SCHOOL SHOOTINGS AND THE NEW CHALLENGE

November 14, 2019 was a Thursday. It was around 7:40 am.  As a homicide detective, one gets used to getting calls about tragic situations. The phone call was from a partner advising me there was a shooting happening at the high school ten minutes from my house. My partner was on his way there to find his child. My neighbor worked at the school. I have driven by the school weekly, and now it was a crime scene. Upon my arrival, the situation was chaotic. Parents were desperate to find their children. Law enforcement personnel from numerous agencies were pouring into the staging area to assist. Numerous helicopters circled overhead. Ambulances and fire personnel responded to the scene where children were screaming and crying. Backpacks and papers were strewn everywhere on campus. Three students were dead, three more were injured. Not here, not in my hometown.

Research indicates that school shootings in the United States outnumber all other countries combined (Bartol, 2021). That is not the kind of statistic any country wants to lead in. Like the majority of prior school shootings, the perpetrator of this shooting was a current student. Most school shooters have been bullied or socially ostracized at school (Bartol, 2021). This student wrote stories about being picked on. The offender in this shooting possessed several of the descriptive characteristics common among school shooters. He was male with above average grades and no history of mental illness. He was raised in a middle class, suburban neighborhood and had easy access to guns. He acted alone, but he did not tell or alert anyone of his intentions.

The typical political and news cycle followed. Non-stop coverage of a school shooting event. Experts were pontificating about the profile of the shooter. Political activists were using the issue to advocate for their agenda. Leaders engaged in hand wringing and virtue signaling which was followed by legislation couched with ambiguous and ineffective language.

Researchers can gather data on these tragic events and report that most of schools that suffered shootings with multiple victims were made up of a majority-white student body (Rowhani-Rahbar, 2019). Research can also provide the percentages of weapons of choice by the offender (Rowhani-Rahbar, 2019). But what is missing from these evaluations is a remedy.

After one school shooting, some researchers assembled and came up with a possible solution that did not rely primarily on gun control legislation. Not that some effective regulation might not make a difference, but with millions of firearms already inside U.S. homes, alternate measures had to be considered.

The researchers argued for school shootings to be approached like a public health issue (Astor, 2018). What these academicians came up with was in some respects the opposite of what one would expect. Instead of making schools a harder target, they advocated for a softening of schools. This idea comes at a time when there has been a rise in incivility on campus and a systemic coarsening in the overall environment. This concept revolved around lowering the climate within the school. This involves having more counselors and psychologists on campus as well as improving the communication between the adults and the students (Astor, 2018).  This plan also included more collaboration between the school and community mental health resources (Astor, 2018).

Another aspect of the public health approach leaned on prior research. Scholars surmised that identifying students with trauma in their backgrounds might mitigate in-school violence (Astor, 2018). Researchers reached back to the Kaiser Medical Center’s research on adverse childhood experience (ACE) and realized there was a correlation between students with higher ACE scores and negative health consequences, including high-risk behavior (Felitti et al., 1998). Some of the experienced adversity Kaiser researchers considered were under the rubric of abuse, neglect and household dysfunction (Felitti et al., 1998). The goal of softening a school’s profile, in addition to lowering the climate on campus, was to learn more about the students so as to place higher risk students in touch with community resources in an attempt to alleviate unhealthy outcomes. This area needs to be a priority as students are now going back to in-person classroom study.

It is hard to believe that 22 years after the Columbine high school shooting that the phenomenon still persists. School shootings are now an area of constant concern for educators. Administrators now have to balance student safety with academic achievement as their priority. School is supposed to be academically challenging, socially enjoyable and a time for personal growth. Students should not have to deal with the element of fear mixed in with their daily routines.

School shootings can have a traumatic effect on survivors (Rowhani-Rahbar, 2019). Almost two years after the school shooting in Saugus, California, one of the survivors I interviewed was diagnosed with PTSD. I am still in contact with his father and have learned that his academic performance has also suffered. The student is applying to colleges now and has expressed interest in becoming a psychologist. There is hope.

The challenge to American schools is now to make them safer and more effective. Part of that solution must rely on lowering the temperature on campuses and facilitating better relationships between students, teachers and mental health professionals. As we look ahead, educators must utilize their creative prowess and meet this challenge. The potential loss of civility and to the American education system is too high if they fail.

Works Cited

Ali Rowhani-Rahbar MD, P. (2019). School Shootings in the U.S.: What is the State of Evidence? Journal of Adolescent Health, 683-684.

Bartol, C. R. (2021). Criminal Behavior: A Psychological Approach (12th Ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Ron Avi Astor Ph.D., G. G. (2018, February 28). Call for Action to Prevent Gun Violence in the United States of America. Retrieved from University of Virgina Youth Violence Project: https://education.virginia.edu/prevent-gun-violence

Vincent J. Felitti MD, R. F. (1998). Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults. American Journal of Preventive Medicine Vo. 14 (4), 245-258.

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