Read the news on any particular day, and more often than not a school shooting will be the lead story. It seems like practically every week Campus Safety is posting an article about yet another tragedy involving guns and active shooters on campus.
It’s enough to make anyone in the school security community question what the heck we are doing. Indeed, I personally experienced a “dark night of the soul” right after the Nashville school shooting in which three children and three adults were murdered. I’ve been running Campus Safety for nearly two decades now, and it feels like no matter how much I write or how hard the campus security community tries, we aren’t making any progress.
But one report that received practically no attention has given me new hope.
Research conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) found that from 2001 to 2019, California schools saw a massive reduction in all types of victimizations, including physical threats with or without weapons, verbal and psychological abuse, and property offenses.
The study of about six million students found there were 70% fewer reports of someone carrying a gun onto school grounds and a 68% reduction in other weapons brought to school. Additionally, in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were 56% fewer physical fights and a 59% reduction in reports of being threatened by a weapon on school grounds. Black and Latino students experienced larger declines compared to White students.
These findings, even though they are from before the pandemic, are huge and should offer some comfort to students and their parents that schools are much safer than ever before.
Yes, it’s true that mass shootings are happening at a record pace, but this UCLA study indicates that the efforts of the campus security community are making a positive impact and improving school security. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect if other studies like UCLA’s were conducted in other states, there would be similar findings.
I hope that if you are a school protection professional, you take this study to heart. We are making progress in campus security, and we need to celebrate our successes rather than just dwell on our failures.
Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. Will we make mistakes in the future? Of course. But remember this study the next time you doubt that what you are doing is making a difference.
