Santana High School Shooting
With Joanne McDaniel
Interim Director for the Center for the Prevention of School Violence
Tuesday, Mar. 6, 2001; 11:30 a.m. EST

A 15-year-old freshman killed two youths and wounded 13 today at Santana High School in Santee, Calif. The shooting was a haunting reminder and reoccurence of the Columbine tragedy nearly two years ago.

Joanne McDaniel, interim director of the Center for the Prevention of School Violence, is online to talk about the Santana High shooting.

Since 1994, she has worked with the center to build knowledge strategies directed at preventing school violence. McDaniel has placed particular emphasis on understanding the role of law enforcement, particularly school resource officers, in schools. She has also worked extensively with safe-school legislation and safe school planning efforts. She has extensive knowledge of state and national trends associated with the problems of violence, crime, and discipline in schools and the strategies employed to address them.

In 1999, McDaniel facilitated the Governor's Task Force on Youth Violence and School Safety in North Carolina. In her capacity as interim director, she works to ensure that the Center's efforts focus on the Center's vision that "every student will attend a school that is safe and secure, one that is free of fear and conducive to learning."

The transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

St. Davids, PA: Ms. McDaniel,

Do any schools (to your knowledge) provide students with a firearms awareness class? Not simply the "stay away from guns" message that I've seen (since when do children stay away from something they've been told to avoid? If anything that is a stimulus rather than a deterrent), but on the practical effects of a single bullet? It would seem to me that if one of the more disturbing influences behind violent crime is a deficient sense of one's own mortality and that of others, then educating students as to what guns can and will do if used seems to be a reasonable measure. We educate children about the effects of drug and alcohol use, about the risks of promiscuity, and about the dangers of drinking and driving. Why wouldn't schools begin teaching students such a simple concept as "this is a pistol, and here's what it can do to someone..."?

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions.

Joanne McDaniel: There are schools in fact that teach about gun safety.
There is a district outside of Baltimore, Md. that is educating its young people as part of its middle school health curriculum. The message is about how to be safe around guns. Many young people are living around or having guns in their lives. An important message in that approach is that young people learn about the consequences of gun usage.

Washington, D.C.: Are you surprised at what happened at this school? When you take into consideration the availability of guns, the irresponsibility of parents, and the wealth of violence portrayed in every aspect of our lives, how can you not have the thought, "what school is next?". In my opinion, the major reason for these acts are gun availability. Even if a person somehow came to the conclusion that violence were the answer, if they could not get access to a weapon the violence could not take place.

Joanne McDaniel: I think that we're beyond surprise at this point with reference to this incident. What we understand is that there are many factors that play into an occurrence like this. Certainly gun accessibility is one of those factors. As a society, we need to balance the right we all have to own guns with the right we have to be safe in our schools and communities.

Joanne McDaniel: There are ways to own guns with responsibility and people who own guns need to recognize that they need to employ that responsibility. With the use of gun locks and gun storage and gun ownership laws, gun owners should pursue those and we can't escape the education of gun safety.

Austin, TX: The thing that distresses me most about this shooting is that he told people he was going to do it ahead of time, yet no one acted on this information. Where can a child or adult turn when he hears talk of someone planning such a thing? Will the police listen? Also, there are web pages where people talk about wanting to do this sort of thing. What can we do about it?

Joanne McDaniel: In the ideal situation, everyone has someone that they can trust to tell this information to. The person may or may not be a law enforcement official. What schools and communities need to do is to provide avenues for reporting that exist in environments that create the allowance of trusting relationships. So our first step is to make sure that we have someone we feel comfortable reporting to. We then need to put in place the appropriate responses that ideally that will be a help and provide assistance to the person who is making the threat as opposed to approaching it in a negative way. We need to make sure that we do follow up when reporting that takes place. One of the things we seen is that students are less likely to report if they don't think that any action is going to take place when they report. We need to make sure that a follow up exists.

Va, 22101: While watching the news last night, one thing stuck out at me. Virtually everyone they spoke with that was at the incident didn’t seem very disturbed. Most of the people, especially the children, seemed almost enthusiastic. This seems to be a very different reaction than that of the other school shootings. It was also very disturbing.

Joanne McDaniel: I would agree that it was disturbing and I would also agree that there was non-chalant attitude about it. There didn't seem to be a lot of surprise where there was overt shock. Then again, it may be that students interviewed were not close to the actual shootings that took place. What's important for that school community to understand is that the student's first response isn't their only response and that there will need to be a time of healing for all the people connected to that school. Just as people react in different ways to the incident occurrence, they will act in different ways as they heal from it.

Bethesda, MD: Ms. McDaniel,

Over the last couple of years, I've read several news reports of psychological studies that suggest a correlation (and even a causal link) between violence in the media and violence in children.

Do you believe violence in entertainment has a role in making children violent? If so, do you believe there's a distinction between different types of entertainment violence; for instance, is there a difference between "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", "Pulp Fiction", and the various violent reality tv shows?

Thanks.

Joanne McDaniel: You are right in that there are increasing number of reports (i.e. APA-American Pediatrics Association) of a correlation between violence in the media and a child's aggressive behavior. What's important to note about the reports is that the correlations still do not isolate the media as the only factor. There is some information in these reports that does distinguish between media that is more passive and media that is more active. Media that is interactive where the participant is doing something in taking part of the media (such as video games) may have a greater impact on the participant than passive media. However, there is no isolation that media is the only factor.

Washington, DC: Shouldn't the government being stepping
up now, especially in this time of budget
surplus, to fund the programs we know
are proven to reduce crime and violence
not just among high school kids but for
everyone? After-school programs and
school readiness child care like Head
Start have been shown to dramatically
reduce crime, and yet they're so
underfunded that only a fraction of the
eligible kids can take advantage of them.
Shouldn't we be urging more spending
on those programs instead of a tax cut or
a missile shield or something?

Joanne McDaniel: I certainly we need to be urging wise spending on programs for youth and preventing youth violence. All of your points need to be taken into consideration. Wise spending means making sure that what we are spending on potentially makes a difference on in the intervention and prevention of youth violence. Addressing violence is certainly a responsibility of the government at a local, state and national level. Resources do need to be spent wisely on those programs that offer the greatest potential for making a difference.

Washington, D.C.: We keep hearing about these shootings in suburban and rural settings but not urban settings. Is this because urban schools tend to use metal detectors and have higher security in the schools?

Joanne McDaniel: Urban and inner city schools have been working on the issue of safety probably longer than other schools. They may have at least have had more prevention strategies than other urban or suburban schools. However that is changing given what has happened the last few years. I think that urban schools have had more practice in hardening the target with security camera, security guards, and other preventive measures.

I think schools need to assess their needs and problems and make decisions on making the appropriate safe school strategies. For some schools that may mean that they need metal detectors, for others metal detectors may not be the best approach. Regardless whether they are urban or rural schools, the school needs to focus on the physical environment, building relationships in the people in the environment, and the purpose of the school ---teaching and learning--and integrates these points together.

Manassas VA: While working as a police office one shift, we responded to a call where a young girl reported concerns about a male friend, similar to the warning seen in this recent case. The boys mother couldn't believe it and denied her son could even possess a gun. She consented to allow us to search his room, leading us to find a high powered rifle in his closet. If she hadn't allowed us to search, what might have happened we fortunately will never know. My question... the laws of privacy are on the side of the accused in these cases. How can the police and school officials intervene when we don't have enough information to proceed beyond nothing but a voluntary interview?

Joanne McDaniel: I commend this officer for the work that he does. This officer as well as other law enforcement and school personnel who deal with this kind of information everyday need to have in place procedures that explicitly account for the balance that is needed between privacy rights and safety. That means from the officer's perspective, good thorough police investigation. From the school's perspective, it means having procedures in place to address the needs of the students and to have relationships with law enforcement so that if investigation and follow-up is needed, it can take place. But also for the school personnel to have relationships with other professionals who can provide services that might assist and help the students involved as well.

Fairfax VA: Joanne,

I am a parent of a 12-year-old in the Fairfax County Public School System. My son, found his middle school very threatening with extensive physical confrontation daily starting his first day, and it appears to him that the violent behavior is accepted by staff. I am told by the administrative staff the there is no real problem with the students behavior, they are just young teen males doing what they do, and the staff takes each incident and handles them fairly.

I believe that they do work to handle them fairly on a one by one basis, but the systems procedures and the absents of any tool that reports fear and anxiety about physical safety directly from the students, means there is no measurable way to hold anyone accountable for the continuance of the problems. In addition I believe that the belief system that we have to accept violent and abusive peer behavior in teenagers is invalid, but if we have no clear way of measuring the consequences (fear and anxiety in so many kids), we can not and will not address the problem. The picked on small kid accused of yesterday's tragedy knows it exists. What are your thoughts?

Joanne McDaniel: Many of the points are very true for many parents in our country. The most important point that this message conveys is that the parent has taken an interest in her child.
It's unfortunate that what she described is a situation where the school personnel say that they are handling the situation taken place but what this parent needs to do is to be persistent with communicating with the personnel.
It's unfortunate also that there may be many other parents whose children are facing the same difficulty but the parents may not be aware or haven't taken interest being involved in their children's school.
At the Center for the Prevention of School Violence, by providing parents with information about school safety and that they need to take the information to the head of the administration at the school, a dialogue is created between the parents and the principals. The bottom line is that parents need to be involved, persistent and make sure that their children's needs are addressed appropriately.

Charlottesville, VA: Do you think establishing people-skill programs in schools that focus on conflict/resolution and consideration for others would decrease the amount of bullying and alienation that occurs among teenagers, and thus, decrease the propensity for violence?

Joanne McDaniel: I think that is a very important set of skills for young people to have. It goes back to the people proponent in my previous response of place, people and purpose. Handling conflict is part of life, it's part of relationships. Teaching young people how to handle conflict should be part of their education. And making sure that the adults that work with young people know how to handle conflict is important as well.

Silver Spring Maryland: I am a 30 year old professional. I'm sort of a computer geek. I can honestly remember in grade school, the oppression, the abuse, and the cruelty of other students. I remember how students didn't respect you unless you were involved with athletic activities or involved in school functions. I side with the gunman here. His choice of killing with others is not justified. But he shouldn't be tried as an adult. Students are very cruel to each other. Many times the faculty looks the other way. This needs to stop. What the general public fails to realize is that sociality in grade school is QUITE savage. Can we put students thru a civility 101 class or a "how to treat each other with respect class?" I think the students here are more to blame than the gun toting outsider. I can only imagine the type of abuse this gunman had to deal with from his peers. Income, physical attributes, involvement, all come to play with excluding a student as an outsider. This gunman was probably abused and beat up on a daily basis. Until students are taught to respect one another, this will never go away. It can only get worse.

Joanne McDaniel: I can give you some encouragement that there is efforts in schools across the country that teach young people character education. At the core of these initiatives is the value and process of respecting other people: respecting yourself, your classmates and your school. With these points, you can address the basic reasons of why bullying might take place; the lack of self-respect.

Leesburg, VA: It seems to me that we do a lot of collective hand-wringing about what schools, or government, or social service organizations could do to quell this. Governments, social agencies and schools are not supposed to raise children - PARENTS are!! WHEN are we going to recognize that PARENTS teaching their kids right from wrong - and then enforcing those standards AT HOME - is the key to turning these things around?

Joanne McDaniel: I agree that parental involvement is a critical element. To truly address youth violence, we need to ensure that collaboration takes place with the home, school and community. Where the home is the base where school and community efforts can build.

With regard to the recent incident, I think the fact that everyone has the responsibility for trying to end violence among our young people whether in schools or neighborhoods. We are losing young peoples lives because we are abdicating that responsibility.

McLean, Va.: When are we as a nation going to get serious about instituting 'no bullying policies' in schools? This is a solution and yet everyone including the president speaks about the lone gunman's actions as an act of cowardice... this isn't cowardice this is an act of desperation on the part of lonely kid who was picked on pure and simple.

Joanne McDaniel: I think we are getting more serious about that. I think that bullying in Kindergarten to high school is more recognized than ever before. An important step was taken out of the tragedy of Columbine. That bullying doesn't take place just on playgrounds. We are seeing more schools employ more anti-bullying programs in their safe school efforts.

Aurora, IL: Greetings,
Maybe I grew up in the wrong area -- or in a high school that was too small with about 800 kids -- but if someone were to be speaking about violence his or her peers would be talking to Coach Long or Coach Crawford or Officer Hopkins or to someone in the counseling office so quickly the person predisposed to violence would have their head spinning.

In the public school I attended, the use of violent speech was considered to be a violent act whether it was on or off campus.

Is there a disconnection between peer groups and authority figures in the twenty years since I was in high school?

Joanne McDaniel: In some places there is a disconnection. You point out a couple of good factors. One is the size of the school and recognizing that school size can make a difference in how schools operate. A second is that there are open lines of communication. Where 20 years ago, there was a willingness to take action when a rumor occurred. I think we can pull two lessons from those two points. Given that the schools are large today, we need to operate them with a small school mentality-- which means we need to get to know and build relationships with each other. The second lesson is the open lines of communication. Big or small, the school needs to make sure that there is a level of comfort where someone can talk about their concerns.

Cincinnati, Ohio: Why are these shootings happening at primarily white, suburban schools? I have a 5 year old daughter who currently goes to a public inner city school. We just moved and have the option of changing her school to a district with much higher achievement scores, but it's primarily a white, suburban school. It's of great concern because I truly feel safer with her at the diverse inner city school.

Joanne McDaniel: I think you need to go with where the parents and child's level of comfort is. A sense of comfort is often driven by the information or knowledge a parent has about a school. There could be many factors, race may be one of them, that may play a role when an incident occurs. But parents need to make decisions based upon their knowledge level concerning the schools they may be making choices about. There are no guarantees that can be given to this parent. So parents must make decisions about their children's education and stay involved to help maintain some sense of assurance.

Washington, DC: I have a comment that may sound a bit insensitive.

Why has it taken so long for the media and government agencies to get so concerned about school shootings? I went to a Wash DC public high school in the 80's. There were regular school shootings back then in inner city, mostly minority schools. It seems like people have only become concerned when this violence moved to mostly white, suburban schools. I am glad that there is concern now. But, the media and government should give equal attention to these types of problems even when they do not occur on suburban street USA.

Joanne McDaniel: I would not argue with you on your point. This issue is reflective of a lot of other issues of society that we need to work on. We need to learn that every child, regardless of where they live, should be a valued child in our society. We need to recognize that and although we may have not recognized that in the past, we need to carry that ahead in the future. The Center for Prevention of School Violence has a vision for every student in every school: "Every student will attend a school that is safe and secure, one that is free of fear and conducive to learning." We all need to work on that together.

Columbia Heights: Having grown up in the Cajon Valley Union School District, to which Santana High School is a part, I had many friends that attended that school in the 80s. The Santee, El Cajon and La Mesa area was a great place to grow up, which makes yesterday's shooting such a shock to me and my family. But to my friends who remain living in East County San Diego, it comes as no surprise at all. The entire school system seems to have taken a massive nose dive. Solid scholastics and safety which were paramount in the 80s when I grew up there are now a rarity. While it's not possible to prevent a person from going on a shooting rampage, is there something that can be done to increase morale in this school district that seems to be bleeding. It's become a horrible place to teach and an even worse place to learn. What can be done to give these kids a better chance? Is it legislative? Can it be resolved in stricter gun control? Psychological counseling? Or must the entire school district be torn apart limb from limb and reconstructed? This trend has become increasingly heartbreaking, but moreso to me this week as the violence has hit so close to home. Something needs to be fixed, but what and how?

Joanne McDaniel: I think there are many different strategies that need to be put together to address this issue in a comprehensive way. There may be the need for some legislation but the most important need is the human need. We need to make sure that our young people feel connected to their schools and communities and families. The sense of connection is something that research is indicating a set foundation where young people get involved in positive behavior. If young people feel connected, they will less likely get into trouble.

washingtonpost.com: Thank you Ms. McDaniel for coming online with us to talk about the tragedy of school shootings. If readers would like more information about the Center for Prevention of School Violence, please visit their website at http://www.ncsu.edu/cpsv/.

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