[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 6] [Senate] [Pages 8923-8924] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]THE LITTLETON TRAGEDY Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, all Americans are struggling with the meaning of the brutal murders in Littleton, CO, and the question of what we should do about school violence generally. As we tackle these issues, we need to take advantage of the best thinking and writing about them. The Columbus Dispatch had a very good editorial on April 22, which points out in a very clear way what the specific challenges are--and most especially the need for adults to provide understanding and discipline to young people. The best way to stop violence is to promote the alternative--an effective culture of life and respect. I ask that this editorial be printed in the Record. The editorial follows: [From the Columbus Dispatch, Apr. 22, 1999] School Killings Adults Must See Themselves as Solution A gunman looked under a desk in the library and said ``Peek-a-boo,'' then fired.--. . . Anyone who cried or moaned was shot again. One girl begged for her life, but a gunshot ended her cries. . . . The shooter turned his attention to a black student, saying, ``I hate niggers.''--AP report out of Littleton, Colo. Black trench coats. Hitler's birthday. Gothic Web sites. Guns and homemade bombs. Hatred. Can any sense be made of the pieces emerging from the bloody halls of Columbine High School? Can the overwhelming why be answered? The issues seem so broad and numerous that a bewildered nation expresses its inability to comprehend it, one of the deadliest school massacres in U.S. history. Counselors propound; experts proclaim. The news media shifts focus from gun control to dress codes, violent movies to police in schools, materialism to racism. Before a coherent thought forms, the lens shifts again. Police who searched Harris' home said they found bomb- making material. Students said the group was fascinated with World War II and the Nazis and noted that Tuesday was Adolf Hitler's birthday. But the real question is not why. Deep down, though we may not articulate it very well, we really do know why. We may not know the exact circumstances that led juniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to gun down their classmates, but we do know that the past three years have produced a series of school killings: Two dead in Pearl, Miss., three in West Paducah, Ky., five in Jonesboro, Ark., two in Springfield, Ore. And from this, we know that it will happen again. We know why. We have produced a generation of children given too much freedom, too little direction; too much money, too little love. The segment of society least capable of handling empowerment has been empowered within the rule of law but beyond common sense. A litigious population demands that schools maintain discipline and instill values but sues teachers and administrators who dare tread upon a student's rights, be it searching a locker or insisting on proper attire. Teenagers demand and are granted their own ``space,'' Bedrooms become inviolable domains where the wild frontier of the Net can be browsed at will and every type of perversion checked out. If the child's character is far enough cracked, bombs can be made or guns can be stashed. The so-called Trench Coat Mafia had boasted of its gun collection. Its members wore black everyday. They even wore black trench coats in class. When did parents and school officials descend to such levels of indifference? And ``nobody thought'' these kids were capable of killing in cold blood. ``They were laughing after they shot. It was like they were having the time of their life.'' The question is not why but, ``What do we do?'' Like recovering alcoholics, we first have to admit that we--all of us--have a problem. Not just our neighbors, not just Paducah and now Littleton, not just big cities or rural towns. The good folks who have to live in crime-ridden neighborhoods used to rally around the cry, ``Take back our streets!'' Now, it's time to take back our children. Even the most dysfunctional families have aunts, uncles and cousins who can help. Churches, mosques, synagogues, libraries and numerous civic- and social-service networks offer havens that too few people see as important enough to spend their time and money on. Much easier to give the kids some money and drop them and their cell phones off at the mall. ``Finally I started figuring out these guys shot to kill for no reason. . . . When he looked at me, the guy's eyes were just dead.'' We are killing our children by insisting that they don't have to be children if they don't want to. We talk values to them but fail, on the whole, to live those values. We lead by example, often unaware that our example is pathetically shallow and certainly poor competition for the pervasive voice of the youth culture where simply buying khakis holds the promise of sex. Littleton is an affluent suburb. This is an affluent nation. We have time and money to [[Page 8924]] spend on our children. Individually, we must ask how our money and time is being spent. Collectively, we must decide to spend it more wisely and to share it with the larger neighborhood, the grand nation of the United States of America and its most valuable asset, the youngsters who will someday be the neighborhood. Most of all, we must teach our children that freedom and independence are earned and that the rites of passage amount to more than clipping on a pager. Neglect and indifference are forms of child abuse. Before we are shocked again by the next school shooting, we should devote more than a moment of thought to how much we overlook deviance and alienation; how so many of us are so little involved in providing direction. Parents and all adults must provide understanding and compassion, discipline and clarity in a world of neglect, obfuscation and self-absorption. ____________________