Feb. 19, 2002
Seeking Safety for Students and Schools
In the Wake of Sept. 11 GW’s Hamilton Fish Institute
Seeks to Protect Our Children from Themselves
By Eric
Solomon
Though the events of Sept.
11 have permanently changed life in America, some of its initial effects
— reduced school violence — have proven less enduring, says
Paul Kingery, director of The George Washington University’s Hamilton
Fish Institute on School and Community Violence.
Last month’s shootings
in Manhattan that left two high school students injured, a shooting
at the Appalachian School of Law that left three dead and three injured,
and a murder-suicide at a South Florida community college, demonstrate
that whatever small reprieve from school violence that may have been
experienced appears to be over, says Kingery. He expects to see an increase
in such events over the next few months.
“Historically, a larger
percentage of major violent incidents occur in schools during the spring
months,” Kingery says. “When the school year starts, in most
cases, students have had the summer to cool off. Some change schools
and others matriculate. As the school year progresses, tensions start
to build and patience with stressful situations such as bullying starts
to grow thin. Too many turn to violence as their release.”
The statistics bear this theory
out. In the 1999–2000 school year, 65.6 percent of violent incidents
that resulted in deaths or shooting injuries occurred during the months
from January to June. Likewise, 58.6 percent occurred during the spring
months of the 2000–2001 school year.
“I think last month’s
shootings are a wake-up call for teachers and administrators to recognize
that tensions are increasing,” says Kingery. “In addition
to the usual tensions students regularly face, there may even be more
this year as ripples from the terrorist attacks begin to be felt in
the economy and in individual homes across America. The message of these
latest acts of violence demonstrates that, as we focus on securing the
homeland, we must not overlook the needs of our schools and our children.”
The National School Safety
and Security Services collects data from print and electronic media
on school-related violent deaths and school shootings that did not result
in death. In an analysis of these incident reports, the Hamilton Fish
Institute concluded that the only month for which data on these violent
incidents varied dramatically from the past two years was in October
2001, immediately following the terrorist attacks.
In October 2001, there were
four violent incidents that resulted in either deaths or shooting injuries,
roughly half the number recorded during the same months in October 1999
and 2000, which had nine and eight violent incidents, respectively.
By November and December, the numbers had rebounded to the levels seen
in previous years.
According to institute research,
one element of implementing a comprehensive approach to school safety
would be an on-site security analysis. Though metal detectors were set
up at the school’s main entrance at Martin Luther King, Jr. High
School, where one of last month’s shootings occurred, the student
accused of shooting two of his classmates took the gun into the building
through an unattended side door. A security assessment may have helped
to identify the need for teachers, volunteers, security staff, or video
surveillance cameras to be posted at those alternate entrances. They
also help to identify potentially unsafe areas within schools and areas
where weapons can be easily hidden.
With assistance from the US
Congress and funding from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention, the US Department of Justice, and other sources, the Hamilton
Fish Institute was founded in 1997 to rigorously research, develop,
and evaluate violence prevention strategies for schools and their communities.
The institute is housed in GW’s Graduate School of Education and
Human Development.
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
