Monday was horrifying: the sirens, the crying teen-agers, the helicopters racing to hospitals in Santee, Calif. Two dead, 13 more injured. Shocked teachers and students and parents saying, "We never thought it could happen here."
Tuesday was chilling: What 15-year-old Andy Williams did at Santana High School seemed not only to shock, but to inspire. Nationwide, schools began to hear of copycat threats. Teen-agers were arrested, classes canceled.
Students comfort each other Friday at a makeshift memorial at Santana High School in Santee, Calif. Charles Andrew Williams opened fire at the school Monday, killing two students and injuring 13 others.
Then came Wednesday, when 14-year-old Elizabeth Catherine Bush walked into the cafeteria of her Catholic school in Williamsport, Pa., and shot 13-year-old Kimberly Marchese in the shoulder. So senseless.
Panic is natural.
Thus, the inevitable frenzied calls for teachers to carry firearms and school bags to be clear plastic and every school to be locked up and ready for lockdown, with metal detectors and surveillance cameras and police officers standing guard outside the classrooms.
Panic is natural, yes but most panic-induced actions do nothing to stem violence, say experts in school safety.
If they've learned anything since 15 died at Columbine High School two years ago, it's this: Schools need to take a collective deep breath, then concentrate on fixing the kind of deep-seated problems that can't be detected by even state-of-the-art security systems.
Among those problems: bullying, the isolation some students feel, the impersonal nature of many large schools, students' pervasive mistrust of faculty.
"When shootings happen, schools want to act quickly and they want what they do to be seen," said Joanne McDaniel, acting director of the Center for the Prevention of School Violence in North Carolina. "If a school puts in a metal detector or a camera system or something else visual, it's so much easier to tell that story than to say, 'We're going to be teaching character development,' or 'We're starting an anti-bullying program.' There's a pattern of reaction rather than real response right after a shooting occurs."
In 1999, the days after Columbine brought a spate of copycat threats, too as well as a spate of untested, potentially harmful quick fixes, from the banning of black trench coats to "profiling" methods purporting to identify students with violent tendencies. Tough security measures, crackdowns, singling out of certain students all these approaches may hurt more than they help, according to those who study school violence.
One of the most troubling aspects of Monday's shooting in Santee was the fact that, though Andy Williams had told many friends of his plans for violence, they didn't pass on the information, in part because they feared getting him into trouble. That Williams talked before he acted appears to be more the norm than the exception in school shooting cases as is the tendency for classmates to keep quiet.
It is precisely the kind of heavy-handed reactions to school shootings seen last week that may keep students from coming forward, said Russ Skiba, professor at the Indiana University School of Education and director of the federally funded Safe & Responsive Schools Project, which helps schools create comprehensive approaches to safety.
Take the familiar television images of teen-agers being hauled off in handcuffs after making verbal threats.
"We're going to need to create some atmosphere of trust, and a sense among kids that adult educators will deal with these situations with some wisdom and fairness," Skiba said. "If they look around them and all they see is overreaction and panic reactions, I think they're just not going to come and talk to adults."
In Colorado, the pressure to find overnight solutions in the wake of Columbine was particularly intense. But in general, the state has taken a measured, long-term approach, said Jane Grady, assistant director for the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado, Boulder, which is helping eight Colorado districts draw up safe-school plans.
Instead of racing to install costly programs, many districts spend time figuring out what their particular needs are. Once they have, they tackle them slowly, often with very low-tech solutions aimed at making their schools friendlier, less alienating places.
"One thing that we know from preliminary research is that often what works is something as simple as a principal or a teacher standing out in front of the school and saying, 'Good morning, Johnny. How are you? How's your family?' That sort of thing is really a big change of thinking for some schools but relationships are very important."
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