In the last two decades, there have been too many reports of youngsters being killed in high schools across the country.
A couple of those incidents happened too close to home. Luke Woodham stabbed and beat his mother to death before heading to Pearl High School, where he killed two other students and injured seven more on Oct. 1, 1997. And just across the state line, four students and a teacher were killed and 10 others were wounded on March 24, 1998, by two young boys in Jonesboro, Ark.
And none of us will ever forget the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado on April 20, 1999, when 15 people were killed and 24 wounded by two teenage students on a shooting rampage.
Luckily, it appears that the trend of students attacking and killing other students is slowing down.
Thursday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control released a report that shows the number of school-related slayings is down from the 1990s.
According to the report, about 16 students are murdered each year in U.S. schools, and the number has held steady and is lower than in the previous decade.
The CDC counted murders of students that occurred at elementary, middle or high schools, as well as school-sponsored trips, or while the students were on their way home from school, according to a story from The Associated Press.
From July 1999 through June 2006, there were 116 such deaths.
But in just five years in the mid- to late 1990s — July 1994 to June 1999 — there were 172 school slayings.
School massacres remain rare, according to the report, but it is sad that they occur at all. The new numbers show that 101 of 116 student deaths involved single-victim incidents.
From what we have learned following the massacres in the 1990s, in some cases the victims of the shootings were involved in bullying or other exclusionary acts toward the perpetrators, who seemed to think this justified murder.
This past week, I watched a movie on television that addressed the issue of bullying.
In this particular incident a teenage girl was ostracized by other students so much that she attempted suicide. Upon hearing of the tragedy, her so-called friends and classmates sent her e-mails saying she should have finished the job. And to top it off, personal e-mails with very private information about the girl were distributed to students at the school in an attempt at further humiliation.
I know this was just a movie, but incidents of this nature happen every day in schools across the country. That makes me angry and very sad. It is heartbreaking to know that there are people who can treat other human beings in such a cruel manner.
Granted, most high school students are immature, but that should not make it acceptable to bully or humiliate other students because they are different.
It also is not acceptable for the victims of bullying to lash out and kill the people they feel have wronged them.
A great deal of the violence in our schools could be avoided if the problems were stopped earlier in the process. On several occasions, there were e-mails or odd behavior that might have tipped off teachers or other students to get these people the help they need to deal with these problems.
In the study released Thursday, researchers didn’t say why school-associated killings have dropped since the 1990s, but it may be because of violence prevention measures the schools have implemented.
There were numerous conferences to address such issues following the shootings at Pearl, Jonesboro and Columbine. And nationwide, schools have implemented stiffer discipline and safety measures to deter violence on their campuses.
Also, warning signs that a student is troubled are taken more seriously today than they were in the 1990s, and many schools have safety officers patrolling their campuses.
We have been fortunate in Greenwood. While there have been random acts of violence in our schools through the years, we have not seen anything like the massacres at Columbine and elsewhere.
So what can we do to help the situation and prevent such outbreaks of deadly violence from ever happening here?
We must teach our children that bullying is wrong. And if we see this taking place, we need to report it to the proper authorities.
I encourage both parents and students to report threats of violence, no matter how insignificant they may seem. I am sure in each school shooting there were people who can look back and remember something they noticed about the shooter, be it odd behavior or e-mails or verbal threats of violence that fell on deaf ears.
When it comes to the safety of our children, we can never take things for granted. Let’s hope school-related violence continues to decrease to the point where no one dies at the hands of a student.
We want our young people to live life to the fullest and grow up to be productive citizens. We don’t want them behind bars for killing someone or in graves before they can even begin to enjoy life.
