Columbine `Memorial' languishes as parents sue over artwork: Columbine High School officials have rejected some 100 ceramic tiles painted in memory of the victims of the 1999 shootings. Now parents are suing to reinstate the designs

Insight on the News, Dec 24, 2001 by Valerie Richardson

When the Jefferson County school district of Littleton, Colo., invited Sue Petrone to paint a ceramic tile for Columbine High School as part of an art-therapy project two years ago, she jumped at the chance. She spent hours painstakingly designing and later painting a picture depicting a cross over a heart with the name of her son, Daniel Rohrbough, who was killed in the 1999 massacre.

But when volunteers finished putting up the decorative tiles along the walls and doorways of Columbine, Petrone's contribution was nowhere to be found. School officials feared it would constitute an endorsement of religion and a violation of the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution.

"When they told her no, they wouldn't put her tile up, she just cried," says Rich Petrone, Sue's husband and Daniel's stepfather. "They were basically telling us, `We want you to express your feelings, but they have to agree with our feelings.'"

Thus did Columbine High School, site of the nation's deadliest school shooting, enter the fray over religion in public education. The Petrones and the parents of another young victim, Kelly Fleming, have hit the. district with a lawsuit. At issue is the families' right to freedom of speech versus the school's right to control the content of its displays.

So far, the parents are winning both the public-relations and the legal battles. Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Wiley Daniel ordered the district to post the disputed tiles, saying that the school had created a "limited public forum" when it invited artistic contributions from individuals.

That might have been the end of the case, but then the school district did something that few expected. On Nov. 5, it filed an appeal with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, asking the higher court to overturn Daniel's decision. The district then requested and won a temporary stay of the judge's order to restore the tiles, a decision that has left much of the community dumbfounded.

"I am, quite frankly, confused as to why the Jeffco [Jefferson County] board has chosen this issue to battle over," says state Rep. Don Lee, who represents the Columbine area. "Maybe they should pray for more guidance before deciding to waste more taxpayer dollars over a position that is unconstitutional and that they cannot defend in good conscience."

Both of Denver's major daily newspapers blasted the decision to prolong the courtroom agony. "Can the board possibly believe it is reasonable to embark on a hugely expensive legal free-for-all that can offend broad swaths of the community?" the Rocky Mountain News asked in an editorial.

The main target of criticism is Superintendent Jane Hammond, who has orchestrated the district's strategy in the absence of direction from the board. She has disputed the parents' contention that censoring the tiles violated their right to free speech. "Our concern is that we don't believe it's an issue of free speech," says district spokeswoman Marilyn Saltzman. "There are numerous court rulings that give schools the right to control speech. It's an issue of church-state separation and also the school district's ability to control what happens in the schools."

The Columbine parents and others were given specific guidelines for what could be included on the tiles, says Saltzman. The rules proscribed religious imagery, personal messages and references to the shootings. "We're working on a permanent memorial in the park [next door]," she adds, noting that the tile project began in 1996, three years before the shootings. "But this wasn't intended to be a memorial."

But Brian Rohrbough, Daniel's father, remembers differently. "I got a call that said, `We'd like you to come in and create a memorial of Dan at the school,'" he says. "When I got there and [a teacher] started telling us the rules, I objected and she said, `Go ahead and do anything you want.'"

Before the school reopened in fall 1999, volunteers mounted about 1,500 tiles. They later removed nearly 100 deemed to have violated the guidelines, including several that were seen as glorifying violence. Painted on one tile were the initials "D.K.," which could stand for "Dylan Klebold," one of the two gunmen who killed 12 students and a teacher before taking his own life. Another tile showed the profile of a head with a splatter of red paint, which some thought represented a bleeding bullet wound.

Officials worried that if the district agreed to put up the religious tiles, they would have to replace the other tiles, says Saltzman. If somebody had painted a swastika tile, argue the district's supporters, would the school be compelled to display that?

Critics dismiss such exaggerations, contending that the "bloody-head" tile is so abstract it can be interpreted any number of ways. In any event, says Rohrbough, the judge's ruling applies only to the tiles named in the parents' lawsuit. "His ruling has nothing to do with the other tiles," he says. "And even if it didn't, I haven't seen one single tile that would offend me to be next to. Even `D.K.' because it's not my tile."