Averting School Rampage

• Author: Eric Madfis
• DOI: 10.1177/1541204013497768
• Published date: 01 July 2014
• Date: 01 July 2014
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Averting School Rampage:

Student Intervention Amid a

Persistent Code of Silence

Eric Madfis

1

Abstract

Pulling from in-depth interviews with school administrators, counselors, security and police officers,

and teachers directly involved in thwarting rampage attacks at 11 Northeastern schools, this study

considers the extent to which students have broken through a ‘‘code of silence,’’ discouraging them

from informing on their peers. While findings support prior research indicating the vital preventative

role of students’ coming forward with information about threats, close scrutiny of averted incidents

reveals that scholars and educational practitioners have overestimated the extent to which the

student code of silence has diminished post-Columbine. Even in these successfully averted incidents,

numerous students exposed to threats still did not come forward; those who did were rarely close

associates or confidants of accused students; and some who did ultimately come forward did so as a

result of being personally threatened or in order to deflect blame away from themselves, rather than

out of altruistic concern for others.

Keywords

school rampage, school shooting, code of silence, bystander, violence prevention

Over the last several decades in the United States, school rampage shootings have taken multiple

lives and, as a result, garnered widespread attention among academics and the population at large.

These events were highly publicized, as they shocked the American public not only for their

brutality, but because of the prior belief that such schools were ‘‘safe havens, free of the dangers

of street crime’’ (Lawrence, 2007, p. 147). That such violence could be perpetrated in middle- and

upper-class school districts away from the plight of impoverished urban areas was seen as especially

perplexing (Kimmel & Mahler, 2003). Perhaps unsurprisingly, a significant amount of empirical

research has since been conducted about the phenomenon. During this same period, however, there

have also been dozens of averted incidents where student plots to kill multiple peers and faculty

members came to the attention of authorities and thus were thwarted. Despite the relative breadth

1

Social Work Program, University of Washington, Tacoma, WA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Eric Madfis, Social Work Program, University of Washington, Tacoma, 1900 Commerce Street, Box 358425, Tacoma, WA

98402, USA.

Email: emadfis@uw.edu

Youth Violence and JuvenileJustice

2014, Vol. 12(3) 229-249

ªThe Author(s) 2013

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DOI: 10.1177/1541204013497768

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of research on school rampages, few studies have addressed attacks that were planned yet did not

come to fruition. Whereas incidents of school violence that have resulted in multiple fatalities and

injuries are often extensively investigated by scholars, the government, and the media alike, far less

information exists about ‘‘near misses’’ (Verlinden, Hersen, & Thomas, 2000, p. 28). Pollack,

Modzeleski, and Rooney (2008, p. 9) noted that:

few [schools] track threats made against other students or the school (especially if the event did not result

in official law enforcement intervention). The result of this failure to collect and maintain records regard-

ing threats is that very little is known about the extent or nature of the problem.

Though understudied, research on averted rampage has clear practical significance. By learning

from the instances in which school rampage threats came to the attention of authorities and were

thwarted, there exists potential for future interventions and policies to be modeled on prior

successes. In addition, empirical knowledge about how school rampage incidents have been averted

is particularly important because many of the most popular and widespread school disciplinary

policies and security practices implemented in recent years cannot be reliably linked to preventing

rampage but may actually hinder the few preventative measures with an empirical basis.

The findings to follow indicate that it was people coming forward with knowledge about a poten-

tial school rampage that has preempted these nearly fatal occurrences. However, even in many of

these successfully averted incidents, numerous student bystanders exposed to threats still did not

come forward; those who did were often not close associates or confidants of the accused students;

and some of the people who did ultimately come forward did so as a result of being personally threat-

ened or in order to deflect blame away from themselves rather than out of altruistic concern for

others. While numerous scholars and many of the school and police officials interviewed in this

study acknowledge the important role that encouraging positive student bystander behavior plays

in averting school rampage, few recognize how seriously ingrained the code of silence is among stu-

dents. Hence, scholars and practitioners may be overstating the degree to which students, after the

widespread reporting of the Columbine attack, now take their peers’ threats seriously and report

them to the authorities. Moreover, this article suggests that the lack of positive bystander behavior

on the part of students likely reflects increasingly punitive and criminalized school environments

that erode trusting relationships between students and school staff members.

Completed and Averted School Rampage

While the term school shooting has been defined and operationalized in a wide variety of ways,

Newman, Fox, Roth, Mehta, and Harding (2004, p. 50) can be credited with delineating the term

rampage school shootings, which ‘‘take place on a school-related public stage before an audience;

involve multiple victims, some of whom are shot simply for their symbolic significance or at

random; and involve one or more shooters who are students or former students of the school.’’Other

academic definitions have variously limited school rampages by the type of weaponry, by the offen-

der’s connection to the school as former students, current students, staff members, or strangers, by

the relationship between offenders and victims as specific or random targets, and by the number of

victims killed or injured (Daniels et al., 2007, 2010; Levin & Madfis, 2009; Moore, Petrie, Braga, &

McLaughlin, 2003; Muschert, 2007; Newman & Fox, 2009; Newman et al., 2004; Vossekuil, Fein,

Reddy, Borum, & Modzeleski, 2002). In order to preserve as general a concept of rampage as

possible, this study defines averted school rampage plots as those cases of any form of fatal violence

planned by one or more students targeting multiple specific or nonspecific classmates and/or faculty

at their former or current school that was preempted from occurring and causing any death or injury

and of which there is any evidence of intent. Thus, the notion of an averted rampage leaves room for

230 Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 12(3)