DUANESBURG — Erika Kenney found herself thinking about her lunch period routines on Thursday.

On most days, the 13-year-old student grabs her food and sits with a group of friends, noticing but not acknowledging the handful of students solemnly eating alone. She routinely sees classmates ridiculing others, but never gives much thought about interceding.

“People make fun of other people every day,” she shrugged.

But after listening to the story of 17-year-old Rachel Joy Scott — the first student killed during the Columbine High School massacre — Erika decided to adopt a new outlook toward her classmates and others. The eighth-grader is among more than 80 Duanesburg Middle School students who agreed to take a closer look at their day-to-day actions in school so that they can create positive change.

The presentation given by former Columbine student Zach Rauzi offered the teens a glimpse into a life that was tragically clipped short by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, a pair often described as outsiders in the months before the killings. In the aftermath of the shootings, many in the community cited their feelings of being ostracized by their peers as leading to the hostility that ended in the murderous rampage.

“Every single situation you guys are in, you’re going to be an influence on someone else also,” Rauzi told the students. “You can be a positive influence or you can be a negative influence.”

Scott, an outgoing junior from Littleton, Colo., was eating lunch with a friend outside the west entrance of the high school when she was fatally shot. She was first among 12 Columbine students and one teacher killed April 20, 1999. Another 23 were wounded.

Her younger brother, Craig Scott, was in the school’s library when the shooting broke out. He survived by pretending to be dead after the gunmen killed two of his friends who were seeking refuge with him beneath a table.

MOTIVES CLOUDED

The Columbine killings would later prompt the U.S. Secret Service to issue a report on school shootings in 2002. The report found that nearly three-quarters of the gunmen studied felt persecuted, bullied and threatened in the months leading up to their attacks.

Scott’s death galvanized her family members into establishing “Rachel’s Challenge,” a nonprofit organization aimed at promoting the value of compassion their daughter once tried to bring into her school. The effort was prompted in part by an excerpt her family came across in an school essay she wrote shortly before her death.

“I have this theory that if one person can go out of their way to show compassion then it will start a chain reaction of the same,” she wrote in an essay entitled “My Ethics, My Code of life.”

“People will never know how far a little kindness can go,” she wrote.

Scott’s father, uncle, younger brother and older sister now travel to school districts around the globe spreading this message. In accepting Rachel’s Challenge, students are urged to motivate, educate and bring positive change to their peers, as well as their families.

Following Rauzi’s presentation, the Duanesburg students signed a banner to indicate their acceptance of the challenge, and then were urged to join a new club at the district called “Rachel’s Friends.” Middle School counselor Neal Silverman said the new group is aimed at fostering the principles Scott outlined in diaries and essays her family later found.

“This is about how to perpetuate and change [these principles] into a culture,” he said following the presentation.

Seventh-grader Libby Aliberti was touched by the story of Scott’s life and felt compelled to change the clique culture in the middle school. The 12-year-old said the presentation showed her how even a simple compliment or positive action could influence someone away from harming themselves or others.

“You could say something nice to someone and that could really impact them,” she said.