Thad Martin says jocks tease others for how they dress. It makes you not want to go to school. And then there are the kids who wear the trench coats. Every American high school has its cliques, and fitting in is certainly one of the more stressful parts of high school. But at Columbine, the cliques sound like the exaggerated stereotypes you'd find in a bad movie.
Students say their lives revolve around the cliques.
It's a rat race inside the school to see who's going to be more popular. The popular kids at Columbine are the athletes, many of whom are also preppies. Mostly it was verbal abuse. Other times, the jocks would cut in front of them in lines for food or registration, or push them out of line. One student witnessed another throwing trash at a trench-coat kid.