More bullets, more lockdowns

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — This too shall pass.

That’s the attitude of area school officials who have watched, with a little dismay, the recent surge in lockdowns within the Gallup schools because of the discovery of bullets on school grounds.

On Tuesday, Miyamura High School was in lockdown —for the second time in five days — and later in the day, JFK Mid was in a lockdown situation because of the finding of .22 caliber bullets there as well.

Both schools were on modified lockdowns, which allowed some school activities to continue but Gallup McKinley County School Superintendent Ray Arsenault said this is all causing a disruption in teaching.

While the bullet angle is new — an outgrowth of an incident that occurred at Gallup High School almost two weeks ago — the basic philosophy is not. Last year, for example, Window Rock High was plagued with several disruptions caused by someone calling in bomb threats.

In each case, lockdowns occurred at Window Rock High, and in one incident, students were kept under lockdown for a couple of hours after the school was supposed to be over, causing a great deal of fear among parents who came to the school and waited outside wondering what was going on.

Arsenault said the district has to take these kinds of “scares” seriously because one never knows if it is real or whether the presence of bullets in the school may mean that someone also has a gun.

But there’s also a feeling that whoever is responsible for this is doing it for the obvious reason — the enjoyment of seeing his or her actions discussed by school officials or by the press. Especially if there are no consequences.

Ralph Casebolt, a psychology professor at the University of New Mexico-Gallup campus, said all he knows about the situation is what he has heard on the television, so he could only speculate, but his surmise is one that seems to be believed by a lot of school officials — that the person or persons who are doing this want attention.

Casebolt said he saw this after the first school shooting made the national news. A series of copycat cases were reported over the next few months in various parts of the country.

But if the person wants attention, how is he or she getting it with no one knowing who is responsible?

Simple, said Casebolt. The person who is responsible is not totally anonymous. He or she has made sure that their closest friends know who is doing this and they are basking in that attention.

“It’s that moment of glory that seems to be important,” said Casebolt.

But Arsenault said that attention can go both ways.
“The more people the person tells to get that attention, the bigger risk he or she is taking that someone is going to report them,” he said.

That’s what happened in the Gallup High School case, when someone hid two boxes of shotgun shells in the boy’s bathroom.

The student — his name still has not been made public, but his name is circulating around the school so it’s only a matter of time before it becomes public — told a friend who may have told a friend until finally someone in the high school heard it and reported it to the principal.

That led to the person being placed under long-term suspension, said Arsenault, which allows him to go to Central High School and eventually — at the start of the next school year — to go back into regular classes.
The Gallup High student, who later confessed to school officials that he was the one who did it, said he forgot that the shells were in his backpack and decided to hide them to keep from having them found on him. By doing this, however, he created a bigger disruption in class routine, and as a result, suffered a bigger penalty.

Arsenault said Tuesday that there were other factors involved in the student’s final punishment, but he agreed that the student, who had other options — including just leaving school or keeping the shells hidden in his backpack and hoping not to be caught — probably made the worst decision he could.

The big question is how long will this continue.

No one knows, but Arsenault said these kinds of things have a habit of just stopping on their own, either because the students realize the consequences of being caught or the thrill just goes away.

Arsenault said he and most of the school superintendents will be meeting in Santa Fe Wednesday to talk about the state imposing another one-cent gross receipts tax state-wide which would be used to improve the educational system in the state.

One of the proposals for using the money is to fund a program that will allow school districts to purchase digital cameras and monitors so that school officials would be able to keep track of what students are doing throughout the school grounds. If one were to leave a bullet in some location where it could be found, the school would have a camera nearby that would record either the activity or give school officials a list of possible suspects.

That’s what happened in the last school Arsenault worked at — Cibola High School in Albuquerque. There he had 52 cameras he could view at a moment’s notice, and each of the cameras had the capability to record events for a week. To make sure school officials had a clear view of who was doing what, students were not allowed to wear hats or hoods.

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November 19, 2008
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