04/05/05 -- The Red Lake, Minn., school board had just taken a break from a special meeting to discuss the district’s budget problems March 21 when word came that shots had been fired at the nearby Red Lake Senior High School, recalls board member Kathryn Beaulieu.
What had just occurred was the worst school shooting since Columbine.
Jeff Weise, 16, shot and killed five students, a security guard, and a teacher at Red Lake High School, wounded seven others, two of them critically, then killed himself. Before coming to the school, he had already killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s companion.
A week after the shooting, the Red Lake Indian reservation was shaken again by the revelation that another student, Louis Jourdain, the son of Floyd Jourdain Jr., the leader of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa, might have been involved.
According to the New York Times, the FBI has accused Jourdain, 16, of conspiring with Weise to attack the school. The FBI is investigating the alleged plot, which might have included other students and additional targets in the community.
Beaulieu’s first concern after hearing about the shooting was to make sure the buses that had just picked up the elementary school students didn’t make their scheduled stop at the high school. And she was worried about a niece and nephew who attend Red Lake High School, which has about 300 students.
Beaulieu’s nephew, Ryan Auginash, 14, was injured in the attack and was released from the hospital March 26. He was in a group running out of the school and was shot as he stopped to help a substitute teacher who had fallen down.
In the days after the tragedy, school officials from around the nation offered support, including the superintendent of the Cold Spring, Minn., school district where a 15-year-old student killed two classmates in 2003.
ýwo students from Columbine came to Red Lake to speak at community gatherings, and a teacher from Columbine offered to be a substitute teacher. That incident in April 1999 resulted in the deaths of a teacher and 14 students, including the two shooters.
The shooting at Red Lake High School fits the pattern of similar tragedies in recent years. It took place in a small, rural area, and the shooter was a troubled youth who didn’t fit in, says Katherine Newman, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University and the author of several studies of school shootings, including the 2004 book, Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings.
Weise’s short life was filled with family troubles, including the suicide of his father and a mother in a nursing home with brain damage resulting from an alcohol-related car accident.
According to Newman, “school officials did pretty much everything they could have done” to prevent an attack of this sort.
Weise had been ordered to stay away from school for undisclosed disciplinary reasons and was schooled at home through the district’s alternative education program. He had been diagnosed and treated for mental illness and was taking Prozac.
The school had a metal detector, video cameras, and guards at the door, which is “more security than the vast majority of rural schools,” Newman says. “It’s really hard to stop a determined killer.”
The attack at the high school lasted only 10 minutes. Although he was killed in the attack, security guard Derrick Brun reportedly saved some lives by putting himself in the shooter’s path.
Weise fired at a group in a hallway and followed them into a classroom. Among those killed were teacher Neva Rogers, security guard Derrick Brun, and students Chanelle Rosebear, Thurlene Stillday, Alicia Alberta White, Chase Lussier, and Dewayne Michael Lewis Jr.
The only way a tragedy like this could have been prevented, Newman says, is “if kids who had seen the writings and drawings had come forward” and reported their suspicions. Weise had reportedly shown his classmates drawings of violent and bloody scenes.
A frequent contributor to Nazi web sites, Weise had reportedly posted an online message saying he had been accused of threatening to “shoot up” the school last year on the anniversary of Columbine but had been cleared.
Following Columbine, Newman notes, there was an increase in the number of plots targeting schools but there was also an increase in the number of tragedies prevented -- primarily because students reported threats and rumors they heard.
“School resource officers have been pivotal in intervening” to prevent school shootings, Newman says. “Students have to be certain that what they report will be confidential, and are more likely to approach SROs than school officials.”
Beaulieu, who has been on the school board for six years, says it’s important that high school staff and teachers know their students. “Our administrative staff should greet [students] in the morning and know them on a first-name basis.”
Beaulieu says there’s been too much attention in the media on the poverty and social problems affecting the Red Lake community. “This was a loss of human life,” she says. “The loss of human life should not be equated with family income levels.”
“By whose standards are we poor? Our culture is rich,” Beaulieu says. “We are rich in traditions. We are very spiritual. We are not a culture of poverty.”
Beaulieu, who also is director of archives and the library at the Red Lake Tribal Council, says schools should do more to educate students about their cultural history. Elementary students in Red Lake are taught the Ojibwe language, and Beaulieu would like it to be a required course in high school.
“Concerns over school safety often turn into debates between prevention or better security,” says Kenneth S. Trump, a school security expert based in Cleveland. “But we need both -- metal detectors and mental detectors.”
In many school shooting incidents, the shooter is facing “a progression of deteriorating life events,” Trump says. “In every incident, these have been well-planned, well-thought-out attacks. They are not spur of the moment.” School personnel need to “recognize smaller, incremental declines and increasing levels of depression” among troubled youths.
Trump says schools made significant progress in crisis preparation after Columbine, but in the past few years, “that progress has not only stalled, but we’re going backwards.”
One reason, he says, is declining funding for school safety. Another is “the competition for time caused by the enormous pressure to increase test scores,” which is shifting professional development away from safety issues.
Finally, Trump says, “the farther away we’ve gotten from Columbine, the greater the human tendency toward complacency and denial. School safety has to be a priority, even when it’s not in the news.