With the reality that a school shooting could happen anywhere in the United States or anytime, there is also the reality many forget: The shooter could be anyone.
Spotting the warning signs and being proactive in stopping potential violence is crucial.
Mississippi State University Associate Professor and Director of the Clinical Ph.D. Program Michael Nadorff said there are many pieces to the puzzle of why someone would want to shoot up a school. Nadorff’s primary research is in suicide, and he has done research on murder-suicides, which ends up happening to many school shooters.
Nadorff said oftentimes people are looking for notoriety or they don’t have a friend group in person, so they take to online platforms that spread hateful ideology.
“Social media has blessings and curses,” Nadorff said. “After an incident, they can be helpful ways for people to grieve and share information and memories, but you also have to moderate those because they can go bad places very quickly. Social media and online forums can be there to build extremism, and often that’s going to be from individuals who aren’t connected in their communities, who aren’t connected in their schools. They find an online community that they latch onto because we all have a need for connectedness.”
Someone who is withdrawn and has begun to show signs of being more drawn to weapons or extremism should raise immediate red flags.
Both Columbus Municipal School District and Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District comb through social media to check for potential threats to school safety. CMSD Superintendent Cherie Labat said if a threat is noted within the district, the principals will be in charge of the next steps.
“We take every precaution to ensure the safety of everyone in our schools,” Labat said. “We have to monitor social media, and we have a web umbrella that acts as a filter. So if someone makes a threat or a post has a specific word in it, we’re alerted at the principal level, and we investigate that thoroughly to ensure that it’s not an active situation within a school environment.”
In SOCSD, once the district has flagged a threat on social media, the chief school resource officer Sammy Shumaker said either district law enforcement or local law enforcement will make a home visit to discuss the situation with parents.
Because there is no one root cause for someone wanting to enact a school shooting, there is also not one solution to proactively address the problem.
Nadorff said in addition to offering mental health services to someone at risk of becoming a shooter, it is also important to make sure they are connected in their community.
“We all need a tribe,” Nadorff said. “We all need a group that we belong to, and I think so often this grows out of when someone doesn’t have that especially locally. It’s important to find a healthy group that the person can grow in. They need to belong and for it to be in a healthy group. … That connection is important, and I think we often underestimate that importance.”
CMSD behavioral specialist Christina Shumpert-Chapman works with students in the district to assist with social and emotional wellness and learning. She said counseling is provided for students, and it is important to help all students with their mental health, which is just as important as physical health.
“We need to make sure that the needs of our students are met, especially in regards to their mental health,” Chapman said.
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