How it goes.
After the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado in 1999 where 12 students and one teacher were murdered by high school seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (who then killed themselves)… many people in the community, in the nation and in the world wondered could more people have been saved? What happened to spread the alarm? Who heard it, who did not? What was the students’ response? The teachers’? What should have been set in place long before? There were many other questions. We might have one more small answer now.
Today, an extraordinary film was released by CNN, a home video made yesterday by a Cleveland Ohio student, Warren Marks, of his teacher and classroom of students at his Success Tech Academy when a ‘code blue’ was called over the loudspeakers. The students in Mark’s math class didn’t realize it, but at that moment, one of their classmates was loose in the school with a loaded firearm.
The students as shown on the video are very slow to react to protect themselves. Precious time is lost until what appears to be an alert teacher climbs up and stands on a desk trying to quiet and focus the raucous students, shouting at them that this is not a joke, to stop laughing, this is to be taken seriously.
More moments before the message sinks in; til the students organize and finally lock down in the classroom. This chaotic and slow response comes in part from the students not immediately having enough specific information about the threat.
For many persons in general, when confronted with alarm, it’s a knee-jerk reaction to initially question or disbelieve there’s a real threat. Despite old media which no doubt will now seek out students who have been proximate to violence before and portray that as ‘the norm’, most students reacted normally… they still expected the inside of the school to be a protected place.
Asa Coon, the troubled 14 year old student who was the reason for the ‘code blue,’ subsequently shot two teachers and two students, and then took his own life. One teacher was shot in the back, one in the chest; the latter teacher having now had surgery and being listed in ‘fair’ condition.
We know the drill.
1. Troubled student
2. Students complained about the student
3. Teachers brought the issue forward
4. Evidence of ill intents found in troubled student’s writing, video, artwork
5. Others tried to intervene but were not supported
6. Other attempted to install precautionary rules /devices in school system
7. Nothing effective accomplished
8. Student gave warnings of impending homicide/suicide
9. Student had known serious mental distress
10. Student kept falling through cracks in terms of containment, help.
11. Harassment, ridiculing, scorning confrontations against/ with troubled student continue by others.
12. Firearm obtained
13. One last straw occurs
14. Psychotic break
15. Murder, suicide.
Everyone in shock.
As well they ought be. The dirty secret is that ignoring homicidal students is still institutionalized policy in too many school systems today. Legal concerns outfox concerns for children’s safety. This deadly configuration allows deeply disturbed and armed young people into school settings, and it is fostered by no early evaluation and containing of the seriously and homicidally mentally ill, not recognizing the threat such a person poses to those in proximity, not giving full weight to students’ and teachers’ evidences, observations and complaints, missing many chances to intervene effectively via a coordinated and relentless team approach from several disciplines; legal, medical, psychological, spiritual, familial… and with competent oversight.
Whose fault there is not better evaluation and aid early on? I say, mine and all those in my profession of psychology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, social work, family therapy, who do not shout out and shout down the ones who want to coddle those in charge at institutions by weakly saying, ‘They did their best, they didn’t know, they had no idea.’
I say, on a day like today, that my profession has failed to clearly and publicly and consistently, year in and year out, distinguish the difference between the onset of severe mental illness in adolescents, and kids who are merely creatively strange.
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard an administrator or parent, say, ‘It’s just a stage they’re going through.’ While it is true that certain stages of teenage development might revolve around rebellions of varying degrees, ‘normal teenage strangeness’ has very different markers than teenage development that aims toward unmitigated homicidal and suicidal rage.
How to make a ‘perfect homicidal storm’ out of the factors of mental illness, grievances imagined or real, ammunition, firearms, school children and teachers unawares? Note the complainants’ observations, but either disbelieve most or else keep as the highest priority ‘looking over one’s shoulder to check legal exposure’ so as to protect job instead of protect human beings. In essence, and deadly ironically, don’t reach out to educate oneself and others about severe, incipient and burgeoning mental illness in a student. Just make a paper trail, but say and do no more that that.
Meanwhile this week, another 14 year old in Pennsylvania was discovered to have illegally collected an arsenal of automatic weapons, ammo clips, homemade hand grenade, etc., that is so vast that when laid out butt to barrel would cover the surface of a full-size bed.
Yesterday the Pennsylvania boy’s parents were reported to have said, they had no idea.
Today, the Sheriff on that case reports that the 14 year old’s mother now says, she purchased one of the automatic weapons for her son at a gun show recently.
Maybe plenty of ‘blame,’ meaning ‘enabling factors,’ to go around. Royally.
What is less clear is: Who will carry the known and effective early interventions and solutions to prevent ill persons from causing mayhem… until those new ways of seeing and intervening become so common proactively, that they, rather than ill murderous students, become the norm.