Third student dies from Ohio school shooting

In Chardin, Ohio the morning-after talk is all too familiar…

• Out of nowhere the killer just gunned them down.
• The students were sitting ducks.
• We never saw this coming.
•  He was a quiet kid. He never bothered anybody. He had friends.
• No he was an outcast, bullied, troubled, into Goth.
• The community is reeling, what can we do to help.
• We don’t have a motive yet, but we’ll keep looking.
• Hug your children, talk with them, tell them you love them.

Our hearts go out to the families, the students and teachers, and the entire Chardin community.

Columbine shook us out of our reverie and made us realize that such violence could happen anywhere, and yes, it could even happen in our town. Even so, it hasn’t gotten any easier to hear that innocent children were shot in their school. We want  a motive, an explanation, something we can point to that will explain away how T. J. Lane got to the point of slaughtering his classmates as they sat talking in the cafeteria.

Killings in a school attract widespread media attention. Yet the reality is that serious, physical, violent crime in schools has decreased over the past decade. School shootings and other fatal acts are still very rare, and less than 2% of youth murders occur in school. When we only consider this school murder statistic, we get the distorted view that violence is very rare, involves a weapon, and is deadly.

So what about the other 179 days of the school year? Does this mean they violence-free? It all depends on your definition of violence.

Every day in every school, students are emotionally and physically victimized by other students and adults. With a broad view of violence, the statistics for taunting, bullying, harassment, gang activity, cyber-bullying, hazing, and hate crimes (especially toward students who are gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender), and discussions with students about what goes on in classrooms, on the bus, in the cafeteria and bathrooms, present a clearer view of reality. This is the violence they live with daily, that interferes with their learning and keeps them home from school out of fear. So to understand and prevent tragedies like this in the future and to create a healthy school climate, we need to look at behavior along the entire violence continuum, from subtle to obvious.

Violence that begins on the subtle end of the continuum escalates if we don’t intervene early and preemptively.  Something valuable can come from this tragic loss of life if it reminds us that our children deal with violence every day and that we spend our best efforts  in prevention by teaching students how to be good people of high character, and in early intervention by getting help for those who are struggling.

For more information, read my blogs about the McInerney murder trial, my web page about the violence continuum, and to learn why and how we can prevent violence every day of the school year, read my book, The Violence Continuum: Creating a Safe School Climate.