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Bill Delaney: Students helping to avert school tragedies

Bill Delaney

Bill Delaney is CNN's Boston bureau chief.

Q: Are students in general feeling less secure at school?

Delaney: The answer depends on what periods of time you are comparing. Certainly, in the years since Columbine, the sense of security among students has plummeted. People who went to school before Columbine, though they may have known about guns and metal detectors, were less aware of those problems.

Columbine really changed everything for young people and the people who teach them. When speaking with college students and younger students, what you hear most is that what would have been unthinkable for a school generation just a few years before is now thought about all the time.

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Today, students feel that it’s possible that violence could erupt where they go to school. Ten years ago, most students would have thought it was almost impossible for such a thing to happen, with the possible exception of students in inner-city schools. Perhaps this is what Columbine really represented. That even at a classic, suburban high school, it had become difficult to feel safe.

Q: How did students in Elmira, New York, manage to help avert another school-shooting tragedy on Valentine's Day?

VIDEO CNN's Bill Delaney reports on the loss of innocence in the generation of school violence Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)   ALSO Student charged with bringing weapons to school

Delaney: Elmira, New York, is located roughly near Syracuse. Here, at Southside High school, a student approached a security officer at around 8 a.m. on Wednesday, and told the officer that the suspect had a gun; the school alerted the local police. Meanwhile, the security officer approached the student, Jeremy Getman, in the school’s cafeteria; the student gave up the gun without incident. Only after taking Getman into custody did the officers discover a shotgun and at least 14 pipe bombs among the suspect’s belongings

This case echoes a situation in California a couple of weeks ago where another tragedy was averted, this time at a community college. A young woman working at a PhotoMat saw photographs of a room full of weapons; she alerted authorities. They traced the photographs to a student at the community college who allegedly had been on the brink of an assault at the school, according to indications from documents reportedly found at this suspect’s home.

Both of these incidents are part of what police are saying is a trend: students helping to avert potential catastrophes because they have learned nightmares can happen in reality; that if a fellow student is flashing a gun, he may not just be showing off -- he may really use it.

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