Mental Health Profiling: Article Analysis

For years, there have been multiple stories on the news about school shootings. Students and faculty feel that change is necessary to keep all schools safer and to create a better learning environment. But one thing still remains: What can be done to prevent mass shootings and other traumatic events on campus in the future? Although they appear to offer opposing viewpoints, those who disagree about how to make schools safer share common ground regarding enhancing security and how overly preparing students could possibly cause problems. There are many different methods to making campuses a safer environment, not only for students, but faculty as well. In Benjamin Reiss’ article “Campus Security and the Specter of Mental-Health Profiling”, he offers the audience an example of how to create a safer environment. Reiss’ suggestion is that “mandatory evaluations are becoming a standard mechanism to enhance campus security.” (Benjamin Reiss paragraph 1) Although the idea is suggested, Reiss questions whether this could make anyone safer. The author of “Campus Shootings: a Prevention Primer,” …show more content…
Fox uses an airline to compare to emergency preparedness. “Imagine if one day the flight attendant announced that passengers and crew were to engage in a crash drill.” (Fox paragraph 9). He goes on to say how traumatizing that would be to anyone on the flight. The possibility of tragedy happening could increase in the attempt to prepare the students by giving them information of previous incidents. With Reiss’ article, the suggestion of a mental health evaluation on a suspected student could cause more problems than necessary. “Who speaks for the student who is sent involuntarily to a counseling center, who gets a visit from the campus threat-management team, who is strong-armed into a psychiatric hospital?” (Reiss paragraph 7). Who’s to say that the student is a threat to other students and