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Snitches are becoming angels. Last month in Fort Collins, Colo., two girls warned police about three students who were then discovered with weapons and plans to attack Preston Junior High. Just last week in Twentynine Palms, Calif., Victoria Sudd, 17, watched the Santee horror unfold and then told her mom that she had heard two boys make comments on the bus about killing people. Sudd's father contacted the authorities, who quickly obtained a search warrant for the homes of the boys. The cops found a rifle and a list of 16 students whom the boys allegedly were going to target. Far from being ridiculed as a tattler, Sudd has been hailed as a heroine in Twentynine Palms, where fellow students hug her and the city plans to honor her.
Similarly, two boys were arrested last Wednesday after classmates at Friendship Christian School in Lebanon, Tenn., told teachers the boys had threatened them and talked of destroying Friendship. Students also turned in potential copycats last week in Miami, where two boys were suspended for 10 days after they said what happened in Santee was nothing compared with what they could do there.
But if all these incidents suggest that violence at schools has reached epidemic proportions, we should take a step back. It hasn't. According to the journal Criminal Justice Ethics, more than 99.99% of public schools have never had a homicide of any kind, let alone a mass killing. In the 1992-93 school year, there were 54 violent deaths on campuses; last year there were 16. "The data suggest that most schools are very safe places for kids, and they're getting safer," says Thomas Connelly, a safety consultant who has worked in schools in 22 states.
Schools are cracking down nonetheless, on the theory that lightning can strike anywhere. Cops are a fixture in many schools (Houston Independent School District alone employs a stunning 177 officers), and so are keycards for entry. And all over the nation, schools have installed phone lines for anonymous tips; administrators must spend hours following up on the calls. "We push the staff almost to the breaking point to investigate every one," says Tom Miller, a school official in Port Huron, Mich. At some schools--including Columbine, understandably--the tips lead automatically to a police investigation, even when they are benign comments taken out of context.
That was the case with the high school student represented by Micki Moran, a family-law attorney in the Chicago suburbs. In 1999, nine days after Columbine, the student, a ninth-grade boy from Wheeling, Ill., was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, though the police considered more serious charges, including mayhem. Classmates thought of him as an "unpopular nerd," Moran says, and made fun of his black clothes. One day at lunch, a group of kids approached him; one said, "You're like those kids at Columbine." The boy responded, "I could be." On the strength of those three little words, Moran says, hysteria broke out at the school as rumors swirled about his possible intent. His locker was searched, and the baseball bat found inside was labeled a weapon. The entire school was evacuated. The boy spent six months in counseling and is now flourishing at another school. The school has said that under the circumstances, it acted appropriately.