This article originally appeared in the January 2022 issue of Security Business magazine. When sharing, don’t forget to mention Security Business magazine on LinkedIn and @SecBusinessMag on Twitter.
A little more than 35 years ago, a fictional kid named Ferris changed the school attendance paradigm forever.
For years after John Hughes’ masterpiece Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, parents dealt with kids trying to avoid going to school using this classic movie quote as the centerpiece: “The key to faking out the parents is the clammy hands. It's a good non-specific symptom; I'm a big believer in it. A lot of people will tell you that a good phony fever is a dead lock, but, you get a nervous mother, you could wind up in a doctor's office. That's worse than school. You fake a stomach cramp, and when you're bent over, moaning and wailing, you lick your palms. It's a little childish and stupid, but then, so is high school.”
Like most nostalgia, the things that worked in the late 1980s have taken on a whole new look in the 2020s. For kids looking to skip school, the clammy hands of 1986 have given way to non-specific threats of violence – definitely NOT a case of the more things change, the more they stay the same.
School Threats Become Routine
In the span of less than two weeks, my son’s middle school was hit with three such threats.
The first threat was prompted by a threat of violence scrawled on the door of a bathroom stall. An email was sent to parents alerting them to this threat at about 9:30 p.m., the night before the next day of school. I never saw this email and sent my child to school as normal. When he got home, he told me that the school was at maybe 25% capacity of normal students (I later learned this was not an exaggeration). Multiple police cars and officers had taken station in front of the school. Thankfully, the security and law enforcement presence ensured that every student returned home after the school day without incident.
The second threat came a few days later. It was an untraceable Snapchat post that showed someone driving past my son’s middle school with a threat being made about “shooting the place up.” Again, parents were notified via email. This time, I saw the email and decided that since most parents kept their kids home the first time, I would keep my son home and have him use his school-issued computer for distance learning.
The third threat came the same week, and it made national news, as someone posted a “TikTok challenge” video calling for school shootings and bombings on Dec. 17. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a statement saying it had no evidence to suggest the claims were credible, but encouraged the public to "remain alert."
With it being such a vague threat, I decided to send my son to school.
An Incredibly Difficult Position
It seems that our nation is reaching a breaking point when it comes to the school shooting problem, with the recent Michigan high school shooting – that left four kids dead and the allegedly negligent parents subsequently arrested – bringing the situation to a head.
Someone has figured out that making untraceable threats to school safety might lead to a day off from school. Despite the lack of credibility of the TikTok threat, districts across the country – including in California, Texas, Minnesota and Missouri – canceled classes on that day.
Even when threats are deemed low-risk, parents like me are faced with a terrible and difficult reality: If I send my child to school when I knew there was a specific threat, and then something unthinkable happens, I would never be able to forgive myself.
The danger, of course, is that the increasing number of these threats makes us become numb to the warnings, and we end up dismissing them without a second thought.
Such is the state of being in a world where parents, school administrators – pretty much everyone – just wishes we could simply deal with a case of clammy hands. That said, it is reassuring to know that many of these schools are much safer and secure thanks to the coordinated efforts of law enforcement, schools and our industry. Keep it up and thank you!
Paul Rothman is Editor-in-Chief of Security Business magazine. Email him your comments and questions at [email protected]. Access the current issue, full archives and apply for a free subscription at www.securitybusinessmag.com.
