What follows may not sit very well with some folks. I hope it does, but if it doesn't, that's ok. It took me a loooooong time to come up with something that I hope speaks truth to reality, truth with compassion, truth with empathy, and even truth with sympathy. That isn't easy when talking about school safety related to school massacres and the fallout that ensues. So, please take what I have to say with a proverbial grain of salt and take it in the spirit it is intended.....the highest good for safer schools.
Truth is, following school massacres, we often see parents whose children were murdered or injured become advocates for school safety or gun safety reform or both. I kinda sorta include myself in both....to a degree. My focus is mostly on school safety, although I've been known to not back down from a challenging 'discussion' on gun safety reform, either.
Both kinds of advocacy sometimes take on a strident, sometimes adversarial tone.
The most vocal parent advocates oftentimes speak from their own unfiltered anger or sometimes even rage and frustration stemming from their children being murdered or injured in a place they were supposed to be safe. Rightfully so. Who can blame them? Not me. I empathize with them. I sympathize with them. I have two children who were directly affected by the massacre at Columbine High School. One of them almost didn't survive her injuries. So, I get it. I really do.
That being said, and although some might disagree with me on this, I also advocate that parents whose children have been killed or injured in a mass school shooting must have, and be given, a voice in advocacy for school safety. No doubt about that!
However, a word of caution must be used here because many of those parents also appear to conflate school safety solely with gun safety reform. And this is where I try to speak truth to reality:
The reality is that these two arenas of advocacy are not mutually exclusive. Nor are they mutually inclusive.
It might also be safe to say most parent advocates also really don't possess adequate knowledge of, or expertise and experience in, what it really takes to make our schools as safe as they can be. I don't say that to be disrespectful. I say it as a simple statement of fact. As a result, they oftentimes end up trying to re-invent the wheel. I’ve seen it happen following virtually every single mass school shooting since Columbine in some form or another.
For example, following the Marjory Stoneman Douglas (MSD) school massacre I put together a graphic that helps illustrate how the more things changed, the more they stayed the same following the Columbine school massacre. The graphic takes quotes directly from the final reports from each of these massacres (MSD Final Report and Columbine Final Report). The similarities are striking....at least they are to me.
This sort of redundancy is probably the single most frustrating thing for me, personally, because recommendations made are supposed to be considered and then implemented if appropriate, right? RIGHT?!
I know changes were made in response protocols following the Columbine massacre (engage and neutralize active shooters instead of waiting for SWAT to arrive to do that), but seriously, folks? This isn't rocket science!!
Both school massacres saw multiple advocacy groups form that were led by parents whose children were murdered or injured. Some have been much more successful in their efforts than others. I tried that route following the Columbine massacre and failed miserably to make even a small dent in the school safety arena. I think part of the reason for that is my 'window' for doing something passed by before I actively engaged in trying to make a difference. The reason(s) for that delay are very personal, but they are real.
But I digress.
Parent advocates' passion drives them. Their pain drives them. Their anger and even rage drives them. I get it. I do. I’ve been there and done that. But those things should never, solely by themselves, drive policy making decisions in the school safety arena.
This is where the term 'single incident experts' comes into play. The only thing that separates me from being a 'single incident expert' is I also have a background in emergency management.
In emergency management there are ‘theoreticians' and there are 'practitioners'. I didn’t become a 'practitioner' until my Columbine experience. Thing is, though, I was a ‘theoretician’ in emergency management for decades prior to Columbine. I have yet to see a single parent whose children that were affected by a mass school shooting possess the necessary ‘theoretician’ expertise in emergency management prior to their tragedy occurring. That doesn't mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that some of them haven't acquired necessary expertise in emergency management related to school safety since their tragedy. There are certainly some that have. But many of them have not. That, too, is a statement of fact.
As a direct result, I don't know any other way to say this, so I'm just going to be blunt: If the injury/murder of a person's child is the first time that person has been involved in advocating for policies that would have protected said child, that’s a problem.
Full disclosure; because my emergency management career was primarily focused on dam safety, one could say I'm just as guilty as the next parent advocate regarding school safety. It’s being reactively proactive in school safety after the fact. That's what I did. I was being reactively proactive and am still doing it.
The difference? If proactive parents whose children have been killed or injured in a mass school shooting choose to let their emotions control their activism, it can become problematic. I chose a long time ago to set my emotions aside as much as I possibly can to advocate as rationally as I possibly can.
Also, if parent advocates do not acquire necessary knowledge and expertise in promoting their advocacy, that’s where the ‘single incident expert’ approach becomes problematic in the school safety arena. That approach does not allow addressing a full spectrum of threats and risks. Its focus too often aligns solely with gun safety reform simply because mass school shootings are, by their very nature, gun safety reform related.
Finally, my frustration level with the direction school safety efforts keep going is palpable.
There are some things we have done in the school safety arena. But, there are still sooooo many things we can, and must, do to help make our schools as safe as they can possibly be. Focusing almost exclusively on gun safety reform to drive school safety policy isn't one of them. This kind of focus will never adequately address all the hazards and risks faced by every school nationally.
That….that right there is what ‘single incident experts’ must come to understand and accept if they truly hope to have the safest schools possible.
With love sent and much respect given to parent advocates in school safety, this has been my two cents.
* Comments on this blog are moderated.
I understand the gist of your message. When I lobby legislators for any particular gun reform law, it is from my own experience that I speak because that's where I've made myself an expert. I know what could potentially have stopped my daughter's murder. That doesn't keep me from advocating for other reforms, even those that wouldn't have had an impact on the NIU shooting, but are simply common sense measures that any unbiased, rational citizen should be able to see would enhance public safety. I don't claim to be a public safety expert, but I'm also not one to say, "it's not rocket science," either. The true difficulty in making progress is because everyone has their own definition of "safety," especially within the framework of what they deem "acceptable losses," which is also subject to personal biases. I do everything I can to keep any emotion out of the gun debate, but I wouldn't equate emotion with irrationality. And the people who try to invalidate someone's position by hurling the "you're too emotional to be rational" accusation are the exact same people having hissy fits because THEIR emotion is that they don't like having to be inconvenienced in any way, even if a small, non-infringing speed bump would save countless lives. And THAT, in my opinion, is why not much ever gets accomplished.
ReplyDeleteBut as to your assertion that school safety entails much more than just gun reform measures, I agree. There are more things to take into account. I can give you one example: when we toured the "repurposed" Cole Hall, I literally went weak in the knees and wept with relief to see that all the rows of chairs packed in together with those lapdesks that swing up from the side of the arm and over across the lap were all gone from the lecture hall. I know those goddamned things made it harder for students to escape during the shooting. In their place were widely spaced tables with chairs that swung in and out very easily; in fact, you could swing it back to the table behind you if you wanted to turn around and work with the people at that table. Very utilitarian, but also far easier to evacuate in an emergency situation.