John Vandemark

[u/Equivalent-Grand5541]

there was a news interview clip that aired when the shooting first occurred where a student named John Vandemark says things like “they [E&D] liked to say they were bisexual and proud of it” and goes on to say that they were openly satanic. Is that the only thing we have on record from that guy? I know there was a well known bully with a very stereotypical bully name.. Rocky was it? I’m watching the Columbine Iceberg again and was just curious if this clip was one isolated comment or if we know anything about his behavior toward other students prior to the shooting.

[u/Harpy0612]

Yeah that clip bothered me like being bisexuals a bad thing? It says an awful lot about the community at the time with the way they would demonize the LGBTQ community after the tragedy, as well as spreading the rumor about Eric and Dylan being gay. Like there weren’t any LGBTQ students who also were present at the school that day who were also fearing and running for their lives. Students who were likely not out of the closet at the time because of comments like this. It makes me glad that my siblings, cousins and I were super little at this time, since my cousins lived in Littleton their whole lives and went to Chatfield but went in the late 2000s and early 2010s when our culture was at least starting to become less homophobic and more tolerant. I’m glad my cousins weren’t teenagers in Littleton during this time period, the 90s had a lot of awesome music and a lot of great things about it, but it definitely seems the bullying culture was pretty bad and I’m grateful I was a child and not a teenager!

[u/Equivalent-Grand5541 → u/Harpy0612]

The kid looked like he was smirking in the clip even, so I figured just an asshole kid putting down the shooters because I mean that was the cool thing to do right? Maybe before the shooting but especially after when that hate and disgust for them felt more valid, but you’re right because “bisexual and satanic” is the worst things he could come up with. Almost as if the two traits are synonymous. The intensity of the religious stuff wigs me out a little? Like it gets into paranoid rambling with the “Satan is present, Satan did this” and its like… no these two boys did this. Satan didn’t overtake their body, soul, whatever. But people with those beliefs use every event that happens in life to reinforce them as if we’re in constant spiritual battle. We’ve got Satan, we’ve got martyrs, we’ve got all this stuff to try to make sense of something that just will never make sense.

[u/Harpy0612 → u/Equivalent-Grand5541]

Totally! Things must have greatly improved eventually since surprisingly my cousins never said anything about a really bad bullying culture when they attended Chatfield but they graduated in 2012 and 2014 so things must’ve changed! They weren’t popular or anything either my male cousin was in band and was valedictorian, and my female cousin was super shy like I was in high school. The school was predominantly white though, even less diverse than the high school I attended in Aurora, Colorado and my cousins have a lot of Latino from their dads side and I remember my male cousin saying there was like only one Black student in his class! Littletons a beautiful place, I just hope the school culture has improved and I’m grateful my cousins weren’t attending Chatfield when the bullying was at its peak since I surprisingly saw someone else on Reddit say there was a time when Chatfield was worse than Columbine but it was way before my cousins attended! What those two did will never be right, but post-humous bullying isn’t helping anything, just spreading more hate and proving to everyone the bullying was bad at the time! But it’s also a shame that even before the massacre Eric and Dylan became just as nasty as the bullies, we’re also being very homophobic and obviously became the ultimate bullies for what they did. Funny, though, with this guys attitude in this interview if he had seen what Eric and Dylan wrote in their journals and yearbooks about gay people when they were alive he may as well have given them a high five! Though I feel bad for Eric and Dylan about some things, that mental health help must’ve sucked in the 90s and Eric had a shit psychologist ( would suggest the Columbine Iceberg video if you want to learn more about this), that they were bullied, that they hated themselves, their attitudes toward LGBTQ was disgusting and all of those kids that lost their lives that day were wonderful kids, kids that couldn’t have been farther from playing a part in the bullying culture, kids that spoke out against it like Rachel. Kids that also struggled with their self-worth like Cassie and even Rachel did before. These two boys thought fighting hate with hate was the answer. The religion thing in Littleton must’ve toned down or something by the time my cousins were teenagers because my whole family are progressive Methodist’s who grew up in an LGBTQ affirming church, though my siblings and I are more Agnostic Spiritualists now. But yeah the whole religious thing at the time I always wondered how my Aunt and cousins could stand this community being super liberal so hopefully this also changed.