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SALT LAKE CITY -- Over the last decade, the Safe Schools program has been effective in dealing with drugs and weapons in schools - day-to-day safety concerns, in other words.
But one of the people who helped craft the program says managing a crisis is a little different. Oli Olafsson of Human Touch Counseling studies human behavior and has applied his knowledge to safety and security plans nationwide. After Columbine 11 years ago, Olafsson honed in on Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris's behavior for not only that day, but leading up to the shooting. What Columbine and the threat at Roy high school have in common, according to Olafsson, is they're not the result of students who suddenly and violently snap.
"These individuals didn't just go out and snap one night and go out based on a stressor that caused them to snap. These were things that were on-going," Olafsson said.
But Olafsson says that though the clues are obvious to classmates, friends, and even family, they don't often register to the point of reporting strange behavior. Luckily in Roy, it did for one young woman, who may have saved many lives.
In that sense, Safe Schools policies may have made a difference, but a lot of responsibility rests on the officials to follow up, as those at Roy did.
"They didn't just dismiss it. They did act upon it," Olafsson said. "That is a direct cause in the awareness that's occurred in the communities over such incidents."
But more students and faculty could be empowered to not fear telling on a classmate. Many other students could have known what the two students were planning and dismissed it. In fact, Olafsson says awareness of dangerous objects is still a challenge. He points to recent examples of a teacher who brought a pipe bomb she found on a playground into the school office because she didn't know what it was, and a crossing guard who was handed a gun, and, unsure if it was real, carried it to a school.
Schools don't want false alarms or over-reactions on their hands, either, and legal concerns are a real sticking point when it comes to making false accusations, so it's a difficult balance.
