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Midnight rendezvous
Did attorneys for Kenneth Starr and Linda Tripp arrange a secret tape exchange to leak information to Newsweek?
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[12/16/99]

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[12/14/99]

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By Speakout.com
[12/14/99]

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Spokeswoman Marilyn Saltzman said the community's retraumatization from the highly publicized videos definitely played a role in the closure. "It's very difficult to conduct finals in this environment," she said. "It's been a very difficult week."

The threat was made to a Columbine student in an Internet chat room late Wednesday night. Parents quickly notified authorities, security swept the school and officials met frantically throughout the night. At 5:30 a.m., they decided to shut the school down.

Spokesman Rick Kaufman described the threat as "more of a warning," but refused to release further details. Saltzman ruled out a bomb threat, calling it "a threat against student safety." The source of the threat has not been identified.

Ironically, security was already high at the school because of a huge concert planned for Thursday evening to thank the community for its support in the wake of the April 20 tragedy. Saltzman said 30 security personnel were already present at school by 8 a.m., with 90 expected by noon, under existing plans.

Eight students have been expelled from the district for making threats this fall, but this was the first time the school was shut down. On Tuesday, a Columbine student plead guilty to misdemeanor charges for threatening to "finish the job" with a car bomb on the six-month anniversary of the massacre in October.

Saltzman said the school takes all threats seriously, but the stress of the past week made finals untenable for both students and staff. "If you go back to Maslow's hierarchy, safety is your first concern," she said. "If you're not feeling safe, you're not very well equipped to get an A on your exam."

School officials repeatedly stressed "emotional and physical safety," and "the emotional well-being of our staff and students." Their tentative decision to proceed with the concert in the school parking lot Thursday night strongly suggests the emotional trauma was the decisive factor. Saltzman said the physical safety of the school and students could not be guaranteed by the 5:30 closure decision, but finals were not simply rescheduled for Friday. District officials complained bitterly about the release of the video this week, but carefully sidestepped the issue of assigning blame to either Time Magazine or the sheriff's department, with whom they've worked closely the past eight months.

Sheriff John Stone has come under increasing pressure to resign this week, following moths of reported friction within the department. Several prominent Jefferson County law enforcement officials openly joined the chorus of dissent this week, but stopped short of calling for a resignation.
salon.com | Dec. 16, 1999

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