Students return to Columbine
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Your support makes all the difference.STUDENTS AT the Colorado high school where two gunmen launched an all-out assault with guns and bombs two weeks ago resumed classes yesterday, sharing facilities with a nearby school while hundreds of investigators continued to pore over the evidence in their shattered classrooms, cafeteria and library.
Nearly 2,000 students from Columbine High, with their teachers, took the afternoon shift at Chatfield High, just a short drive away, while Chatfield's students crammed their schedule into the morning.
Mental health counsellors were expected to be on hand in every classroom, and the normal curriculum was likely to be waived - yesterday, at least - in favour of a reassessment of the traumatic events of 20 April and their aftermath.
Traditionally, Columbine and Chatfield are rivals. But yesterday students from both schools were given blue and burgundy ribbons combining the colours of both institutions.
The arrangement presented considerable logistical problems - such as letting all the Chatfield cars leave before all the Columbine ones arrived - and police took several extraordinary security measures, such as changing all the locks and issuing special identification cards.
Some students were also nervous that possible accomplices of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold - the two pupils who killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before ending their own lives - might be in class with them. Investigators have neither confirmed nor ruled out the possibility of further suspects.
But school officials said it was vital for the school to carry on as normally as possible and for high school seniors to graduate on schedule. "I will not allow this tragedy to erase the 27 years of excellence that Columbine represents," Columbine's principal, Frank DeAngelis, said at a Sunday memorial service.
Local supply shops donated new school bags and books to replace the ones left inside the Columbine campus, which is still an active crime scene. Students who felt physically or psychologically unable to go to school were given official blessing to stay away. Five children remain in hospital and 17 others are still recovering from serious gunshot and shrapnel wounds.
The investigation into the attack appears to be in some disarray. Prosecutors said yesterday - not for the first time - that they were on the verge of arresting a young adult suspected of providing the killers with one of the most lethal of their weapons.
In the community of Littleton, attitudes towards Harris and Klebold appear to be polarising sharply between anger and forgiveness. Last week, an Illinois carpenter, Greg Zanis, erected 15 crosses on a hill near the school. The two symbolising Harris and Klebold were soon pulled down. On Friday, Mr Zanis put up two new memorials to them, but when these too were vandalised he decided over the weekend to remove all 15.
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