Chevy Chase, Md. – President Bush said he wanted today’s White House conference on school safety to produce a concrete plan of action. But practical solutions like the use of metal detectors or a ban on assault weapons were rejected, and eclipsed by testaments to the power of love.
The conference was quickly staged after recent invasions by berserk intruders at schools in Colorado and Pennsylvania. But the session’s most emotionally potent moments were devoted to identifying and communicating with murderous homegrown students like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who killed 13 people in the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School.
“The main thing I have learned is that kindness and compassion can be the biggest antidote,” said Craig Scott, whose sister Rachel died at Columbine, and who narrowly escaped death himself that day. “Take my words to heart today; they were bought at a high price,” he said.
The audience of several hundred law enforcement officials, educators and others rose and applauded as Scott finished speaking. Bush told Scott’s father, Darrell Scott, who was in the audience, that he “raised a good man here.”
Several speakers at today’s conference urged Bush to purge America’s coarse and violent culture, and to order that schools teach students about character, virtue and God. But the president noted the limitations of government in the battle against school violence.
Craig Scott “is inspiring others to continue to reach out to say to somebody who is lonely, ‘I love you.’ And I’m afraid this requires a higher power than the federal government to cause somebody to love somebody,” Bush said.
The best solution, he added, is for parents, educators and students to find the love and compassion to reach out to troubled youths before they turn to violence.
“Societies change one heart at a time,” said Bush. “This need to say ‘I love you’ comes from your soul. Hopefully, out of these tragedies will come the sense of communal obligation … for people to take an extra effort to comfort the lonely.”
First lady Laura Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings also addressed the conference, which was held on the campus of the National 4-H Conference Center here, in one of the capital’s wealthy suburbs.
Delbert Elliott, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado, spoke approvingly about steps that have been taken since the Columbine tragedy.
“Our kids are safer at school than they are at almost anyplace,” Elliott said. He noted that students today have a greater chance of being killed at a shopping mall, or in their home, than at school.
Yet in the last two years, Elliott said, gang-related violence and school-related deaths have risen.
Law enforcement officials vowed renewed dedication to school design improvements aimed at security, better coordination among local authorities, and lockdown and evacuation drills that have been widely adopted since the Columbine killings.
Such drills “made a big difference two weeks ago in … the shooting in Bailey, Colorado, where they were able to respond in a very effective manner to that tragedy,” Gonzales said.
The attorney general and other experts urged parents and educators to stay on the alert for potentially violent students, and to get them treatment.
During one panel presentation, Gonzales and Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener, who led the raid that ended the Sept. 27 hostage crisis at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, characterized some proposals – like the purchase and operation of metal detectors and security cameras – as overly expensive and easily evaded.
And both dismissed the proposal of California student Theo Milonopoulos, who suggested that a ban on assault weapons and other gun-control measures might reduce the number of school shootings.
“Obviously, kids should not have access to weapons,” said Gonzales, but he advocated tougher enforcement of existing gun laws rather than promoting new ones.
Wegener noted how in his younger days it was not uncommon for students in his rural community to keep rifles in their pickup trucks, or to carry knives in school. A subsequent breakdown in “society,” he said, has led to school violence.
“I’m not sure that response – that society should change – is enough,” Milonopoulos replied.
The conference was largely ceremonial, with victims and representatives of volunteer organizations offering testimony to Bush administration officials, who listened but offered little.
Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., joined other Democratic senators in criticizing the administration for cutting the budgets of federal programs that had been adopted after Columbine to funnel funding to law enforcement agencies for community police officers and other assets.
“As the recent tragedies in Colorado, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have made clear,” Salazar and eight other Democratic senators wrote Bush, “our children remain all too vulnerable in school.”
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