Pep Rallies and Burned Books: Welcome Back to Columbine High, Where Denial Gets Extra Credit

Photo by Eliott Reyna on Unsplash

Nothing says “healing” like pompoms, cheerleaders, and a fresh coat of paint over the blood.

“Don’t be so cynical,” my mother said when I showed her the article about Columbine High School’s welcome-back pep rally. I sipped my coffee and raised an eyebrow. “I’m not being cynical, Mom. I’m being observant. There’s a difference.” “Maybe they’re just trying to move on.” “Right. Because nothing screams ‘healing’ like blasting Top 40 hits over the site of a mass shooting.”

Let’s be honest. If America had a report card on empathy and historical literacy, we’d be repeating the fourth grade. Maybe even third. And right now, Columbine High School is raising its hand, begging for extra credit with a three-ring binder full of denial, baked casseroles, and T-shirts that say “We Are Columbine.”

You know what you are? You’re confused. You’re grieving. And you’re pretending that grief looks like cheerleaders and clean hallways instead of uncomfortable conversations and uncomfortable truths.

🎯 “The kids need normalcy,” they said. So they gave them a pep rally.

You can’t make this up. On August 16th, 1999 — just four months after one of the most violent school shootings in American history — Columbine High School opened its doors with a pep rally. That’s right. A goddamn pep rally.

Imagine walking back into the building where your friends were murdered, and the first thing you hear is a cheerleader yelling “Let’s Go REBELS!” while glitter falls on your trauma.

It’s giving post-traumatic pom-poms. It’s giving hallway-of-the-dead meets homecoming week. It’s giving are you people high?

Student body president Mike Sheehan stood up and declared, “It’s so great to look out and see so many of you here today and to take back our school.” Take it back from who, Mike? Satan? Rage? Grief? Or the last four months of reality?

This was not Take Back the Night. This was Take Back the Narrative. A staged PR move to assure middle America that everything’s fine now — as long as you wear a matching T-shirt and never talk about how it got soaked in blood.

🧠 “We’ve fixed the school.” Translation: We painted over the trauma.

The bullet holes? Gone. The bloodstains? Covered. The library where most of the murders happened? Sealed off, its books burned.

Burned.

The literal site of the massacre is now concealed behind a row of lockers like an emotional crime scene in a sitcom reboot. I get the idea. “We want students to feel good about being back here,” said Jack Swanzy, director of planning for Jefferson County Schools. Right. Because nothing makes me feel safe like an aesthetic cover-up.

Here’s a wild thought: maybe leave one bullet hole. One mark. A plaque. A line of text etched into the wall like, “Here, kids killed other kids, and we still haven’t figured out why.”

Because history has never been polite. And erasing it won’t make your kids any safer.

⚰️ “Let’s not include the killers in the memorial.” Because they don’t count, right?

When officials proposed 13 marble crosses to honor the victims, not one included Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold. Look, I get it — no one wants to build a monument to murderers. But if you’re going to create a cautionary tale, shouldn’t you include the villains?

You can’t sanitize horror into sainthood. You can’t slap angel wings on trauma and call it solved. You want to prevent another Columbine? Start by acknowledging that the shooters were also kids, poisoned by a culture that worshipped jocks, punished difference, and forced conformity like it was gospel.

By most accounts, Harris and Klebold were bullied — not “had a rough day at school” bullied, but “systematically tormented in a suburban petri dish of jock exceptionalism” bullied.

And yet, at the pep rally? Guess who was front and center? The football team. The same crew the killers reportedly targeted. The same culture they blamed for their pain.

Coach proudly told CNN that “athletes” (read: jocks) are now oppressed by students who wear trench coats. Sir. Sir. You’re one eyebrow away from saying goths are domestic terrorists. Sit down.

💬 “You’d better believe that good overcomes evil.” — Pastor Pep Talk

The night before school resumed, 3,000 evangelical Christians held a back-to-school rally near the site of the massacre. Speaker Bart Campolo shouted, “You’d better believe that good overcomes evil or I don’t know how you can go back to school.”

Right, because the best way to spiritually cope with mass murder is through emotionally manipulative Christian rock and lukewarm youth pastor sermons about “finding your light.”

I hate to break it to you, Bart, but good didn’t overcome evil. Evil brought guns and evil got in. Evil knew the dress code, the bell schedule, and where the bullies sat at lunch.

“It’s not just that they whitewashed the walls. They whitewashed the narrative. And then they sold it for retail at the school store.”

🚽 And then there were swastikas. Because trauma never goes quietly.

Hours after the rally, someone scrawled three swastikas in the bathroom. “The rally was great,” one parent said, “and then I see this. It’s like they’re laughing in our faces.”

Maybe. Or maybe it’s a sign that your version of healing doesn’t heal everybody. You don’t get to paper over deep cultural rot with hashtags and then act shocked when the mold seeps through.

Let’s be honest: Columbine didn’t just need therapy. It needed introspection, accountability, and a long-ass pause button. But America doesn’t like long pauses. America likes sequels.

🚨 State Panel: Let’s prep for the next one

A state panel was formed to coordinate law enforcement responses to “future Columbines.” Not prevent them. Coordinate the damage when (not if) it happens again.

That’s the tell. We’re not trying to fix the problem. We’re trying to get better at sweeping up the aftermath and booking the media coverage.

Final Bell: What We Refuse to Learn

We live in a country where:

• Grief is merchandised.
• Victims become halos.
• Killers become shadows.
• And trauma becomes a reason to rehearse normalcy like it’s a school play.

We say “Never Again” the same way we say “Bless You” after a sneeze — out of habit, not conviction.

Meanwhile, teenagers are still being bullied for being different, schools are still worshiping at the altar of the Friday night football game, and no one is leaving even one damn bullet hole behind to remind the next Mike Sheehan that trauma isn’t something you take back — it’s something you carry.

And you better carry it honestly. Because if you don’t, someone else will carry it with a gun.

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