Kids (from Columbine) calling [Harris and Klebold] "freaks" and "fags" is part of the story that is not being told in this rush to make martyrs out of the victims and demons out of the perpetrators. "Fag" is the first thing that somebody who doesn't fit in is called, and in most high schools in this country, it is still acceptable to hurl that word around in a way that it isn't acceptable to hurl anything else around. Teachers and administrators don't do anything about it because everyone seems to be in perfect agreement, in a lot of rural high schools and even big city high schools, that fags are bad.

I sincerely doubt that these kids were gay, but I don't doubt that they were called gay constantly. I know that when I was in high school there were kids who weren't gay but were called gay who would then hold hands, as these boys allegedly did, to annoy the people who were torturing them. Clearly these guys were willing to offend and antagonize and ultimately murder their tormentors.

These two aren't heroes; they're a couple of racist know-nothing thugs. But they didn't go in with guns blazing into a vacuum. This is the lesson that's not being learned. There are social dynamics in high schools that are every bit as murderous as what these kids did, except they're stretched out over years and years. I'd be interested to know how many ostracized kids there have committed suicide over time.

They kept saying on the news, "How could this happen, in a place where children feel safe?" Did you go to high school in this country? Even to some extent the kids who engage in the worst social ostracism and sadism are also acting out of their insecurity and the lack of physical safety. Every day I was in school it was like a fucking nightmare. I'm surprised it didn't happen then -- I'm surprised I didn't do it.

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Michael Thompson, Ph.D., co-author of "Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys"

As a psychologist, I've had boys who've carved swastikas into their shoulders. To me, it's always a warning -- how could it not be? They [Harris and Klebold] were saying, "Nobody noticed. Everybody disrespected us. Nobody comforted us. But we're going to prove we're strong. We'll make the people who teased us pay."

All boys are teased between the ages of 11 and 15. Boys are very, very tough on each other. I call it the culture of cruelty. The main insults are "gay" and "faggot." There is a process of sorting through who's in and who's out. Kids who are really cast out are at risk. Most American boys are not given enough practice in articulating their inner lives. They're emotionally illiterate. They feel they have to express everything in ways that are strong. By the age of 8 or 9 a boy is measuring everything he does on one measurement, strong to weak. That's why boys seem to fall silent. You get some boys who are more gripped by violence in the media, and then if they also get too severely alienated or depressed, or their only company is another boy who is also depressed and alienated, then they can just spiral downward. These were two suicidal boys. I think they had a suicidal pact when they went in there. They knew they were going to be dead at the end, and they were going to take a lot of people with them. We know boys are vastly more at risk for suicide.

It's terrifying that they had so little adult presence in their lives that nobody checked on them, that nobody knew what they were up to. Kids need to be known. My wish is that every child in school would have to say hello to an adult, shake his or her hand, look her in the eye every day, so that the same adult would see a child every day, right up until the end of high school. At least the advisor would know whether they weren't able to make contact with the kids.

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Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and professor of sociology at Northeastern University in Boston.

What people are confused about is, how can it be a hate crime when most of the victims were white? There's no contradiction at all. Hate mongers don't specialize. They go hunting for a black to kill, but if they don't find him, they'll take someone who's gay or target a woman or maybe someone with a disability. The largest number of hate crimes are committed by teenagers who are marginalized and alienated. They're not members of organized hate groups, but they go out on a Saturday night looking for "the enemy." The more they bash and assault and attack, the more important they feel, the greater their sense of belonging.

All of the symbols that these two youngsters were enamored of were symbols of power, the power that they lacked and wanted so desperately. Targeting athletes -- the most powerful, the most popular, the most prestigious members of the school. The attack against the one black student is a hate crime, and I think it does qualify legally. (Isaiah Shoels) embodied everything that they wanted. He was strong, athletic, popular -- and he was black. The last things that these assailants wanted to see was a member of the "inferior race" have a position at the top of the class, the people who are supposed to be the weakest actually being the strongest. That infuriated them.

We can reduce hate crimes and reduce these attacks at schools if we provide our young people with healthy alternatives to hatred and violence, so they can feel important and special and a sense of belonging without hurting anyone. That's a tough thing for people to understand, because it's a long-term preventive solution. It's not as easy as putting metal detectors in schools and stationing guards around the hallways. What we tend to do is go toward short-term solutions that don't work because they're politically expedient and because they make people feel better. Adults have to get back into the lives of youngsters so that they no longer raise themselves, as they have been for 20 or 30 years. They haven't been doing a very good job of it, and sometimes, they explode.

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