Identification of at-risk youth is tricky. Yet most of them do not commit crimes. Another common reaction to school shooting incidents has been to bolster the physical safety of schools with metal detectors, guards and locker searches and to expend additional resources on crisis management. But the critical question is why so many youths bring weapons to school in the first place. Student surveys indicate that the No. 1 reason is self-defense, not acting out.
Students feel threatened by their peers.
It is not clear that extensive physical security measures make students, as opposed to administrators and parents, feel more secure. In fact, some principals believe that students' feelings of anxiety are heightened by the presence of metal detectors and locker searches. It had a staff of counselors available to deal with troubled students. What they were not able to stop was the steady ridicule of Charles Andrew Williams. Unlike many violence prevention programs, comprehensive school-based prevention approaches like the one at UES are not expensive.