What+are+the+psychological+effects+of+excessive+security+among+students?

By: Brittany Rodrigue
1) Fitzgerald, Eileen. (2013). Mental health experts warn schools about armed staff. //Newstimes//, Retrieved from http://www.newstimes.com/local/article/Mental-health-experts-warn-schools-about-armed-4286392.php

This article summarizes the debate of armed forces within school's across the country. Mental health experts are used to determine that metal detectors and armed guards increase the perception of feeling unsafe within a school. The article also proposes that if a school were to have an armed force were to exist, it would be a school resource officer because they are police officers trained to work in schools. Human detectors are also more useful than armed guards or metal detectors because no event is spontaneous, they are usually planned and spoken to another person. Armed forces establish the mindset within children that there is danger within there school and they have a hard time trusting people because of this.

I feel this article accurately described the effects of armed forces among schools. Students will become mistrustful around people because if they are surrounded by guns and metal detectors they will feel they are in a dangerous environment. If most tragic events at schools are planned, then student bodies and teachers should become more aware and alert of probably incidents. I feel there should be a workshop to detect symptoms leading towards school shootings or harmful events so people can begin to prevent something like this from occurring. Enhancing school's to prevent violent acts will ultimately decrease the amount of criminal actions and create a safe environment within schools.

2) Lieberman, Donna. (2012). Schoolhouse to courthouse. The New York Times, Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/opinion/sunday/take-police-officers-off-the-school-discipline-beat.html?_r=0

Schoolhouse to courthouse is an article that reveals the effects of police officers on education within schools. The article gives incidents and statistics validating how police officers violate civil rights and escalate minor disciplinary problems into criminal activity. New York public school officials have no authority over on-site police officers. The article discusses how schools with control and less police-to-school involvement had a decrease in criminal activity and an increase in graduation rates. Schoolhouse to courthouse also discusses how police officers throughout the United States are targeting Black or Latino students. More than 70% of arrests in schools during the 2009-2010 school year were arrests on Blacks and Latinos. The article concludes that with police officers under authority of schools, there will be a decrease in crime, misdemeanor violations and increase graduation rates.

The article validated my opinion of a need to decrease police activity in schools. Police officers create minor problems into criminal activity which impedes a student's achievement. School's as a nation should consider this article when deciding on police involvement within their schools. School officials as a disciplinary are enough to decrease criminal activity and also promote a students success.

3) Sussman, Aaron. (2012). Learning in lockdown: school police, race, and the limits of law. //UCLA Law Review//, Retrieved from Academic Search Complete Database

Learning in Lockdown also discussed how police officers are violating student's rights and how police are targeting multicolored students. The article goes in detail about violation of the Fourth Amendment and talks about psychological effects of abusive school security. The article explains stigma and stereotypes with the psychological effects and how they are caused. Stigma is a discrepancy between a child's self identity and the identity ascribed by others. Research studies have shown that a teacher usually has negative associations and lower expectations for nonwhite children. The article then assumes that police officers have negative associations and lower expectations to the conduct of nonwhite students when observing them.

The majority of this article focused on criminalizing schools so most of the article I found irrelevant but also useful. The fact that teachers have a negative image of nonwhite students was surprising and I think this research displays even more the affects of police officers violating students rights. Nonwhite students are subject to implicit messages from teachers and constant suspicion and harassment from law enforcement. While the article compared nonwhite schools to white schools it also provided a point that white schools receive better resources because nonwhite schools use their budget money on extra metal detectors and security guards rather than counselors or library books. This article was useful to me as a whole because it reinforced the fact that police officers create problems out of minor offenses or even create problems from thin air because of their unconscious negative associations with nonwhite students.

4) Wasserman, M. Lewis. (2011). Student's freedom from excessive force by public school officials: a fourth or fourteenth amendment right? //Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy// (1), Retrieved from Academic Search Complete Database

This article goes into detail about how the Supreme Court has still not decided whether the Fourth or Fourteenth Amendments apply to public schools and excessive force to punish students. The article mainly uses arguments to support that the Fourth Amendment does apply to public schools. It states that the Fourth Amendment is the source of school student's right to security from acts committed by school officials. The article mainly goes into detail about court cases in history that have set constitutional protection in place for public schools. I feel as if a bias lawyer wrote the entire research paper because it was very one sided and also persuasive.

I believe this article was probably the least useful to me but it did confirm the fact that society provides protection under the Fourth Amendment to public school students. The article also promoted the fact that in a previous article, police officers were abusing students rights to the Fourth Amendment. The article replayed history to demonstrate when the Fourth Amendment was used as protection and when it was not. It provided evidence to display that the Supreme Court has yet to come up with a decisive conclusion on whether these Amendments apply to the public school system.

5) Koch, Kathy. (1998). School violence: are american schools safe? //CQ Press//, Retrieved from CQ Researcher Database

This article summarizes the fear that America has obtained over the past decade in regards to school shootings. The number of students bringing guns to school has dropped 36% within the last five years but after school shootings, armed police officers and security measures tend to rise. High school seniors that were injured or threatened by a weapon in school has been at it's highest in 1991 at 3.9%. Ever since then, violent incidents in schools have been decreasing but public schools are still insisting on an increase in security. The article summarizes how preventing school violence is essential but it also states how there is a difference between reacting to gun shootings and overreacting. The article produces evidence that providing stricter gun policies within the United States would decrease the amount of deaths and diminish the need to increase school security.

With all of the data and evidence provided in this article, it actually brought a different idea in to mind. Why do we spend so much money and budgets on increasing school security with armed police, cameras and metal detectors when we could reduce gun violence and save money by putting stricter laws into effect? As a nation, America should realize when being the best becomes a problem and try to do things more effectively.