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Northeastern Voice: Fox to deliver Klein Lecture on school shootings
By: Susan Salk
If campus shootings in the United States today were compared to those in past decades, the numbers would tell a story different from the panicky headlines and "giddy" minute-to-minute television reports that make the crimes seem more commonplace, says Lipman Family Professor James Alan Fox.
Fox, an internationally known criminologist, will talk about mass shootings on campuses in this year's Robert D. Klein University Lecture, "Making Sense of School/Campus Shootings: Policies, Practices and Prevention." The lecture begins at 3 p.m. March 27 in 240 Egan.
He will contrast mass media portrayals of such shootings with the statistics, which show campus murders in the United States have remained relatively steady, at about 10 a year.
"We've had campus rampages in the '70s and '80s, but people forget about that because our telecommunications abilities weren't as sophisticated, and we didn't have the minute-to-minute coverage we have today," Fox said. "But then, as now, it's a very rare event. By comparison, about 1,000 students a year commit suicide."
He argues that panic-driven decisions and approaches by colleges — drills, plans of "lockdowns" and exploration of the use of metal detectors — are wrong. Instead, a "student-centeredness" should be at the foundation of campus and faculty planning, he said.
"A lot of student shooters are graduate students whose careers are on the line," Fox said. "If they have a grievance with a professor, and they can't get their dissertation approved, this could make or break them."
Fox cites the incessant reporting of the recent shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois as being a part of the problem. "The news coverage of these events has been absolutely horrible. At one point, the press seemed almost giddy as the death toll rose," he said.
The coverage has not only heightened fear and paranoia on campuses, but has also triggered policies that veer toward to the ridiculous, in Fox’s estimation. "There's actually a campus out west that is training their faculty in marksmanship," and other universities are actively engaged in student profiling, he said.
The author of 16 books on topics including mass killings and violence prevention advised President Clinton on juvenile justice issues.
Fox was selected by the provost's office to deliver this year's lecture, an honor offered every year in remembrance of the late professor Klein, a chair of mathematics and member of the Faculty Senate Agenda Committee.
Source: This article was originally published in the March 5, 2008 edition of the Northeastern Voice.
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