MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Classes in Monongalia County Schools are underway after a week of threats and cancelled activities. On WAJR’s “Talk of the Town,” Superintendent Eddie Campbell said they will never take a chance with the safety of students, so every threat is handled very seriously.
Campbell said when a threat is detected, all normal operations immediately cease, and the call goes out to law enforcement for help. Steps are taken to secure buildings and staff following the directives of police.
“We don’t discount anything until someone in an official capacity has told us this is not a credible threat,” Campbell said. “So, we drop everything when we see one of these and report it to our authorities.”
The motive behind the threats is unknown. Campbell said it could be a young person with a warped sense of humor, maybe a student attempting to avoid taking an exam, or a student with a mental issue. Young people can sometimes allow seemingly insignificant issues to spiral out of control, creating a volatile situation that can become deadly.
“Until we’ve actually apprehended that young person and we can determine which side of the fence it is—whether it’s a mental issue or a lack of good judgment that young people generally have—we’re going to treat it like it’s a serious issue,” Campbell said.
Professor Dr. Jeff Daniels of the WVU School of Counseling and Well-Being said many students are struggling with a range of issues in and outside school. Some students truly feel overwhelmed, while others are acting out just to disrupt school to get attention.
“For others, it could be a serious cry for help,” Daniels said. “There may be a serious crisis in the person’s life and they don’t know what to do, and they believe this will help them out.”
Parents can play an important role when it comes to social media. Campbell said dozens of schools were included in a “threat list” that circulated on social media last week and was continually shared by multiple users. Continuing to share the information within the online community does little to ensure the information gets to the hands of investigators that can confirm or discredit it.
“Report it as opposed to sharing it on social media; that’s as much of a problem as anything else,” Campbell said. “If we would stop sharing the types of things we’re seeing, it wouldn’t grow to the level it does, so if we report as opposed to sharing, that might help us out here.”
Daniels said the quick rise and number of threats point to what he believes could be a trend among young people. Social media can quickly spread a “challenge” that can go viral, causing injuries in many cases before the participants learn how dangerous something like the “Tide Pod” challenge was.
“We saw it with Tide Pods and things like that,” Daniels said. “I think now we’re really seeing a trend to call in school threats, unfortunately, because there are huge implications for those types of threats.”
Threats have been to more than 40 school systems across the state over the last 10 days.