Today at around 11:20am at the Lone Star College's CyFair campus northwest of Houston Texas, 16 people were injured by a stabbing that occurred. Out of those 16 people, 2 of them were in critical condition. A student reports that "he saw blood on a stairway and several injured victims...one wounded woman had a hole her throat, one had a hole in her cheek and another victim had a stab wound in the back of his head." A group of students managed to chase the suspect, tackle him and pin him to the floor until authorities arrived. The suspect has been identified as a 21 year old male who currently was enrolled at the school. The weapon currently hasn't been identified."We don't know whether (it was) a knife or some other type of instrument." The school remained on lock down until around 2pm today to make sure no other attackers or injured were present on campus. Investigators are still trying to find out the motive of the suspect but it appears to be random. This stabbing only took place 2 months after a shooting that wounded 3 people at a nearby college.
How do you think schools can protect their students without interfering in a students privacy? What could the students do in order to prevent incidence like this one?
More information can be found
here and
here
5 comments:
In my opinion, a school stabbing is no different from a school shooting; in fact, it is perhaps even more gruesome and traumatic to the students that witnessed the stabbing. An incident like the stabbing at Lone Star College emphasizes the importance of not only enhanced security against guns on a school campus, but other violent weapons such as knives. Although a school could not do much to prevent students from bringing dangerous weapons to school without infringing on students' privacy to some degree, student awareness and caution is a key factor in preventing such violence. For instance, if a student notices another student talking about or carrying a dangerous weapon, he/she should tell a school administrator or professor immediately to prevent any violence, injuries, and even possibly deaths, from occurring. Schools should also attempt to formulate ways to prevent the dangerous weapons from entering the campus without severely intruding on the privacy of its students. In the long run, student safety is key, and some degree of privacy intrusion is inevitably necessary for a school to prevent violence on its campus.
Events like these seem to increase in frequency in recent years (and closer to home too). I think the best way to prevent stabbings or shootings is for students to keep their eyes and ears open and report any suspicious behavior to the administration (as Samantha stated). This may raise more false alarms and, if taken to the extreme, increase student paranoia about disasters of this kind; however, most students know other students better than the faculty and staff. By alerting the faculty to potential threats, hopefully the faculty will be able to provide mental services and prevent accidents. I've also heard of schools that require students to pass through metal detectors before entering the campus, but this doesn't seem feasible for all the high schools and colleges across the U.S.
Knives are tools, and I don't think that we should worry about limiting the number of knives in the aftermath of this incident unlike gun control. It seems like this entire event has drawn attention once again to concerns about safety and the trade offs such as privacy and efficiency. I'm interested to see how others would remedy this problem.
I personally do not believe that there can be any remedy to this sort of problem. Yes, students can and have been keeping eyes and ears open for any details that might suggest an event like this from happening. One can clearly not just ban knives. It's just the fact that knives are so easily concealable virtually no one will know somebody has one until it's too late. The college could put metal detectors up but there would be so much backlash from it that it would be impossible. All anyone can do is keep their eyes and ears open.
I think that events like these serve as a reminder that the issue of school safety is much broader than gun control. You have to be pretty mentally unstable to perform a violent crime like that, be it with a gun, knife, or other weapon. Schools should be working on making mental health services more accessible, as well as lessening the stigma of mental health, so that more people are inclined to get help, and report others who they think need help. Both students and adults on campus need to be trained on what to do when they think someone is in need of help, is carrying a weapon, or might do something that will harm themselves or others.
I agree with what Kathryn and Samantha have said about how people should just report anything they hear that might relate to a future violent outbreak, even if it seems like a joke. Violence can happen anywhere, and it's impossible to know when it's going to happen if people don't speak up. After recently experiencing a potentially dangerous situation at Aragon, we know what it's like to have heightened security. Having police around puts everyone on edge. Though it may make people feel safer, I don't think extra security is the answer. Knives, just like guns, are dangerous. However, I don't think there needs to be knife control laws like the current ones for gun control. Like George said, the best method to prevent violence is for people to just be aware of whats going on around them.
Post a Comment