Columbine: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

Springtime has filled Columbine with excitement. Everyone is looking forward to summer, and seniors—80% of whom, according to Columbine’s superb statistics, will go on to college—are looking forward to the next steps in their lives. Cullen describes the cafeteria, which is known as “the commons” by members of the Columbine community. Lunch is divided into shifts, and “A” lunch is the most popular. The commons are always packed for a few minutes at the beginning of lunch before students settle down or trickle out to go off-campus for lunch. 

Mr. D is on lunch duty—he loves the task, seeing it as a chance to really engage with his students. He is a stickler for cleanliness—so much so that he has surveillance cameras installed in the commons to monitor student activity and look out for those who disrespect the environment of the commons. A custodian reloads the tapes each morning just past 11am. The cameras record “banal” footage each and every day.

Meanwhile, a “terrifying affliction” has stricken America: school shootings. Many have already been widely reported on in newspapers and on TV since the phenomenon “materialized inexplicably” in 1997. Shootings in Alaska, Mississippi, Kentucky, Arkansas, and more states have rocked the nation. The violence is worst in the springtime, which is referred to by the media as “shooting season.” The perpetrators, Cullen notes, are always “white boy[s],” and each attack ends relatively quickly—TV news “never [catches] the turmoil [live,]” and the country sees only the aftermath. During the 1998-99 school year, there has not been a single shooting. As chaos erupts in Central Europe in March of 1999, America is at “war,” and no one is thinking about “the suburban menace of the school shooter” for the time being.