Professor Hollingsworth
English 1A
26 February 2015
Essay #2- Rough Draft
The article “Red Flags Before Santa Monica Shooting, But Pointing Fingers is Hard”, by Gloria Goodale states the need to raise awareness in schools, workplaces, and families and teach people to identify red-flag behaviors. Such signs can include a change in behavior, an interest in violent weapons, strange writing, feeling hopeless and the desire to hurt someone. People can be trained recognized behavior before incidents happen, but there are challenges, because it could discriminate against people with mental health problems. The article “Colleges Are Watching Troubled Students”, by Jeffrey McMurray, mentions how many colleges and universities began monitoring and sharing information about troubled students after the Virginia Tech shootings, to prevent crime and violence on school campuses. School officials created a “watch list” of troubled students and decided whether they needed professional help or if they should just kick them out of school. Both articles are similar because if “red flag” behaviors were spotted early on it could prevent those students from harming themselves and others.
Schools are beginning to monitor students more for suspicious behavior to prevent violence. By identifying suspicious behavior early on and reporting to the school officials and authorities could save lives of others and themselves. However, there are some concerns that monitor students because they are classified of having a mental illness, can be considered discrimination and a violation of their student rights. Student monitoring can be both good and bad.
Student monitoring can be good because it can prevent school shootings like the incident at Santa Monica Union High School. The alleged shooter, Zawahri, was described as having “red flag” behaviors. Zawahri had a home life of violence, showed an interest assault weapons, from guns to samurai swords, and also had list of people