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People got together to stop a school shooting before it happened

69 points by whack 1y ago

rolph 1y ago
eventually someone will figure out how to stop adolescent cliques from driving people into mental infirmity, then truly stop a shooting before it even begins to happen. not only that, a large portion of suicides, self harm, and academic disadvantage would be stopped, before it even begins to happen. this should be just as elementary as storing weapons properly, and modeling responsible usage. it should be pathetically obvious when an individual is being systematicly ostracised, schcool year after school year.
- asdff 1y ago
  Even if you snapped your fingers and eliminated bullying from the world, you will still get school shooters, due to the intersection of mental illness rates in the population and gun access.
  - kelseyfrog 1y ago
    Are you saying that if we cannot solve the problem entirely that even incremental improvements are not worth employing? I'd like to find a more charitable interpretation.
    - bongodongobob 1y ago
      They are saying it's a lot more complicated than just stopping bullying.
    - metalman 1y ago
      you have masterfully rendered my less charitable pronouncements, redundent
    - asdff 1y ago
      Bullying happens in other species outside humans even. It is very deep evolutionary behavior. It isn't going away, unfortunately. However, when we look at places outside the US that have very low rates of school shootings, they generally have stronger gun controls and better mental health care. To me, this is more realistically achievable than rooting out bullying. The vast majority of victims of bullying do not murder people. The vast majority of school shooters (100%, surely) are mentally ill and had access to a gun.
      - kelseyfrog 1y ago
        There are many behaviors that other species do that we don't, even behaviors that we used to do that we've collectively decided are socially unacceptable - rape, cannibalism and infanticide easy come to mind. The longstanding history of such behavior, I would hope, reflects the difficulty of reducing it, and not our stance on whether it should be reduced. Often the most difficult part of change is confronting the fatalistic position that nothing can be done. The vast majority of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking, still it was a worthwhile effort to reduce asbestos use. Likewise, and generally, we can address issues by targeting a wide array of causal factors. How many of those school shooters do you recokon were also socially outcast or bullied?
      - huem0n 1y ago
        > Bullying happens in other species outside humans even. It is very deep evolutionary behavior. In animals, male parents often kill weak children. Doesn't really mean we just say "oh well, its in our DNA". Over and over society has managed to successfully surpress biological behaviors to nearly zero. I hope we can agree its an endeavor worth putting effort into. Right? > The vast majority of school shooters (100%, surely) are mentally ill and had access to a gun. 1. Having a mental illness does not make a person violent. Step one of better mental health (illness or no illness) is reducing bullying. 2. Saying "100% surely" is not very convincing to me. What percentage of shooters are suspected to be born with a mental illness? (Rather than forming one from environmental factors) what data/sources is that conclusion based on?
        pessimizer 1y ago
  - huem0n 1y ago
    While fine to try and make that argument, what percentage of shooters were not bullied?
    - exe34 1y ago
      I suspect mental health issues are a big glowing neon sign that says "bully me".
      - t-3 1y ago
        Yep. Bullies are generally looking for a response. Someone who can deal with bullying in a level headed and appropriate manner isn't an interesting or easy target. Someone who "freaks out" is fun and interesting to torment, and their response is more likely to bias authority figures against them and insulate the bully from consequences and even twist the bully into the victim.
  - JTbane 1y ago
    As a start there should be common-sense gun control, like, if you get any kind of mental illness or violence on your record you lose your guns. Secondly, if a kid does get access to your gun in any circumstances you should also be charged with manslaughter.
    - rgblambda 1y ago
      Agree with the second point, but the first point would have an unintended consequence of discouraging people from seeking mental health treatment for fear of losing their guns, thereby exacerbating the problem.
      - asdff 1y ago
        Then you perform the mental health evaluation before you are allowed to even own a gun in the first place. Along with regular evaluations thereafter to continue to be legally qualified to own a gun.
- kelseyfrog 1y ago
  I wish there were more said about the bullies and other student who made up a rumor about him. Each of these is a story in their own right as often these actions stem from other sources of injustice. I'd love to reqd more about evidence based bully reduction programs.
- silisili 1y ago
  Outside of corporal punishment, which is a divisive topic, the only thing I can think of are a) not making school compulsory, and b) not tying government money to headcount. If you have problem kids, expel them immediately and let the parents figure out the education. Which goes back in a way to my initial point - you have to at some point pick who's in charge. We've decided as a society it's the parents, so make public education an easily revokable privilege. Right now we seem to have chosen the worst of both worlds - forcing kids to spend time with untouchable psychopaths all day every day.
  - TimorousBestie 1y ago
    > If you have problem kids, expel them immediately and let the parents figure out the education. This is a non-starter if homeschooling is also as unregulated as it currently is in the States. Parents who abuse homeschooling to intentionally undereducate their children is a serious and growing problem.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - duskwuff 1y ago
      And that's for parents who choose to homeschool. If you start trying to force parents to homeschool their (poorly behaved) children, most of them probably won't (and/or can't) follow through.
    - silisili 1y ago
      Then let the military run the schools and cede power to the educators for discipline. You can't have it both ways. I don't blame most homeschool parents for not wanting their children indoctrinated by what's been happening the last few years. At some point, we need to pick a sane path. Today's system is literally the worst of every world to where we have daily school shootings and parents with any money at all opting out.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
- mikewarot 1y ago
  The adolescent cliques are a result of the artificial age segregation of students. Separating them from siblings or making friends of different ages, was likely a very bad decision, made in the interests of efficiency?
  - AtlasBarfed 1y ago
    You think placing younger kids with older, stronger, more hormone/testosterone/violent kids will decrease bullying? The notion of keeping kids in four year windows in the same school is a bad idea in my opinion.
    - mr_toad 1y ago
      Evidence shows that violence and other bad behaviour among boys is highly concentrated around the 14 year old mark. Statistically, older boys (16-18) are a lot better behaved and can act as a moderating influence.
- sznio 1y ago
  schools are too much like prisons, so the same problems show up
dangle1 1y ago
https://archive.ph/jOh1x https://archive.ph/jOh1x
deleted 1y ago
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deleted 1y ago
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sxp 1y ago
>Finally, one winter morning on the school bus, he turned on his tormentors. Curling his fingers in the shape of a pistol, he said, “I hope you all die.” > Mike Carinci, the school resource officer — a member of the sheriff’s office who worked in the school — viewed and listened to hours of video from the bus, seeing the level of abuse directed daily at the student. “Just horrible things, like nonstop,” he said. Mr. Carinci summoned the students and told them that the bullying had to end. The superintendent told them that they could be suspended or expelled. > The school traced the “hit list” rumor to a girl who admitted making it up. This quieted the community. This article makes it sound like the only one who was punished was the victim of the bullying for his emotional outburst and everyone who picked on him got away unscathed. This seems similar to the recent Netflix miniseries Adolescence. Both the series and the discussion around it focused on the main character rather than the bullying that caused him to kill.
- Apreche 1y ago
  Exactly. They don’t even question how all this bullying went on for so long without any adults noticing or doing anything about it. For "horrible things, like nonstop" to be going on without anyone noticing or doing anything about it is absurd levels of negligence by the parents, teachers, and administrators. It should never have reached this point.
  - paulryanrogers 1y ago
    Bus drivers have to focus on driving safely. Expecting them to maintain bully free interactions among 20+ kids is absurd. Pay for an adult monitor on the bus. Kids will find ways to harass each other: between classes, lunch times, recess, etc. Schools can probably do more, but I doubt they can fix bullying alone. And certainly not with the resources they're given today.
    - Apreche 1y ago
      Surveillance isn’t the answer, justice is. You know how women often don’t report sexual harassment and assault? It’s because if they do report it, they will suffer further victimization and their chances at any just outcome are too low. Same thing with bullying in schools. Kids don’t report it because if they do so, they will be opening themselves up to further victimization, and the people they report it to will not take sufficient action to stop it. All schools need to do is make it safe to report bullying, prioritizing the victim’s safety. Then with a report they don’t need blanket surveillance, they can just do targeted surveillance to verify the reports. Once verified, they should take immediate action to put a permanent stop to it.
trhway 1y ago
Whether the mass shooting was stopped or not is impossible to say. What is a fact here is that the "106 people from 59 organizations" spent several weeks to stop or at least significantly decrease the level of bullying against one student. One can only wonder why stopping bullying is that hard and expensive (100 state and federal employees at the minimum cost of $1K/employee/week). And why that "school resource officer" hadn't been doing his job? And why other adults can't get involved and stop bullying before it reaches the level when government has to get involved? These days adults don't "correct" teenagers anymore like it was done in the past and like say adult dogs do to badly behaving puppies.
- rjbwork 1y ago
  We've lost a lot of ability, societally speaking, to maintain order and discipline bad behavior. People are volatile and the youth have very little respect for their elders. Just read testimonials from teachers about the environment in public schools. They're structurally prohibited from addressing problem behavior, from kids not turning in work and being given a million chances to "make it up" or just being given a 50% for not doing ANYTHING and then being "socially promoted", to not being able to remove problem kids from their classrooms, to the gutting of the para role, etc. And this is just a microcosm of the wider society. Easier to just remove yourself from a situation when anyone could be carrying a gun. We're also living in larger and larger polities and individuals are far more anonymous. That means the grapevine and social shame are night impossible to enact. But this is the atomized, individualist, omni-competition that we keep being told is great for society and the economy.
  - paulryanrogers 1y ago
    > Easier to just remove yourself from a situation when anyone could be carrying a gun. There are more guns than people in the US. Whole states have open and concealed carry laws. You'd have to live like a hermit. The solution is blindingly obvious: make gun possession and ownership illegal. Yet we can't stop indoctrinating kids from a young age that guns are a human right, no matter the cost.
chmod775 1y ago
For a while I was nodding along, being able to picture what occurred and understand how the adults dealt with it. Then I realized these people were ~16 years old. Maybe it was an outlier? I looked up what the typical age of school shooters in the US is: also 16-17 years old. If a lot of these are bullying victims, something is seriously wrong. Looking back at my own time in school, people had grown out of this sort of bullying years earlier. Teachers would treat you like young adults by 16. If you engaged in this sort of extreme bullying at that age, you wouldn't get summoned to the headmaster's office to get a slap on the wrist - you'd face real consequences and might even find yourself dealing with police if not in juvenile court. Are these kids just not growing up because they're still being treated like 9 year olds when they're almost adults? I'd understand the occasional outlier, since even the occasional developmentally stunted "adult" engages in bullying, but it really shouldn't be a common theme. It is likely most adults still engaging in this behavior simply never were given reason to grow up before their behavioral patterns crystallized, much like the protagonists in our story at hand.
- dmitrygr 1y ago
  > If you engaged in this sort of extreme bullying at that age, you wouldn't get summoned to the headmaster's office to get a slap on the wrist - you'd face real consequences Clearly you didn’t go to American schools! If you complain, the teachers do nothing (not wanting to get involved or get hurt - teachers being hurt by students isn’t uncommon [1]) and the bullies bully you harder. If you fight back, the school administration gets YOU into trouble only. Ask me how I know. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=teacher+beaten+by+student https://www.google.com/search?q=teacher+beaten+by+student
  - Animats 1y ago
    What are the rules of engagement today when being bullied in school? Apparently shooting bullies is a no-no. You only get to do that as an adult in stand-your-ground states.[1] If attacked, do you get to use an improvised weapon such as a baseball bat? Great question to ask your school administrators, especially if you're a military brat and grew up around people who have to know when and where to use their lethal force. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law
CommanderData 1y ago
An odd phenomenon school shootings are and continue to be with little or no intervention from the government.
idle_zealot 1y ago
I know this "bullying causes shooters" narrative is popular and makes some kind of intuitive sense, but do we have actual data on it? Is there even a correlation? Because my memory of the last few months of shooters is that most of them didn't really experience bullying (though were definitely socially maladjusted). I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting bullying isn't a problem, regardless of its correlation or lack thereof.
ameixaseca 1y ago
It's ludicrous to read the article and notice how hard they are trying not to blame the victim, as if a child going through bullying and seeing that nobody around them cares to actually do something is somehow in the wrong when they react. I never seen or heard any school doing any meaningful actions to deter bullying, and I don't mean this about the US system alone. Students are often left to fend off by themselves like animals, only punished when they fight back. The classic victim-turned-perpretator is symptom of a system that is fundamentally broken. I don't say this to justify any kind of violence, just that it is understandable and baffling that so little seems to be done to address root causes. Almost as if the children going through this are right on point: nobody really cares. The last paragraph says it all: > At one point during his senior year, he even asked to meet her team to thank them. “He thanked us for caring about him,” the sergeant said. “Because he felt like no one ever took the time to really care, and he could tell that we cared. It was really nice to hear.” I read this a few times now and it hits hard every time. I hope he's well and was able move one with his life. This would be indeed the best achievement of a system that should be like this from day 1.
cobertos 1y ago
> The team reassessed his threat as moderate, which reduced the monitoring. I wonder what sort of monitoring. If it was purely just checking in with him, or more than that? I feel like constantly being watched or having my devices watched as a kid would have made me more paranoid as an adult. Less able to trust the world.
shruubi 1y ago
As someone who was the victim of a lot of bullying myself, this article is a very mixed bag for me. For one, I like the idea of creating some degree of systems of support to try and prevent things like school shootings from happening by stopping them before they get too far. On the other hand, unless there are more details missing from this article, it really seems like the only person who got any degree of punishment is the student who was being bullied. You know what stops bullies that doesn't involve shooting them? Ruthless consequences for their actions. Schools love to talk about their 'zero tolerance' policy for bullying, but if there are no consequences outside of a teacher telling the bully to stop, then that is definitely less of a 'zero tolerance' policy and more of a 'mostly tolerated' policy. Zero tolerance means immediate suspensions, expulsions, supporting police reports for physically violent bullying etc.
- CalChris 1y ago
  The article does cover the bullies: Mr. Carinci summoned the students and told them that the bullying had to end. The superintendent told them that they could be suspended or expelled.
  - 77pt77 1y ago
    [dead]
  - crossroadsguy 1y ago
    Ragging (esp. in STEM places; often violent; no slapping, et cetera, was not even considered violent) was a pathetic menace where I live. It is still not eradicated, but has shrunk to something so little that it is not a norm anymore or a right passage for seniors. How did it shrink? When seniors started getting expelled – no quarters given if ragging was proven. Yup, cracking the toughest of entrance exams here after toiling for years in school (sometimes after) and going to those colleges and then getting kicked out (often with a piece of paper that ensured you didn't get admission elsewhere either) just because you couldn't resist harassing/abusing/attacking/hurting freshers who had just entered college did the trick. Before that? Threats, warnings, and policy-making just on paper did zilch. It was literally a national move sort of - coming right from the top, forcing states to act.. etc.
ozozozd 1y ago
So, no action necessary if bullying victims have no access to guns or are just “taking it?” Kind of a bizarre view. Almost as bizarre as viewing gun regulation unthinkable, but I am not gonna talk about that. I grew up at a time where school principals had monopoly on violence at schools. I think it’s an improvement that we don’t accept school staff to beat kids anymore. But, whose brilliant idea was to accept that students will just bully each other and nothing can be done? I see many comments on this thread that just accept it. Why not accept all kinds of violence everywhere then? It’s impossible to prevent it so just let go of trying at all. Society has rules. Every institution has an authority figure. There are virtually no spaces without rules or an authority. Enforcement usually happens at varying degrees, from warnings to punishments. Back in the day beatings were warnings, punishments were suspensions and expulsions. We don’t want beatings, and if we are not resourced enough to rehabilitate, we have to aggressively suspend and expel. It really isn’t rocket science. We don’t owe bullies anything.
- watwut 1y ago
  School shooters being bullying victims striking back is a myth. It is a made up explanation that has little to do with who school shooters are and why they do what they do. Hint: they are more likely to be bullies themselves, as their aggression is raising prior the attack.
  - 0dayz 1y ago
    There's plenty of evidence that show a good chunk of school shooters are or were bullied : https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35058114/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35058114/
    - watwut 1y ago
      I used to read awful lot about them in a period of my life. > 76% posted disturbing content of guns and threatening messages. This is them provably being bullies as judged by their own social media accounts. > 60% reported being bullied in-person or online This is them claiming to be bullied at some point in their life. Elliot Roger claimed to be rejected by women while what happened was that he self isolated entirely for whole his life. This was similar to other guys - a person with track record of violence or threats feeling bullied by other people basically existing. Compare the two claims, really.
jinjin2 1y ago
Bullying is such a hard problem. The only school system I have seen dealing with it effectively is the Sudbury Valley schools. There they have a Judicial Committee, composed of both students and staff, and deal with issues through a process similar to courts in democratic society. Interesting enough, both students and staff can be brought up for bad behavior, which is probably what makes the process respected enough to work.
slaw 1y ago
[flagged]

69 points by whack 1y ago

eventually someone will figure out how to stop adolescent cliques from driving people into mental infirmity, then truly stop a shooting before it even begins to happen. not only that, a large portion of suicides, self harm, and academic disadvantage would be stopped, before it even begins to happen. this should be just as elementary as storing weapons properly, and modeling responsible usage. it should be pathetically obvious when an individual is being systematicly ostracised, schcool year after school year.

asdff 1y ago
Even if you snapped your fingers and eliminated bullying from the world, you will still get school shooters, due to the intersection of mental illness rates in the population and gun access.
- kelseyfrog 1y ago
  Are you saying that if we cannot solve the problem entirely that even incremental improvements are not worth employing? I'd like to find a more charitable interpretation.
  - bongodongobob 1y ago
    They are saying it's a lot more complicated than just stopping bullying.
  - metalman 1y ago
    you have masterfully rendered my less charitable pronouncements, redundent
  - asdff 1y ago
    Bullying happens in other species outside humans even. It is very deep evolutionary behavior. It isn't going away, unfortunately. However, when we look at places outside the US that have very low rates of school shootings, they generally have stronger gun controls and better mental health care. To me, this is more realistically achievable than rooting out bullying. The vast majority of victims of bullying do not murder people. The vast majority of school shooters (100%, surely) are mentally ill and had access to a gun.
    - kelseyfrog 1y ago
      There are many behaviors that other species do that we don't, even behaviors that we used to do that we've collectively decided are socially unacceptable - rape, cannibalism and infanticide easy come to mind. The longstanding history of such behavior, I would hope, reflects the difficulty of reducing it, and not our stance on whether it should be reduced. Often the most difficult part of change is confronting the fatalistic position that nothing can be done. The vast majority of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking, still it was a worthwhile effort to reduce asbestos use. Likewise, and generally, we can address issues by targeting a wide array of causal factors. How many of those school shooters do you recokon were also socially outcast or bullied?
    - huem0n 1y ago
      > Bullying happens in other species outside humans even. It is very deep evolutionary behavior. In animals, male parents often kill weak children. Doesn't really mean we just say "oh well, its in our DNA". Over and over society has managed to successfully surpress biological behaviors to nearly zero. I hope we can agree its an endeavor worth putting effort into. Right? > The vast majority of school shooters (100%, surely) are mentally ill and had access to a gun. 1. Having a mental illness does not make a person violent. Step one of better mental health (illness or no illness) is reducing bullying. 2. Saying "100% surely" is not very convincing to me. What percentage of shooters are suspected to be born with a mental illness? (Rather than forming one from environmental factors) what data/sources is that conclusion based on?
      - pessimizer 1y ago
- huem0n 1y ago
  While fine to try and make that argument, what percentage of shooters were not bullied?
  - exe34 1y ago
    I suspect mental health issues are a big glowing neon sign that says "bully me".
    - t-3 1y ago
      Yep. Bullies are generally looking for a response. Someone who can deal with bullying in a level headed and appropriate manner isn't an interesting or easy target. Someone who "freaks out" is fun and interesting to torment, and their response is more likely to bias authority figures against them and insulate the bully from consequences and even twist the bully into the victim.
- JTbane 1y ago
  As a start there should be common-sense gun control, like, if you get any kind of mental illness or violence on your record you lose your guns. Secondly, if a kid does get access to your gun in any circumstances you should also be charged with manslaughter.
  - rgblambda 1y ago
    Agree with the second point, but the first point would have an unintended consequence of discouraging people from seeking mental health treatment for fear of losing their guns, thereby exacerbating the problem.
    - asdff 1y ago
      Then you perform the mental health evaluation before you are allowed to even own a gun in the first place. Along with regular evaluations thereafter to continue to be legally qualified to own a gun.
kelseyfrog 1y ago
I wish there were more said about the bullies and other student who made up a rumor about him. Each of these is a story in their own right as often these actions stem from other sources of injustice. I'd love to reqd more about evidence based bully reduction programs.
silisili 1y ago
Outside of corporal punishment, which is a divisive topic, the only thing I can think of are a) not making school compulsory, and b) not tying government money to headcount. If you have problem kids, expel them immediately and let the parents figure out the education. Which goes back in a way to my initial point - you have to at some point pick who's in charge. We've decided as a society it's the parents, so make public education an easily revokable privilege. Right now we seem to have chosen the worst of both worlds - forcing kids to spend time with untouchable psychopaths all day every day.
- TimorousBestie 1y ago
  > If you have problem kids, expel them immediately and let the parents figure out the education. This is a non-starter if homeschooling is also as unregulated as it currently is in the States. Parents who abuse homeschooling to intentionally undereducate their children is a serious and growing problem.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - duskwuff 1y ago
    And that's for parents who choose to homeschool. If you start trying to force parents to homeschool their (poorly behaved) children, most of them probably won't (and/or can't) follow through.
  - silisili 1y ago
    Then let the military run the schools and cede power to the educators for discipline. You can't have it both ways. I don't blame most homeschool parents for not wanting their children indoctrinated by what's been happening the last few years. At some point, we need to pick a sane path. Today's system is literally the worst of every world to where we have daily school shootings and parents with any money at all opting out.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
mikewarot 1y ago
The adolescent cliques are a result of the artificial age segregation of students. Separating them from siblings or making friends of different ages, was likely a very bad decision, made in the interests of efficiency?
- AtlasBarfed 1y ago
  You think placing younger kids with older, stronger, more hormone/testosterone/violent kids will decrease bullying? The notion of keeping kids in four year windows in the same school is a bad idea in my opinion.
  - mr_toad 1y ago
    Evidence shows that violence and other bad behaviour among boys is highly concentrated around the 14 year old mark. Statistically, older boys (16-18) are a lot better behaved and can act as a moderating influence.
sznio 1y ago
schools are too much like prisons, so the same problems show up

dangle1 1y ago

https://archive.ph/jOh1x https://archive.ph/jOh1x

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sxp 1y ago

>Finally, one winter morning on the school bus, he turned on his tormentors. Curling his fingers in the shape of a pistol, he said, “I hope you all die.” > Mike Carinci, the school resource officer — a member of the sheriff’s office who worked in the school — viewed and listened to hours of video from the bus, seeing the level of abuse directed daily at the student. “Just horrible things, like nonstop,” he said. Mr. Carinci summoned the students and told them that the bullying had to end. The superintendent told them that they could be suspended or expelled. > The school traced the “hit list” rumor to a girl who admitted making it up. This quieted the community. This article makes it sound like the only one who was punished was the victim of the bullying for his emotional outburst and everyone who picked on him got away unscathed. This seems similar to the recent Netflix miniseries Adolescence. Both the series and the discussion around it focused on the main character rather than the bullying that caused him to kill.

Apreche 1y ago
Exactly. They don’t even question how all this bullying went on for so long without any adults noticing or doing anything about it. For "horrible things, like nonstop" to be going on without anyone noticing or doing anything about it is absurd levels of negligence by the parents, teachers, and administrators. It should never have reached this point.
- paulryanrogers 1y ago
  Bus drivers have to focus on driving safely. Expecting them to maintain bully free interactions among 20+ kids is absurd. Pay for an adult monitor on the bus. Kids will find ways to harass each other: between classes, lunch times, recess, etc. Schools can probably do more, but I doubt they can fix bullying alone. And certainly not with the resources they're given today.
  - Apreche 1y ago
    Surveillance isn’t the answer, justice is. You know how women often don’t report sexual harassment and assault? It’s because if they do report it, they will suffer further victimization and their chances at any just outcome are too low. Same thing with bullying in schools. Kids don’t report it because if they do so, they will be opening themselves up to further victimization, and the people they report it to will not take sufficient action to stop it. All schools need to do is make it safe to report bullying, prioritizing the victim’s safety. Then with a report they don’t need blanket surveillance, they can just do targeted surveillance to verify the reports. Once verified, they should take immediate action to put a permanent stop to it.

trhway 1y ago

Whether the mass shooting was stopped or not is impossible to say. What is a fact here is that the "106 people from 59 organizations" spent several weeks to stop or at least significantly decrease the level of bullying against one student. One can only wonder why stopping bullying is that hard and expensive (100 state and federal employees at the minimum cost of $1K/employee/week). And why that "school resource officer" hadn't been doing his job? And why other adults can't get involved and stop bullying before it reaches the level when government has to get involved? These days adults don't "correct" teenagers anymore like it was done in the past and like say adult dogs do to badly behaving puppies.

rjbwork 1y ago
We've lost a lot of ability, societally speaking, to maintain order and discipline bad behavior. People are volatile and the youth have very little respect for their elders. Just read testimonials from teachers about the environment in public schools. They're structurally prohibited from addressing problem behavior, from kids not turning in work and being given a million chances to "make it up" or just being given a 50% for not doing ANYTHING and then being "socially promoted", to not being able to remove problem kids from their classrooms, to the gutting of the para role, etc. And this is just a microcosm of the wider society. Easier to just remove yourself from a situation when anyone could be carrying a gun. We're also living in larger and larger polities and individuals are far more anonymous. That means the grapevine and social shame are night impossible to enact. But this is the atomized, individualist, omni-competition that we keep being told is great for society and the economy.
- paulryanrogers 1y ago
  > Easier to just remove yourself from a situation when anyone could be carrying a gun. There are more guns than people in the US. Whole states have open and concealed carry laws. You'd have to live like a hermit. The solution is blindingly obvious: make gun possession and ownership illegal. Yet we can't stop indoctrinating kids from a young age that guns are a human right, no matter the cost.

chmod775 1y ago

For a while I was nodding along, being able to picture what occurred and understand how the adults dealt with it. Then I realized these people were ~16 years old. Maybe it was an outlier? I looked up what the typical age of school shooters in the US is: also 16-17 years old. If a lot of these are bullying victims, something is seriously wrong. Looking back at my own time in school, people had grown out of this sort of bullying years earlier. Teachers would treat you like young adults by 16. If you engaged in this sort of extreme bullying at that age, you wouldn't get summoned to the headmaster's office to get a slap on the wrist - you'd face real consequences and might even find yourself dealing with police if not in juvenile court. Are these kids just not growing up because they're still being treated like 9 year olds when they're almost adults? I'd understand the occasional outlier, since even the occasional developmentally stunted "adult" engages in bullying, but it really shouldn't be a common theme. It is likely most adults still engaging in this behavior simply never were given reason to grow up before their behavioral patterns crystallized, much like the protagonists in our story at hand.

dmitrygr 1y ago
> If you engaged in this sort of extreme bullying at that age, you wouldn't get summoned to the headmaster's office to get a slap on the wrist - you'd face real consequences Clearly you didn’t go to American schools! If you complain, the teachers do nothing (not wanting to get involved or get hurt - teachers being hurt by students isn’t uncommon [1]) and the bullies bully you harder. If you fight back, the school administration gets YOU into trouble only. Ask me how I know. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=teacher+beaten+by+student https://www.google.com/search?q=teacher+beaten+by+student
- Animats 1y ago
  What are the rules of engagement today when being bullied in school? Apparently shooting bullies is a no-no. You only get to do that as an adult in stand-your-ground states.[1] If attacked, do you get to use an improvised weapon such as a baseball bat? Great question to ask your school administrators, especially if you're a military brat and grew up around people who have to know when and where to use their lethal force. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law

CommanderData 1y ago

An odd phenomenon school shootings are and continue to be with little or no intervention from the government.

idle_zealot 1y ago

I know this "bullying causes shooters" narrative is popular and makes some kind of intuitive sense, but do we have actual data on it? Is there even a correlation? Because my memory of the last few months of shooters is that most of them didn't really experience bullying (though were definitely socially maladjusted). I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting bullying isn't a problem, regardless of its correlation or lack thereof.

ameixaseca 1y ago

It's ludicrous to read the article and notice how hard they are trying not to blame the victim, as if a child going through bullying and seeing that nobody around them cares to actually do something is somehow in the wrong when they react. I never seen or heard any school doing any meaningful actions to deter bullying, and I don't mean this about the US system alone. Students are often left to fend off by themselves like animals, only punished when they fight back. The classic victim-turned-perpretator is symptom of a system that is fundamentally broken. I don't say this to justify any kind of violence, just that it is understandable and baffling that so little seems to be done to address root causes. Almost as if the children going through this are right on point: nobody really cares. The last paragraph says it all: > At one point during his senior year, he even asked to meet her team to thank them. “He thanked us for caring about him,” the sergeant said. “Because he felt like no one ever took the time to really care, and he could tell that we cared. It was really nice to hear.” I read this a few times now and it hits hard every time. I hope he's well and was able move one with his life. This would be indeed the best achievement of a system that should be like this from day 1.

cobertos 1y ago

> The team reassessed his threat as moderate, which reduced the monitoring. I wonder what sort of monitoring. If it was purely just checking in with him, or more than that? I feel like constantly being watched or having my devices watched as a kid would have made me more paranoid as an adult. Less able to trust the world.

shruubi 1y ago

As someone who was the victim of a lot of bullying myself, this article is a very mixed bag for me. For one, I like the idea of creating some degree of systems of support to try and prevent things like school shootings from happening by stopping them before they get too far. On the other hand, unless there are more details missing from this article, it really seems like the only person who got any degree of punishment is the student who was being bullied. You know what stops bullies that doesn't involve shooting them? Ruthless consequences for their actions. Schools love to talk about their 'zero tolerance' policy for bullying, but if there are no consequences outside of a teacher telling the bully to stop, then that is definitely less of a 'zero tolerance' policy and more of a 'mostly tolerated' policy. Zero tolerance means immediate suspensions, expulsions, supporting police reports for physically violent bullying etc.

CalChris 1y ago
The article does cover the bullies: Mr. Carinci summoned the students and told them that the bullying had to end. The superintendent told them that they could be suspended or expelled.
- 77pt77 1y ago
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- crossroadsguy 1y ago
  Ragging (esp. in STEM places; often violent; no slapping, et cetera, was not even considered violent) was a pathetic menace where I live. It is still not eradicated, but has shrunk to something so little that it is not a norm anymore or a right passage for seniors. How did it shrink? When seniors started getting expelled – no quarters given if ragging was proven. Yup, cracking the toughest of entrance exams here after toiling for years in school (sometimes after) and going to those colleges and then getting kicked out (often with a piece of paper that ensured you didn't get admission elsewhere either) just because you couldn't resist harassing/abusing/attacking/hurting freshers who had just entered college did the trick. Before that? Threats, warnings, and policy-making just on paper did zilch. It was literally a national move sort of - coming right from the top, forcing states to act.. etc.

ozozozd 1y ago

So, no action necessary if bullying victims have no access to guns or are just “taking it?” Kind of a bizarre view. Almost as bizarre as viewing gun regulation unthinkable, but I am not gonna talk about that. I grew up at a time where school principals had monopoly on violence at schools. I think it’s an improvement that we don’t accept school staff to beat kids anymore. But, whose brilliant idea was to accept that students will just bully each other and nothing can be done? I see many comments on this thread that just accept it. Why not accept all kinds of violence everywhere then? It’s impossible to prevent it so just let go of trying at all. Society has rules. Every institution has an authority figure. There are virtually no spaces without rules or an authority. Enforcement usually happens at varying degrees, from warnings to punishments. Back in the day beatings were warnings, punishments were suspensions and expulsions. We don’t want beatings, and if we are not resourced enough to rehabilitate, we have to aggressively suspend and expel. It really isn’t rocket science. We don’t owe bullies anything.

watwut 1y ago
School shooters being bullying victims striking back is a myth. It is a made up explanation that has little to do with who school shooters are and why they do what they do. Hint: they are more likely to be bullies themselves, as their aggression is raising prior the attack.
- 0dayz 1y ago
  There's plenty of evidence that show a good chunk of school shooters are or were bullied : https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35058114/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35058114/
  - watwut 1y ago
    I used to read awful lot about them in a period of my life. > 76% posted disturbing content of guns and threatening messages. This is them provably being bullies as judged by their own social media accounts. > 60% reported being bullied in-person or online This is them claiming to be bullied at some point in their life. Elliot Roger claimed to be rejected by women while what happened was that he self isolated entirely for whole his life. This was similar to other guys - a person with track record of violence or threats feeling bullied by other people basically existing. Compare the two claims, really.

jinjin2 1y ago

Bullying is such a hard problem. The only school system I have seen dealing with it effectively is the Sudbury Valley schools. There they have a Judicial Committee, composed of both students and staff, and deal with issues through a process similar to courts in democratic society. Interesting enough, both students and staff can be brought up for bad behavior, which is probably what makes the process respected enough to work.

slaw 1y ago

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