From the BBC:
“Columbine shooting: District
suggests tearing down school”
Local authorities have proposed
destroying Columbine High School in Colorado, the site of a deadly school
shooting 20 years ago. Two teenagers murdered 12 students and a teacher at
Columbine in April 1999. Now, Jefferson County School District has proposed
tearing down and rebuilding the school to end the "morbid
fascination" with the massacre. Superintendent Jason Glass wrote to
parents, saying people use Columbine as "a macabre source of
inspiration". Hundreds of people try to enter the school every year, Mr
Glass wrote, and these numbers have grown to "record levels" in the
past 11 months. Mr Glass specifically
mentions 18-year-old Sol Pais - who travelled to Colorado in April and made
threats to local schools before taking her own life. "In 1999, no guidance existed on what to
do with a building such as Columbine High School," the letter reads. "Today
school safety experts recommend tearing down buildings where school shootings
take place... we believe it is time for our community to consider this option
for the existing Columbine building." Some of Columbine High School was
partially rebuilt in the wake of the killings. The new district proposals include demolishing
the current site and rebuilding a school just to the west, keeping Columbine's
name, colours and mascot. Fields would be grown on top of the old building,
with "controlled entry points". The Hope Memorial library, built after the
massacre, could be preserved and serve as the "cornerstone" of the
new building.
What happened at Columbine?
On 20 April 1999, two students -
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold - killed 12 students and one teacher before
taking their own lives. At the time, it was the deadliest school shooting in US
history. The death toll was not surpassed until the Sandy Hook Elementary
School shooting in 2012. The Columbine
massacre has since influenced numerous other school shootings, with attackers
making specific reference to the killings. A memorial for those killed opened
in 2007. Events took place this year to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the
shooting.
Is tearing down schools a new
idea?
No. Sandy Hook Elementary School,
where a gunman murdered 26 people - the majority under seven years old - was
demolished and rebuilt after the massacre, with bulked up security measures. Sutherland Springs' First Baptist Church in
Texas was similarly replaced after 26 people were shot dead inside in November
2017. And the West Nickel Mines School
in Pennsylvania was demolished after five Amish schoolgirls were murdered
there. The New Hope School was built nearby to replace it.
^ I do not think Columbine should
be replaced. It is 20 years since the massacre and the library (where most of
the killings took place) were replaced. There are always going to be the crazy
people who are sickly obsessed with Columbine and other places like it and they
will simply go to the new school – especially if it is also named Columbine. I
have been to Columbine - no not as an obsessed fan of the massacre – but I
worked at the Irish Festival that was held in fields directly at the Columbine
School and the Columbine Massacre Memorial. I believe that when something horrible
like a school shooting happens the school itself should try to be repaired, renovated
and reused to show that the shooter/shooters did not accomplish their goal (the
same with a place after a terrorist attack.) If all or part of the school is
damaged beyond repair then it should be rebuilt. ^
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