CLASS DISMISSED: School violence still a major issue

By: Jasmyn Elliott/Columnist

I would be remiss if I didn’t address the high school shooting in Ohio that claimed the lives of three innocent students and landed yet another emotionally disturbed youth behind bars.

On Feb. 27, 17-year-old T.J. Lane opened fire in a cafeteria full of students at Chardon High School, killing three students and injuring two others and leaving an indelible painful mark on all who witnessed it. Interestingly, Lane wasn’t even a student at Chardon.

Ever since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, the first one I was directly exposed to, I have noticed that whenever a school shooting happens we, as a society, try to figure out whether or not the shooter came from a broken home, listened to death metal and played violent video games, hoping that these ultimately useless facts would somehow help us understand why he committed such a horrendous crime.

Truthfully, it does seem as if the shooters in these incidences were troubled in some way.

In Lane’s case, a report in The New York Times revealed that he attended Lake Academy, a school for at-risk youth, and is said to have witnessed several incidences of family violence at a young age, particularly the fights between his parents that landed them in court several times and was likely the determining factor in their divorce.

However, there are many students that go through much worse and have never picked up a gun.

When senseless acts of school violence occur, it resurrects the fear many of us have, especially as students.

We succumb to hyper-vigilance and paranoia, terrified that on one fateful day one of our peers will step foot onto our campus ready to open fire, gun laws and anti-violence policies be damned.

Although the threat of school violence is an unfortunate possibility, it doesn’t have to be a reality so long as we get such students the help they need before they are committed to harming others and themselves.

Reaching out to troubled students doesn’t stop at the college level, as illustrated by Seung-Hui Cho and the Virginia Tech shooting that occurred in 2007.

Thankfully, our University has not endured such a dangerous ordeal, but the possibility still exists.

Both students and professors must do their part in preventing such a heinous act, and this can be done by doing two simple things: being observant and being proactive.

Should any of us see red-flag behavior in our peers, encourage them to get help from the University’s counseling services or by other means, and do not hesitate in reporting observed threats of violence to the authority figures on campus.

Stringent gun laws and discouraging death metal music will not completely eliminate gun violence in any arena, even a school.

What we can do, as a society, is reassess why these students become murderers and make improvements in a variety of systems so the next school shooting does not occur.

Getting an education is stressful enough as it is; none of us should ever have the additional worry of being shot on our way to class.

My condolences go out to those affected by the Chardon High School shooting.

 

“Class Dismissed” is a weekly column critiquing education in America. Email jasmyn.elliott@fiusm.com