SCHOOL SHOOTINGS'Aggressive drills' in Response to U.S. School Shootings Can Harm Students
Following an increase in the number of school shootings in the United States, many schools now conduct regular mass-shooting drills for students and faculty. Experts say that these drills, if not properly conducted, needlessly increase student stress and anxiety, leading to lasting psychological damage.
Six months after the mass murder of young students at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, shootings at U.S. schools appear to have reached a five-year high, according to Education Week. The nonprofit magazine reports that 34 people have been killed and 88 have been injured as a result of 40 shootings at schools this year.
But James Alan Fox, a Northeasternprofessor who maintains the longest-running and most extensive data source on mass killings, says that many of those events do not meet the traditional criteria.
What constitutes a school shooting?
Fox notes that people tend to define school shootings as tragic events that victimize students during classroom hours: At Virginia Tech, where 32 people (including 27 students) were killed in 2007; at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where 26 people (including 20 first-grade students) were killed in 2012; at Robb Elementary School, where 21 people (including 19 students who were 10 years or younger) were killed.
Fox says that the tabulations of Education Week do not meet the traditional criteria because many of the events in 2022 took place at school rather than in school.
“Of the 10 fatal shootings, seven occurred in the parking lots and playgrounds and athletic fields outside the school,” Fox says of the 2022 data. “It’s an important point because when people think about school shootings, they respond by wanting more security in the school.”
Fox says that inflating the threat of school shootings leads to policies that he argues can be harmful to students—such as arming teachers with guns and operating active shooter drills at schools that result in stress and anxiety that Fox cites as needless.
“The point is, you need to have a clear set of data in order to know what to do about it,” Fox says.
Fox says his goal in managing the Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killings Database (which won a 2022 EPPY Award for digital journalism) is to deepen perspective and reduce anxiety around such horrific incidents. He says the same is true of the context he provides on school shootings.
“We focus a lot on these shootings, which are awful,” Fox says. “They absolutely impact the entire community when they happen. But they are extremely rare.”
And yet, adds Fox, the events sometimes result in drastic measures within schools.
