The Day Of Fate - Original Writing

The weather cleared up and me, along with my entire class and teachers, got to enjoy a beautiful ceremony. Lining up we started to proceed out to the football stadium from the gymnasium, my mind would not stop thinking. I just could not stop remembering what it took for me to get to this day. The stress that I endured studying for the SAT, filling out my applications and most importantly, perfecting my essay. The idea that I was not going to be living in this beautiful town I have spent my life in, brought a flood of emotions. Thoughts of my friends not being by my side next year made me feel as if I was sinking into a deep hole; this place, this town has had so much to offer to me. The past two years that I had spent in this place were the most emotional and exciting times of my life. I knew even though I was not going to be waking up in my familiar place anymore, I would be waking up in what was to become my new familiar place. I knew that even though my friends would not physically be there with me every day, that they would be there when I called them. If it were not for all of the people I have met along the way, I do not think I would have ended up where I am today. It just is a common thought for whenever I get sad about everything ending, I remind myself that there is a new beginning coming and it is going to be amazing. The place that I have spent my whole life

The problem with society, is that people tend to wait for the problem to occur before making a change. Troubled children and teens have always existed but unfortunately now we’ve entered into an era where shootings are no longer just seen in action movies, it has now become a reality in our schools. Why do these children end up killing their classmates and why the number of school shootings in America have increased in the past several years? These articles try to give some kind of explanation into why these tragic accidents occur. As well as preventions that teachers, parents, and the community as a whole can partake in. This paper will focus on these two main ideas or themes.

In looking to explain the characteristics behind school shootings, Warnick (2015) argues that it is necessary to recognise that schools are places of both real and symbolic violence, in which force and power of the authority dictate rules. Combining this with the fact that schools are so often places of high expectations, hope, refuge and friendship, when these expectations are not met, it is noted that bitter resentment from a

As the world recovers from recent school shootings, people wondered why these events have occurred. They are focused on drug use, violent society, video games, bullying, and mental issues to try and explain an unexplainable event. The idea that a person would shoot others for little or no reason gave little relief to the survivors.

The beginning of the nonfiction, Columbine by Dave Cullen, takes place four days before the Columbine massacre at Columbine High School’s assembly in Littleton, Colorado, just before the weekend of Prom. Ironically, Principal DeAngelis, the one who had hosted the school assembly, provides a lecture of everyone coming back alive and safe after prom. Soon after, on April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold arrived at Columbine High School with two bombs based on portable propane bottles, decoy bombs in their cars and across town, and dozens of small pipe bombs, along with guns and ammunition. Their original and only plan was to shoot anyone and everyone who escapes from the building after the bombs detonated, and they had expected to be shot to death by police; however, their plans partly failed when the bombs planted inside the school did not go off. Although their plan of distraction did not succeed as expected, Harris and Klebold entered the school and began shooting and firing pipe bombs for a little over fifteen minutes. Afterwards, after roaming the school for a short amount of time, they returned to the library where most of their victims had died, set off one final bomb, and committed suicide by shooting themselves. Although their bombing failed, the ensued shooting resulted in a new era of school violence and had left “a lasting impression on the world.” However, by the end of the day, the horrifying incident was falsely blamed on bullying, the popular “Goth”

Between the comings and goings of an average day in America there are momentous events that fall across the globe and stain history for better or for worse. These world-changing occurrences are often wrought with tragedy, and cling to the mind with the sharp talons of loss. More often than not, unfortunate events have a way of establishing a camaraderie among humanity, setting in motion a gentle shift in people 's disdain for others- if only for a moment- and allowing them to move together and reinvent the rules and techniques; readjusting and shifting until something that works is sealed into standard procedure. From turmoil and hurt, humanity corrects itself and grows. Of these events, the Columbine High School shooting comes to many as one that completely morphed America 's culture and sense of security. The assault was carried out by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, students of the school and close friends. They had nourished the idea, feeding it hours of attention and deep consideration. Then, they went forward with it on April 20, 1999. The boys took the event seriously, setting up decoy bombs and then positioning their vehicles in the school parking lot with an arsenal and military methods of execution prepared to put in motion. They ending thirteen lives, including their own. The ruin caused by the shooting would have been greater, had the plan prevailed. Their actions had a severe impact on the way many people live and think. When one sifts through the information

On the morning of April 20, 1999 – Adolf Hitler’s birthday – two students entered Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, with as many guns and pipe bombs as they could carry. The original plan was to plant bombs in the cafeteria to drive teachers and students to the parking lot, and from there they would shoot as many people as they could. More explosives would be detonated once police and ambulances arrived. But the first set of bombs failed to explode. So instead, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold simply wandered their way around school grounds, gunning down whoever was unfortunate enough to cross their path. In less than an hour, the two teens killed twelve students and a teacher. More than twenty others were also wounded. The onslaught ended when Harris and Klebold turned the guns on themselves in the library.

"I'm angry someone would do this to us. There are lives ruined, families ruined, and our whole school year is ruined" (Brackely 1). Casey Brackely, once a student that attended Columbine High School, remembers the tragedy of the horrific Columbine shooting that killed and injured many students. Mass shootings in the United States have been on the rise since the 1980’s, especially in the last decade. These shooters motives and profiles are almost all terrifyingly alike. Many of these shooters try to imitate and parallel the tragic shooting of the Columbine High School in 1999. These shootings have made peaceful organizations, such as an elementary school; become a place of violence and death. Currently, in the United States, an epidemic of

Imagine a scene of unimaginable terror: several college students are lined up against a wall and shot, sirens are blaring in the background, and people are seen crouching on floors in classrooms and dormitories in a futile attempt to escape the wrath of a crazed gunman, who also happens to be a fellow student. By mid-afternoon, even the sidewalks are stained with blood and the atmosphere is desolate and aberrantly quiet. Students gather in small groups, some crying while still others make an effort to console each other. Such was the scene on April 16th, 2007 on the campus of Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia when Seung-Hui Cho went on a mass killing spree. In slightly under three hours, Cho managed to gun down thirty-three students and faculty members, injuring seventeen others in the process, before finally turning the gun on himself. It has been described as the deadliest shooting rampage in American history.

It was a warm spring morning in the little town of Littleton, Colorado. The birds played beautiful music while small beams of sun slowly escaped from behind the clouds and through the kitchen windows of all the houses. Classes were starting at seven-thirty just like any other day, however at eleven- twenty a bloody massacre began at Columbine High School. “ There was a girl crouched beneath a desk in the library, and the guy came over and said, ‘Peekaboo,’ and shot her in the neck,” said Kirkland, a 15-year-old sophomore. Two seniors who belonged to a group called the Trench Coat Mafia, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, entered the school with guns, knives, and bombs hidden beneath their trench coats and started opening fire on their classmates and teachers.

Rampage-style school shootings are rare and tragic events. Although measures of prevention have become more advanced, school shootings have increased in frequency over the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. Here in the United States, they have become especially prevalent, with 63 shootings just this year (Acevedo). The aftermath of rampage shootings leaves gaping holes and questions in communities. People try to heal and seek closure at their own pace, but the biggest question most are left with is “why”? In Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings, Katherine S. Newman seeks to answer this question. She lays out her research and methodology for studying rampage shootings and comes to the conclusion that shootings are not spontaneous, but rather the build up of psychological issues and negative sociological situations within a student’s community that causes them to seek to regain power over their own lives through a rampage shooting. The story Rampage builds out of the narratives of shooters and their victims along with national data and trends is important because it highlights the places that our societies fail in providing a safety net for deviant students and their peers.

Veteran teacher Jess Burnquist’s, “A Teacher’s Appeal: Reverse the New Normal” argues that the necessity for lockdown procedures and society’s passive acceptance of them is “unacceptable.” Using a blunt and shocking narrative and dark sarcastic humour, she delivers a acrimonious critique of society, condemning it for not only robbing her of the opportunity to teach, but imposing the responsibility of protecting her students on to her and her colleagues. Burnquist suggests emergency lockdown drills are reflective of an apathetic country, focused on teaching students to hide and prepare for an intruder, while failing to address the real issue: a society that generates a person—or persons rather—that feel compelled and/or in entitled to walk onto a campus and start slaughtering innocent people. She accuses our country of being desensitized to these massacres, and she suggests lockdown procedures are a submissive acceptance that disregards student anxiety and lost time for core curriculum.

Rampage shootings are a very serious problem in the United States, and an issue in other countries, and, beginning in the 1990’s, there was a significant rise in the number of school shootings. In order to try and decrease the occurrence of these rampage shootings, it is important to thoroughly understand what they are compared to other shootings. According to Katherine Newman and her colleagues in their article Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings (2004), rampage shootings must take place in a school-related area with witnesses, have multiple victims many of whom are shot for their significance or at random, and finally must involve one ore more shooters who are or were students of the school (Newman, Fox, Harding, Mehta, Roth, 2004: 51).

As the end of the night approached us, I couldn’t stop thinking about how many mixed emotions I had about starting a whole new chapter in my life. I couldn't wait to go to college, meet all new people, get a degree so that I could start my career path, but I knew that meant I had to say goodbye to my two best friends, who were moving several hours away from me. This was one of the hardest things I had ever had to do in my life. We all cried a little, and then made promises to keep in touch, and then we were off into the real world! I was very happy to be at this point in my life, but I was scared deep down inside.

Not long into second period, school administrators alerted the school resource officer that there was someone on campus carrying a firearm. The school instantly went on lockdown. Having never experienced a real lockdown before and unaware of the current situation, most students did not take this lockdown with seriousness. Minutes passed and our little game continued on, but some people had abandoned it because they were anxiously awaiting news about the lockdown; this lockdown was taking longer than previous drills we had practiced. I still had my head