Christmas Present
Ethan Crumbley was a fifteen year old sophomore at Oxford High School in the Detroit exurbs. His parents gave him an early Christmas present the weekend after Thanksgiving, a semi-automatic pistol. His Mom took him to the shooting range so he could enjoy it. And on Tuesday, November 30th 2021, Ethan put the semi-automatic pistol and several clips of ammunition in his backpack, and took them to school. Later in the day, he attacked his fellow students and teachers. Four students were killed, seven more students and a teacher were wounded.
16 Year Old Hero
Before we go any farther into this tragedy, we need to recognize a hero. Tate Myre was a sixteen year old junior, and a star running back on the football team. The weekend before the shooting, he visited the University of Toledo as a scholarship prospect. When Crumbley started firing, Tate charged, trying to stop the shooter. Tate was shot several times, and died in a police car on the way to the hospital. But his actions bought other students’ time to get away. He saved lives, at the cost of his own.
A Threat
On Monday, a teacher was disturbed to observe Ethan searching for ammunition on his cell phone. The next day, the day of the shooting, a note was found on his desk. It had a drawing of a gun, a bullet, and a bleeding victim, and the words “…the thoughts won’t stop, help me”. The teacher did exactly the right thing: Ethan was sent to the office. The administrators called the parents in for a conference, and required that Ethan receive counseling within forty-eight hours. They suggested that the parents take Ethan home.
But the parents demanded that Ethan stay in school. We don’t know how that conversation went, yet, but clearly administrators didn’t feel they had “enough” to require Ethan’s removal from school. And, they either didn’t think of it, or felt they couldn’t, do a search of Ethan and his backpack, the backpack with a gun and ammunition clips. And they didn’t call in additional social services, or call the police.
We also don’t know if they asked the obvious question: does Ethan have access to weapons, particularly guns. If they did, we don’t know if Ethan or the parents lied or told the truth about his new present. Certainly Ethan didn’t tell them the gun was right there, in the office, in his backpack. So Ethan went back to class, and ultimately, four students died and six more and a teacher were wounded.
What Would We Do
I was the Dean of Students at a suburban high school for eight years. If I was working in Oxford High School, Ethan and his parents likely would have been in my office.
What would we have done? So the note, the pictures and the cry for help, would have been considered a threat. That creates the “reasonable suspicion” that a school legally needs to act. In our situation, probably the entire administrative staff, the Principal and the Assistant Principal and the Dean would have been involved. We also would have called in the School Resource Officer (SRO), the Sheriff’s Deputy assigned to our school, in the years when one was available.
I retired in 2014. While there were political divides then, the current climate is far more polarized than it was even seven years ago. So we don’t know what the conversation with the Crumbley’s was like. We don’t know if the Second Amendment was mentioned. We don’t know how concerned the Administrators of Oxford High School were with parent complaints, and student removals. And finally, we don’t know if Ethan was a student with a status which made it difficult to remove him from the school building.
Reasonable Suspicion
But I do know what would have happened in our office. One of us, probably me, would have searched Ethan’s pockets, and his coat, and his locker, and for damn sure, his backpack. He made an identifiable threat, on paper, and asked for help. Our staff, including the SRO, would want to do everything to help him. But first, we would have made sure he was safe, and so were our students and staff.
And if the parents refused to allow the search? Then a couple of things would have happened. The SRO could have raised the threat to a legal issue, and then handled at as a police matter. In the years when we didn’t have an SRO on site, a Deputy would have been called in. Here in Licking County we have deputies specially trained in crisis intervention.
Or we would have done an “emergency removal”, requiring the parents to take Ethan home. There might have been yelling and screaming. Things might be ugly. But Ethan would have gone home, and those ten students and a teacher would have been safe, at least for Tuesday. And then the Sheriff’s Department would have been notified, and they would have done a “home check”.
Hindsight
I can imagine how the Oxford High School administrators are feeling right now. No matter how you look at it, they failed the most important mission they have for their students, to keep them safe. They must be devastated, perhaps beyond recovery. They not only have to live with their failure, but also with the national scrutiny of their actions, including by armchair quarterbacks like me. But I have been in their position. There are lots of pressures: parents, school boards, district office staff, local, state and national politics. But none of that compares with their duty to stop what happened in the halls of Oxford High School on Tuesday.
Somehow, they missed that.
