enterprise is not like prosecuting a case, defending a client, or just adding another
scholarly opinion to the many opinions already offered on the problem” (277). I would
add to that: the interdisciplinary enterprise is not like reporters in the media, who
highlight the newest development at hand and provide faulty evidence to get the highest
ratings.

15. I chose to analyze the media particularly because reporters are often guilty of the
fragmentation and compartmentalization of insights, much like disciplinarians are guilty
of insisting that their own theory is right, and using that a method that will support their
theory. Following Columbine, there was a lot of information out there, some of which
was true, some of which was false, most of which was both true and false. It took a few
hours for TV reporters to start flocking to Littleton, Colorado and come up with
explanations for what was happening at Columbine High School. It took ten years for
Dave Cullen, leading expert on Columbine, to research and come up with the accepted
facts and debunk the myths surrounding the school shootings, many of which the media
relentlessly put forward.
The trigger theories the media introduced were the flavour of the hour, their method
was qualitative and often erroneous, and their assumption was that the public will tune in
to see the instant coverage news for answers. And the media was right. On the day of
Columbine, leading TV networks such as CNN had more than 2 million viewers, nearly 3
times the amount they usually had on the previous Tuesday (Chicago Tribune, April 25,
1999). People wanted answers. They “snapped” was not an answer: “Non violent people
do not „snap‟ or decide on the spur of the moment to meet a problem by using violence,”
an FBI report said. The planning for Columbine was a year in advance. Did people care
they were getting the right answers? Reporters wanted to provide people with relief and
knowledge, but often they were wrong. The worst part is that by the time the truth came
out, the media had already moved on, and people‟s opinions regarding Columbine had
already calcified.
I have tried to counteract this by expanding Newman's 5 aspect theory of rampage
school shootings to include certain aspects of Fast's ceremonial violence theory, such as
identity crisis, we are able to cover ground that the media failed to mention in their hasty
reports. By debunking myths, like the trigger theory, as witnessed in the case study of
Eric and the Luvox suit, we are able to remain critical in discourse and advance our
cognitive understanding of school violence. Finally, through redefining and organizing
certain theories, such as bullying, we are able to see more clearly exactly how much what
part each factor played in the Columbine school shootings. There is still a long way to go
in mapping out other factors in relation to one another, but I do hope my research has
provided some enlightenment regarding the Columbine school shootings.
Conclusion
It is no news that we obtain much of our information about the world through the
news and other forms of media; however, it is crucial to keep in mind that the media is
anything but objective. As Dave Cullen states, “it is an axiom of journalism that disaster
stories begin in confusion and grow clearer over time. Facts rush in, the fog lifts, an
accurate picture solidifies. The public accepts this. But the final portrait is often furthest
from the truth (Cullen 150). It is the public‟s responsibility to seek out the most up-to-

16. date research to engage in meaningful discourse. It is also the public‟s job to hold
reporters accountable for what they say and who they blame for tragedies.
The media‟s sensationalism behind rampage school shootings has influenced the public
to perceive that such incidents are on the rise. Future research on university shootings
such as at Virginia Tech might provide new explanation on how the media coverage at
Columbine aided in the future construction of the deadly fantasies of school shooters.
Taking it Further: Reflection of my Challenges and Difficulties
Since the interdisciplinary research process requires constant decision making and
step taking, I always revisited my earlier work. There was a very important lesson for me
in the fact that I could not move from point "A" to point "B" via point "C" and on to a
conclusion. It was more like this: I got to point "B", realized I must go back to point "A"
but that was hard because point "C" overlaps with point B and I already dipped into
point "D" to make my conclusion. Consequently, I read a lot of material that I did not use
in my paper, even though I would have liked to. Nevertheless, I included all the
references in my bibliography because they probably influenced my thought and decision
process.
Reflecting on my own biases:
Throughout the research process, I was self-conscious and self-aware of my
personal biases and I kept them in check so that they would not influence my evaluation
of insights, and thus my product of integration. These biases included: (a) school
shootings are bad and we must look at ways to prevent them (b) a negative bias of the
way reporters report school shootings and (c) there is a link between the way school
shootings are brought to the public‟s attention and future school shootings. I also started
thinking that finding common ground is possible. This is a good bias to have, as even
Repko states that it is “unlikely” that a student does not find a point of commonality that
will allow integration of at least some insights (Repko 276). Nevertheless, at times it took
an endless amount of imagination and creativity to see what two different disciplinary
perspectives had in common. Also, I had read that “too much integration can lead to
theoretical mush”, so I had to be careful with that too.

17. What I would have done had I more time:
Cultural studies would have provided a very unique perspective of how the public
reacted and subsequently created artistic and literary representations of school shootings
like songs and books that reflected their perception of the events (probably also
influenced by the media). I would have enjoyed taking a look at music and contemporary
books that have school shootings at their core, for example the song Little Weapon by
Lupe Fiasco, or the novel 19 Minutes by Jodi Picoult. The extent to which violent video
games impact school shootings would also be an interesting topic to develop.
Cognitive Advancement:
Allan Repko discusses how school learning is like rote learning, a process that occurs
when the learner memorizes new information without relating it to prior knowledge,
which involves no effort to integrate new knowledge with existing concepts, experience,
or objects (Novak qtd in Repko 140). This is what the interdisciplinary research process
attempts to defy. Haynes stated that the interdisciplinary research process "is a tall order
for even the best of learners"(qtd in Replo 140). I am not claiming that I am the best of
learners, but I found this project to be extremely difficult. Prior to this course, I was
indoctrinated in the disciplinary perspective, a school system focused on specificity,
duality, analysis, and reductionism. By taking courses ranging across a wide array of
disciplines, I developed adequacy in understanding different disciplinary perspectives,
but was never taught how to integrate knowledge in a holistic way while developing
disciplinary depth and breadth. So even though the process was hard, it was extremely
rewarding and I feel that it resulted in cognitive advancement. I will use the tools gained
in this course for the rest of my scholarly career.
[1] in this case it was the media that disciplined us into believing their fragmented truth
[2] information for this table was gathered and synthesized from Why Kids Kill by Peter Langman, and not from The
Social Roots of School Shootings
[3] The loner myth was the single biggest misconception, as some of the attackers were loners, but two thirds were
not.
[4] The family of Dave Sanders, Mark Taylor and three other Columbine families sued Solvay. All but Mark
withdrew their claims. Solvay settled with $10 000 dollars donated to the American Cancer Society.
[5] Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors: a class of medications that includes Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil.
[6] Two out of the ten shooters analyzed in Langman's book were on medication, whereas eight out of the ten used
alcohol, marijuana and possibly other drugs