CHEYENNE – In a school essay titled “My Ethics, My Codes of Life,” Rachel Scott of Littleton, Colorado, wrote that she wanted to start a chain reaction of kindness.
Six weeks later, she was dead, the first of 13 to be shot and killed during the 1999 Columbine High School shooting.
For students at Cheyenne’s East High, who have grown up in an era where school shootings are at the forefront of national conversation, Rachel’s Challenge brought an unexpected twist to those discussions.
After Rachel’s death, her parents, Darrell and Sandy Scott, began reading through her journals and papers, and found proclamations of kindness and compassion. They were so moved by their daughter’s words they began speaking to community groups and student organizations on behalf of their late daughter, using the words she’d put down in her journals as the crux of their message: kindness.
These speaking occasions grew into what is now called Rachel’s Challenge, a nonprofit organization that seeks to share Rachel’s message of kindness with high school students across the country.
They focus on a few key ideas. They ask students to fight prejudice, to intervene when somebody is being bullied and to look for the best in others. Though inextricably tied to the Columbine shooting, the presentation hinges less explicitly on school safety and more on kindness and its byproducts – safer schools among them.
“It’s about students’ hearts and getting them to that place where they are connected,” said Nate Rees, regional partnership manager for the group. “A direct result of that is less violence in schools.”
Rachel’s uncle, Larry Scott, gave the presentation to East High students Tuesday. He is one of dozens of the group’s presenters, but unlike most, his own children were inside Columbine High School at the time of the shooting. They got out unharmed.
It’s a heavy feeling, made perhaps heavier at East with the knowledge Cheyenne is less than a two-hour drive from where the shooting occurred. Regardless of proximity, though, the message is meant to be a universal one, and, indeed, it carries weight.
In 2015, the most recent year with a publicly available IRS filing for the nonprofit, the organization took in nearly $4 million in revenue. Much of that comes from presentation fees, which range from $3,600 to $6,500 per school, according to Rees. But more than $500,000 of that revenue came from donations.
Celebrities like Dr. Oz and Chuck Norris, and politicians like Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, have given the group glowing endorsements. So too have some of the country’s heftiest philanthropists, including recent Wyoming gubernatorial candidate Foster Friess. In 2016, Friess pledged to match donations up to $100,000 to the organization, and in 2018, he pledged to match up to $2.5 million in donations to Rachel’s Challenge and other school safety groups.
Rachel’s Challenge has been in 30 Wyoming schools this academic year alone, thanks to contributions from Friess, event organizers said.
In the last three years, the organization has presented to more than 5,000 schools across the country.
Participant surveys report a 123 percent increase in the number of students who said they would intervene to stop a bully and a 282 percent increase in students who said they believe their school is a safe place.
Rachel’s Challenge organizers claim to have stopped seven school shootings since the program began, and to have prevented more than 100 suicides annually, which they estimate using emails and testimonials from program participants.
East High students Michelle Puente and Keely Cleveland were so drawn to the program after seeing it at a Family, Career and Community Leaders of America event they lobbied their school administrators to bring Rachel’s Challenge to their school.
“It’s really inspiring to see you don’t have to do big things to make a difference,” Michelle said.
They said they thought their classmates would really listen to Rachel’s story, and it would make them think seriously about what happened at Columbine nearly 20 years ago.
“The kids who did the shooting at Columbine were bullied,” Keely said.
She said she hopes it encourages people to be kind to one another from the outset.
Rachel’s story silenced an auditorium of more than 600 people. From the stillness came sniffles and a few stifled sobs from students with whom the message resonated with particular fierceness.
Sophomore Skyler Eidhead, face blanched and wet with tears, said he recently lost some people close to him, and hearing Rachel’s story gave him a sense of hope.
“What keeps resonating is I always want to see people be their best and remember the people they’ve lost,” he said.
Skyler spent most of the presentation in an embrace with his friend and classmate, sophomore Caleb Howard, who said he, too, was moved by Rachel’s story.
“People are people, no matter how different,” he said. “This can and will help people understand that bullying is wrong.”
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