So it’s come to this: The Genesee and Lapeer county school districts have shut down today in response to social media rumors of violence, including violence connected to the fake Mayan calendar end of the world trope, that school investigators concluded are, according to reports from Michigan Radio, “completely without merit.”
Ponder the phrase “completely without merit” for half-a-second. They didn’t say “not credible” or “unlikely to occur.” They didn’t conclude with “90% certainty” the threats are a hoax. Investigators determined there was absolutely no legitimacy to the rumors. Then school officials told kids it’s not safe for them to go to school.
Shutting down these schools is almost akin to closing a beach because someone thinks Lake Huron might be a fire hazard.
Certainly, every reasonable person can understand why parents, teachers, and administrators would be on edge in the wake of the Connecticut school shooting tragedy last week, but at the same time it’s completely unreasonable to create a culture of paranoia where every imaginary threat leads to a lockdown.
This irrational over-reaction by school officials and parents turns the very kids they seek to protect into psychological victims of the Sandy Hook shooting. It’s not enough that today’s students—like previous generations that dealt with the JFK assassination and the Challenger explosion and 9/11—must try to understand why this horror happened to someone else. Authority figures are telling them there is a very real chance it could happen to them…today…if they go to school.
That’s not only terrifying, it’s also false. As tragic as these mass shootings are, they are also rare and random. Over the last 20 years, gun violence in schools has killed less than 50 students annually nationwide. That’s far too many, to be sure, but when you consider the millions of children who go to school everyday, the chances of becoming a victim are infinitesimally small. Yet, right now in Genesee and Lapeer counties, and really all across this county, children are receiving essentially opposite message.
Maybe adults can distinguish between over-preparing for an unlikely worst-case scenario and the statistically improbability of the worst happening—and that’s a big maybe—but can ten-year-olds? Should we really expect the still-forming brains of children and adolescents to understand the difference between kabuki safety measures and actual dangers?
The panic room reaction to even meritless threats is its own kind of violence. How can it not create terror in the minds of children? Kids are entitled to know that it’s safe to go to school, but they constantly seem to be told otherwise.
And let’s be perfectly honest about something else, when these unspeakably tragic mass shootings occur, they do so without warning. Often people around the killer miss red flags that something is amiss, but these killers don’t call in threats before their crime.
It’s appropriate and necessary to investigate threats and perhaps (quietly) up the level of security just to be safe. However, shutting down schools every time some sadistic yahoo seeks some attention on Twitter gives that person precisely the power—over our children—which he craves.
