May 2007 — News
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Long Odds, Short Fuses
Imagine that.
And it's not the only case of overreaction in the post-Virginia Tech environment. We also have the instance of the student from Clements High School in Fort Bend (TX) Independent School District who was "caught" playing the game Counterstrike using as the virtual locale a 3D model he built of his school. Again, the student was removed from the general population (placed in an alternative school), and police were brought in.
"I think we overreacted as a result of the Virginia Tech ordeal," said one of the Fort Bend ISD Board trustees, Stan Magee, who, along with another board member, Ken Bryant, has been attempting to get a special meeting of the board together to review the disciplinary action (Hanson 2007). This too is an ongoing case, one that might find resolution within the next few weeks, with or without a special meeting of the board (Dunn 2007).
In both cases, administrators in favor of the disciplinary action cited these troubled times as a justification for the disciplinary actions, implying that somehow things have gotten to the point in the downward spiral of humanity's moral well being that it is now reasonable--that schools are in so much mortal danger--that we call the police on them for writing essays or playing video games that portray violence.
Are Schools Really Dangerous?
Nevertheless, the facts show that schools are among the very safest places in the United States in terms of murder and non-negligent manslaughter. Over the five-year period of 2000 to 2004, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there were precisely 27 known cases of murder or non-negligent manslaughter in the nation's K-12 schools and colleges combined (FBI 2000-2004), representing some 60 million students enrolled annually in primary, secondary, and post-secondary institutions (based on various Department of Education sources). Over that same period, there were 80,528 cases of murder or non-negligent manslaughter in the United States as a whole, out of the currently estimated U.S. population of less than 300 million (FBI 2005).
Based on FBI statistics for 2005, the odds of a student being killed intentionally or through non-negligent manslaughter on a college campus in any given year in the United States are about one in 1.25 million. Contrast that with odds of one in 17,857 of being killed intentionally or through criminal negligence anywhere in the United States in the same year, and you will see that campuses are statistically much safer places to be--with or without additional security measures--than, say, pretty much anywhere else.
And those are just the odds of actual students being killed on a college campus. Factor in the general population, and the odds get truly astronomical. Actually, they grow well beyond astronomical. See, the calculated odds of a 100,000 megaton or greater object impacting the earth and killing you THIS YEAR are only one in 2 million, assuming such an object would, as expected, kill off a quarter of the earth's population (Martel 1997).
