The Labeling Case Of Columbine High In Littleton, Colorado

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One spring day April 20, 1999 to be exact, a school named Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado was under assault by two of its own students. Within fifteen minutes of the first lunch period, two students carrying weapons killed thirteen and wounded twenty one classmates before they turned the guns on themselves, becoming one of the most disturbing school shooting in U.S. history. This generation comes from aggression, hate, and ignorance, the three principal factors that cause school shootings. High school is a place where bullying, teasing, intimidation, humiliation, disapproval, physical abuse and social isolation are an everyday occurrence.
Had Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris be looked at before the shooting they should have already been …show more content…

The labeling theory refers to data that “individuals become deviant when either a deviant label is placed on them or they adopt the label by exhibiting the behaviors, actions, and attitudes associated with the label”. The labeling theory also states “people become deviant when the identity of the label is placed upon them”. The person being labeled is ensnared within that label, that’s when people that are labeled act out. The boys felt that there was no way out of the labels that the students placed on them so they decided to act out the individuals who placed the labeled them. Eric Harris and Dylan Kelbold were both stereotyped after the horrible killing took place. Much of their preceding actions that led up to the shootings had been looked at again and they were labeled as deviants after the …show more content…

A stigma is a forcefully negative label that seriously alters a person’s self concept and social identity. Since high school is such a susceptible part of someone’s life, I wonder if the boys felt that since they weren’t popular in high school they would regard as nothing but trash among their peers. Eric Harris might be described as medically deviant because he was in fact on medication that was mind changing. Harris talked about how he had stopped taking his pills to let the fury build up so it would be easier to murder all his fellow students. Since Harris who had been harassed throughout high school had so much rage built up inside and that he wasn’t taking his prescribed medication didn’t help.
It seemed that both boys felt that they had nothing to lose. Being ridiculed persistently and with no end in sight the boys thought up a plan to end it all. These boys seem to never in control their entire lives. They were always looked at with scorn in school and in their neighborhood so they knew by holding the school prisoner they would at last become in control. People who feel they have little or nothing to lose by deviance are likely to become law breakers. In Hirschi’s Control Theory that if someone lacks control they are able to easily become

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