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Two weeks before the shootings, Daniel Mauser came home from school and asked his parents if they knew about the loopholes in the Brady Bill. Looking back, says Mauser, "that was a sign." His fight against gun violence is his way of honoring Daniel's memory. Mauser protested the N.R.A. convention held in Denver two weeks after the shootings; he picketed the offices of Colorado's U.S. Senators Wayne Allard and Ben Nighthorse Campbell after they voted to keep background checks at gun shows voluntary; and he's joined the Bell Campaign, a group that lobbies against gun violence. "There's something wrong with a country when a kid can get a gun so easily and shoot that gun into the face of another kid, like my child," says Mauser. "Unfortunately it looks like it's going to take a lot more of these tragedies for real change to occur."
Students at Columbine don't want to wait that long. Eleven of them--their backgrounds as diverse as can be hoped for in this mostly white, Abercrombie and Fitch community--spend an hour one morning sitting around the conference table in the front office. They're brainstorming about what they've learned from their tragedy, and what they plan to do so that it never happens again. "I don't tease my friends as much as I used to," says freshman Kent Van Zant. "I try to be a lot nicer now to everybody."
Senior Joel Kuhns, who was in Harris' video class last year, says that this year, "a lot of seniors have been more open to people, even to underclassmen. This is the class that they're going to look at to see what happened afterward. I just think that's a huge responsibility for us, and we're doing a pretty good job of it." Adds Lindsey White, who serves in the senior senate: "There are still cliques. You're going to get that no matter what. But more people are willing to talk to other people they don't usually talk to."
All summer, principal Frank DeAngelis has been listening. He spent July and August serving on two school-safety task forces, reviewing everything from metal detectors to dress codes to having four or five armed officers patrol school grounds. "I'm not sure if that's the answer," says DeAngelis. "I think where money needs to be spent is educating our students about tolerance, about respecting one another, about communication." While Columbine High School did add an additional campus supervisor this year, along with 16 security cameras and a keyless entry system, DeAngelis is most proud of Columbine's efforts at prevention: the Links program that pairs upperclassmen with incoming freshmen; the emphasis on "zero tolerance" of threats and harassment; the hiring by the school district of Jackson Katz, a consultant who speaks to coaches and athletes about using their status to be role models, and the peer-counselor program, in which senior leaders can help identify students in need of support. At Columbine's opening-day rally in August, DeAngelis urged all students "who don't feel part of the Columbine family" to come to his office and let him know why.