Teens Speak Out at Summit on Youth Violence

DENVER —  Two months after the mass shooting at Columbine High School, hundreds of Coloradans gathered Saturday for a summit on youth violence and heard a relatively simple message from high school students: Parents should spend more time with their children and do a better job of instilling values.

“We need to attack the roots,” said Estee Blatter, 17, who will be a senior at Columbine when school resumes in August. “Our main problem is at home.”

Blatter was one of about two dozen Colorado high school students who kicked off the daylong discussion of school safety and violence at the Metropolitan State College of Denver. Originally scheduled for this fall but moved up because of the April 20 assault in Littleton, Colo., that left 15 dead, including the two gunmen, the summit drew local, state and federal officials, clergy, youth workers and various experts. But it was the children--many of them profoundly affected by what happened at the school--who seemed to best cut through the clutter and speak from the heart.

“The reason I turned out good is [because] I was blessed with a mother who still built me up regardless of what other people thought of me,” said Julian Gilbert, a teenager from Denver. “That’s what a lot of parents need to do.”

Largely ignoring what has been a raging national debate over cultural decline, the effect of violent mass media and the easy availability of guns, Gilbert and his peers returned repeatedly to their simple message: Parents and school administrators alike need to be more supportive, caring and nurturing.

In opening the conference, Colorado’s Republican Gov. Bill Owens touched on that subject but dwelt far longer on the consistent Republican theme in the wake of Columbine: that the spate of school shootings attests to a loss of moral values, abetted by an increasingly violent mass media.

“We gather together here as a society because we are afraid,” said Owens. “We are afraid something has gone profoundly wrong in our state and in our nation. . . .”