Post-Columbine

Well, another Columbine anniversary has come and gone. It's been a decade now since 2 bullied and disenfranchised teens were pushed too far and changed everything. Not that they were justified- nothing justifies violence and the randomness of it went beyond mere revenge - but a lot of bullied and formerly bullied people understood that day. I am so glad I went to school before Columbine, back when you could be quiet and wear all black and glare at jocks without people thinking you were about to blow up the cafeteria. Now all it takes to get a school closed down for an hour is a threatening note dropped in the bathroom. Kids who write violent stories (didn't we all have that notebook and hate the cheerleaders?) are arrested or expelled or both. At first I thought the post-Columbine world would be one which valued conformity a little less, one in which bullies got called out for their actions. But that was all talk and so, ten years later, the high school experience is (from what I've heard) basically the same.