Roy Utah: Utah girl credited with alerting officials over alleged school bombing plot
An appropriate follow-up to the previous post on anonymous tip lines is this report of a foiled plot to bomb a public school campus a few days ago. It all began when a student received a text message from one of the suspected bombers that asked, “If I told you to stay home on a certain day, would you?”
And to everyone’s surprise and great relief, the student took the warning to the authorities. At least three implications emerge from this event:
- Educators become a valuable resource for school safety when they make themselves accessible to students in a manner that minimizes the anxieties of student who wish to approach them. This is often spoken of as the “goodwill” factor in school safety. It cannot be minimized.
- Students are imminently capable of making mature decisions about people and situations that require intervention for the greater good of campus safety. Educators are wise to promote campus safety in a manner that encourages students to take ownership for their role in protecting the campus climate.
- The profile of the so-called “rampage student” is inherently unreliable and rather dynamic across the spectrum of students. Stereotypic thinking about students is as likely to be a catalyst to rage incidents as of angry behavior. The safest campus is likely to be one in which student concerns and needs are individualized by properly trained educators.