Safeguarding schools

Columbine survivor shares lessons 'bought at high price'

M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News

Published October 11, 2006 at midnight

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CHEVY CHASE, Md. - Metal detectors, gun crackdowns and political rhetoric are not likely to halt school violence, participants in a presidential school safety conference said Tuesday.

President Bush brought hundreds of educators and members of faith-based and nonprofit groups to suburban Washington, D.C., to respond to the recent wave of school violence, including the fatal hostage taking at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey.

Bush said he was hoping to compile the "best practices" being used around the country to prevent and react to school violence. But he cautioned that the federal government does not have all the answers.

Many speakers drew on the lessons that followed the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School, including Craig Scott, a Columbine student who survived the attack only to learn that his sister, Rachel Joy Scott, had died.

Craig Scott urged people to tune out violent or shallow messages in popular culture and warned against politicians "who want to slap Band- Aids on deep, gaping wounds."

And echoing a theme expressed by others, he urged schools to offer character-building lessons alongside academics.

"Please take my words to heart today," he said. "They were bought at a high price."

Bush halted when Scott had finished speaking and the applause had died down.

"Which one of us up here can now talk after that," said Bush, who twice interrupted his own remarks to praise Scott or his father, Darrell Scott, who founded the group "Rachel's Challenge" to share his daughter's message in motivational speeches at schools around the U.S.

Some audience members said the conference was valuable in continuing a dialogue on school safety. But others said that too many audience members wasted time promoting their own organizations and causes during question-and-answer sessions.

Panels were packed with Coloradans, including Lt. Gov. Jane Norton; Del Elliott, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado; and Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener, who led the response to the shooting at Platte Canyon High School.

Wegener called the tragedy, in which a gunman killed 16-year-old Emily Keyes before taking his own life, an aberration. Despite the shootings, "I still think our school is safe," he said.

One audience member listed countless shootings that have taken place across the country, suggested that easy access to weapons was to blame then asked for panelists to respond. Wegener said that people always have had easy access to weapons but that something else has changed over time.

"The answer to your question is relatively easy," Wegener said. "You just need to change society."

Elliott said that despite recent shootings, the country's schools are still safe.

But he said that violence and gang activity have increased during the past two years and that one lesson from Columbine is that anonymous hot lines can help prevent violent incidents.

Reaction

Participants in a presidential conference on school violence in Washington, D.C., weigh in:

• "I really believe we must, more than just having programs available in the schools, integrate the messages of kindness and compassion and morality, and the way we treat each other. Those things have to become a part of the everyday teaching and training in the schools."

Darrell Scott father of Columbine victim Rachel Joy Scott

• "It's a terrible tragedy, and we're not supposed to lose our kids at school."

Fred Wegener Park County sheriff

• "Our first line of prevention really is having good intelligence . . . The code of silence has largely been broken down because of Columbine."

Del Elliott director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado, urging expansion of anonymous tip lines at schools

• "I'd like not to see metal detectors in schools . . . I think the metal detector, although it serves its purpose, sends a negative message to young people."

Thomas Kube executive director and CEO of the Council of Educational Facility Planners, in Scottsdale, Ariz.

• "When the crisis happens, that's not the time to figure out the details of how that plan works."

Gregory White U.S. attorney for the northern district of Ohio, urging schools and local law enforcement agencies to update and practice their emergency plans

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