GUN VIOLENCE

Are School Officials Culpable in Michigan Shooting?

At my school, the kid would be gone from campus before he had a chance to take aim

The American flag now flies at half staff outside Oxford High School near Detroit.

The four students who died at the hands of a 15-year-old classmate last week will be buried soon.

The shooter’s parents have been charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter in the case and, according to recent news reports, were on the run for a short period of time.

But there’s another disturbing detail in the case gaining traction. As journalists peel back the layers of another American school shooting — the 28th since August 1 of this year — reports emerged that those in charge had the chance to do something before four kids lost their lives at the business end of a semi-automatic weapon.

The Oxford High School administration — those in charge on campus — received two credible warnings about the young man who planned to wreak havoc in their hallways.

And they apparently did nothing about either one.

On Monday — the day before the shootings — a teacher caught this creeper during class, looking online for information about purchasing ammunition. The teacher — as I and I’m sure all of my fellow educators across the country have been trained to do — informed the principal and others about the situation.

The next morning — just hours before the bloodbath— another teacher turned the kid in for unsettling sketches he scribbled. Again, this was during class. Several news outlets have reported drawings of a person with a gun; bullets dripping blood; a person bleeding on the ground, and a “thought bubble” reading “Help me,” and other red-flag words.

The teacher, of course, reported this beyond-disturbing development. And this time, at least administrators called the kid’s parents. They came up to school and met with someone in charge — it’s unclear who — along with their son.

And then authorities sent the boy back to class. He started his killing spree shortly thereafter.

Unbelievable.

Some speculate he had already stashed the weapon in a backpack before the meeting. In other words, he was armed while being interrogated in the office.

Yet school officials say they sent the boy back to class because “no discipline was warranted”, according to the school district superintendent. He’d never been in trouble before, you see.

While the school, of course, bears no blame for the shooter’s frame of mind or his ready access to a weapon of death, the case could be made that disciplinary protocols left the administration woefully unprepared and perhaps liable for the killer remaining on campus.

Here’s what should have happened at Oxford High School, but sadly didn’t.

The high school where I taught for 23 years had no active shooters during that time. But we had close calls. And this is the way they handled each situation.

• Any time a student made what was deemed a “credible threat”, he/she was banned from campus immediately. My school district didn’t mess around with student rights when it came to public safety. Yes, they banned a few kids over the years without just cause, and had to apologize more than once, but the general consensus on our campus — from the administration to the teachers, to the support staff, to the parents — was virtually unanimous. Get the kid out of here, and ask the questions later.
• As the digital age dawned with the millennium, we didn’t ignore “old school” means of communication from troubled students. Back in the day, kids would scribble in their spirals, much like the Michigan shooter did. Now a lot of threats gain traction online. We were trained to report anything and everything that disturbed us, from conversations to drawings to posture to actions. I’d say sketches of shooters, guns, bullets, blood, bodies and the scribbled missive “Help me” more than clear the bar in that regard.
• Kids — especially high-schoolers — talk a lot. And teachers had to keep their ears open for tell-tale signs. We had four bomb threats phoned in while I was teaching. All were from disgruntled students, dissatisfied with one thing or another taking place in our building. But only one of them posted online about his plans for the next day, and in the wake of the school’s evacuation, bragged again online about what he had accomplished. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that someone — actually dozens of someones — would talk about what they saw on the internet. No one was hurt, and no bomb was found. But that young man was arrested before the “all clear” sounded after the school’s evacuation and he never set foot at our school or at any school function again, even when he attempted to attend his little sister’s graduation a couple of years later.
• Always expect that the kid was carrying. Again, a classmate of the gun’s owner — in this case, it was a sawed-off shotgun he’d lifted from his grandpa’s house — told our school resource officer. You know, the professional policeman assigned to every high school in our district. In this case, the SRO did scare the living bejesus out of an American History teacher during 1st period, when he knocked on the door and then entered the classroom with his hand on the butt of his service revolver, but he kept his weapon holstered and in what I’m told was more-or-less one fluid movement, greeted the teacher, stepped across the classroom, yanked the kid out of his chair and hustled him out of the building. The student was unarmed, but showed the officer where he’d stashed the gun in his jalopy in the student parking lot.
• Creepy parents often produce creepy children. I could write a book someday — but probably wouldn’t enjoy being re-traumatized — containing the missives, pleas, commentaries and downright threats I received while helming the podium in Room 215. And I forwarded each and every one to the proper authorities. Let’s just say the apple almost never falls far from the tree, and leave it at that.

So, I’m really not perplexed at all. The district superintendent is trying to cover his tracks. He shouldn’t be surprised if he gets served.

I get it — a student opened fire in one of his schools, killing four and injuring seven. But the already-grieving Oxford Community Schools could probably use a little less smoke and a few more mirrors reflecting back on the problem at hand.

“There’s just been a lot of talk about the student that was apprehended, that he was called up to the office and all that kind of stuff,” Superintendent Tim Throne said in a 12-minute video. “No discipline was warranted. There are no discipline records at the high school. Yes, this student did have contact with our front office. And yes, his parents were on campus.”

Well, that’s fairly specific. No, not really.

But I think the good superintendent speaks, in a sense, for the whole country here: “To say that I am still in shock and numb is probably an understatement,” Throne said.

Yeah. You, me and everyone else who is worried about the active shooter pandemic, buddy. Really, though, it’s a “pandemic within a pandemic”. And it doesn’t show signs of clearing up any time soon.