reaction and equip student activists about the march for our lives rally taking place in washington dc on saturday. all the conversation morning with phone calls, emails, facebook comments and tweets. be sure to watch live at 7 a.m. eastern on saturday morning. the march are holding for our lives rally against gun violence tomorrow in washington. our live coverage begins at noon eastern on c-span. professors, physicians and a legislative experts discuss gun violence and school safety. posted by the national provincial and thus prevent shell -- the national prevention science coalition. this is about two hours.

i would like to spend a minute thanking everyone for putting together this event. let me start by thanking bobby scott, our sponsor who is a staunch advocate of evidence and evidence-based policy on capitol hill. and to the house committee on foreign affairs, for giving us this lovely brief ing room for us to use today, we thank you for that.

i would like to thank our sponsors, penn state university, the universities of florida, south carolina, john hopkins, the society of policy and practice, it takes a village to put on a briefing and we are very grateful to our sponsors. i would like to thank lauren hogg and her family for coming today. i would like to thank dr. julie phelps pollack for coming today and being with us. time magazine in yesterday, there was a wonderful profile of the parkland students and their efforts to organize this march and movement. the report had a wonderful line, and she walks into the offices of the parkland students and says, "everything crackles with a sense of ferocious optimism."

" a sense of ferocious optimism. ." i would like to thank you for your leadership and grace in helping us to understand where we are and where he might go today. i want to make a special thanks used to michael green. when parkland happened, we were obviously all devastated. when the march appeared on the horizon and the magnitude of this event, and the opportunity to stand in front of congress and all of you and put out and evidenced-based message for howe prevention -- that is i see prevention science, these lens --e a much broader michael is the one who said, we have to have an opportunity. we can't just have knee-jerk responses to what is in front of us today. we have to rely on the science and the evidence. michael is a distinguished scholar and an even better human being. we thank you for your leadership today. logistics -- we are going to go

up until 4:00. we are live on c-span. as you walk out to use the restrooms, down the hall to the right, a little wave to your friends and family at home. we will be having a reception in the basement, banquet hall, i'm told, room 24. lightwill be refreshments, beer and wine, and we hope you will join us to continue the conversation that we are about to start today. most of all, we hope you'll join us tomorrow on pennsylvania avenue for the march. the purpose of the discussion today and the purpose of the national prevention science coalition is to promote science-based education of lawmakers. we are intentionally and purposefully focused on perhaps the hardest policy objective of all to achieve, because the goal of prevention science -- to make something visible invisible. to keep something from happening. to help a carefree child grow and be carefree instead of the victim of abuse.

to help educate and have an education that isn't thwarted by conflict at home or communities or conflict with the system or violence within the schools. to have health, not illness or harm. when you achieve these objectives, you cannot see what the alternative was that you avoided. that's what makes this path so hard. that makes the looking out for voiceless constituency. our goal today is to give that constituency of prevention a voice. we believe that science can help thatinate the path prevention science promises to lead us to. having a voice is not enough. the seven deadly sins is science without humanity. here we will strive for both science and humanity along with a sense of ferocious optimism. let me turn it over to michael to introduce the panel.

thank you all, again. >> thank you, john. we start this about three weeks ago and thank you all for coming . thank you to the panelists for agreeing to come and speaking. this event, as john said, could not have occurred without a team of people. i want to specifically think the to thank specifically the people from the national times coalition. john, to my left. bobby, jeff, who are stun an amazing job in helping to organize this. andy, who will be here later. we are here today not because a killer killed. we are here because of the

amazing outcry, activism and encouraged of the students at marjory stoneman douglas high school. we often say that our fate as a nation rest with young people. well, as a nation, despite these perilous times, i think we can all celebrate the path of young young people, that they are paving throughout the nation, in the march tomorrow, and certainly continuing in the months and years ahead. and courage of our young people. -- let us givend her hand to this spirit and courage of our young people. [applause] michael: how many of you all are marching tomorrow? all right! we have convened this briefing not to give personal opinions. we are here for two reasons. we want to convey the thoughts

and feelings of those who experienced the rampage shooting at marjory stoneman douglas high school through firsthand accounts. lauren and julie, i know you are speaking as part of an ongoing healing process. and i know it takes enormous strength to recall this tragedy. i don't think i could have done what you are doing. we are in all of you and your awe ofre simply iin your friends and your peers. we are looking for a strategy designed to make our schools safer and promote student well-being. the best of the best scholar were invited from all over the country and all are agreed to speak without

accepting or requesting speaking fees. each will be given 12 minutes to speak. each could hold our attention for hours. i hope you can all enjoy our speakers informally. card during the light refreshments later. [laughter] i do hope and believe legislators and all of us can benefit from what we are about to hear. that said, without taking away one iota of respect for the scholar practitioners we have assembled, i want to acknowledge the obvious fact that we are all white men and a white woman scholar. was a significant and quite frankly, unacceptable lapse of consciousness on my part as the primary organizer of this event. hogg, brother of

lauren acknowledged, people of color in their communities , and these violence senseless killings really reach the front pages of our newspapers and media. i say this because it has to be said. at the same time i do not, in any way, want to diminish the horrible tragedy that was heartland. i do hope and believe that we can work as a nation together with pride in our diversity and throughout all of our communities, to drastically reduce the scourge of gun balance in our country. biographies ind the program, and it will not spend time reading them. dew, ihout further a want to begin to introduce -- without further ado, i want to begin to introduce and have our speakers speak. first lauren to my right, if a 14-year-old freshman at marjorie stoneman douglas high school. some of you may have heard her brother speak.

lauren and her mother rebecca, rebecca would you stand, please? sorry. this is lauren and david's mother. >> and a public school teacher. michael: and a public school teacher. very important. [laughter] [applause] >> these women represent the strength behind david and all men that walk in their footsteps . lauren? lauren: hello, my name is lauren hogg. i am a freshman at marjory stoneman douglas high school in parkland, florida. on february 14 i went through an unimaginable tragedy. everyone at my school did. but unfortunately we now know what it is like to go through it and we can imagine what it is like. i was in my fourth period tv production class when it all started. we were getting ready for the end of the day, we were packing up, we were laughing with my friends, having a great

valentine's day. right before exchanging valentine's day gifts with each other. as a were finishing up, we heard the sound go off. we thought it was weird, because it was a fire drill. earlier in the day we had had another we assumed it was a one. valentine's day prank. as we took our time and packed up, we walked down the stairs s eventually, and as he walked down the stairs, people were joking and laughing. we took our time. when we got down to the stairs, that's when i realized something really was wrong. as i looked behind my school were supposed to go for our fire drill, i saw kids running. i saw kids running for their life. is look in their eyes something that no one should ever have to see. the fact of the matter is kids still thought it was a joke. they thought it was a joke

because we were told at our school that we were going to have a code red drill with actors and blanks being fired. kids were laughing, while on the other side of my school campus my friends were dying. , we had no idea what was going on just a few feet away from us at that time. as i saw people running and people joking, i grabbed my four closes friends my class and i said something is wrong here. we have to get back to class. they're like, don't worry lauren, it is just a drill. i said no, guys, i know something is wrong. at this moment, something was telling me that something bad was happening. i followed my intuition. i grabbed my friends and i took them and said we need to get back to class. i don't care if this is a drill or not. we need to be prepared for

whatever it could be. as he ran back to our class, we had to shovel through kids were taking their time to walk back the stairs. when we got back to class, i called my brother. i said david, what is going on here? something is wrong. why are people running, why are people screaming? and my brother was in another building than me, and all he could mutter out was hide, , lauren, hide. he just kept on repeating, hide. i heard people screaming behind him and i knew something was surely wrong. when i got back to my class we hid in a corner. and so many kids thought it was a joke. i grabbed my friend and we hid behind the television set where nails are sticking out because they built it a few years ago. as kids still thought it was a joke, we began to get texts from our friends. it started up with one kid

saying, what is that noise? a lot of my friends were in the freshman building and in the group text, this is what the texts were like. next thing you know, another kid saying, what is that noise? why does it sound like there are gunshots down my hallway? my friend was screaming and telling us they loved us and the shooter was shooting through their classroom door. and the next thing you know, we were hearing stories that they were telling us, that our friends were on the floor bleeding. and that is something that no child, nobody in america, no matter how old you are or where you are from, should have to go through. it is something that no one should have to go through. hearing reports while we are stuck in a corner of a dark room , having our teachers cover the

door, as our friends were laying on the floor, was probably one of the worst parts of the day. as we waited in silence, one of my friends told up a newsfeed on their phone. hiding, were still's had no idea what was going on. the rumors coming to our phones and the snapchat's that we were getting from our friends in the freshman building, as the shooter was shooting through their door, it is something you can never imagine unless you were there and you saw what we saw. as he sat there, the look in people's eyes -- i was holding people that i have never talked hands. every single person was telling each other how much they loved each other. i never realized until that moment, how much something as little as saying, i love you, can make a difference. throughout the whole day, it was a great day before this. everyone was saying i love you. it was probably the happiest day

at douglas. what really struck me was that even i before this, was saying i love you to my friends, and it could've been the last time i said it or heard it from my friends. for some of my friends, it was there last time. met. we sat there in the darkness and heard reports coming in about my friends being on the floor and teachers eating dead on the floor. we were scared. dead on thebeing floor. we heard reports there were multiple shooters. we heard someone come down our hallway. we didn't know who it was. in that moment, all i could think about was my family. people say that your life flashes before your life that flashes before your eyes, and it really does. as i sat there, i'm 14, i shouldn't have to think about getting shot at my school. a sanctuary that should be safe

for every child in america! in that moment, all i could think about was getting shot, and things i hadn't said to my family. having to text goodbye to your parents that you love them, is the worst thing imaginable. we heard our door get kicked open. we didn't know who it was, but thankfully it was the swat team coming to save us. when they came to get us they made us line up in a row. as he walked out, we had so many police officers and swat members pointing guns at us. having to hold my hands above my school, knowing that something was wrong and the building right next to ours, it was horrific. outside and being told to run for our lives with our hands above our heads, it was horrible. once i got out, the thing was it

was almost like a movie. everything seemed to glow. in your life, i never realized that things could physically glow, sounds could be obsolete. things seem so extreme. my friends screaming. people not knowing what was going on. our school has literally become a battleground. it was silent. kids did not know what was going on.

it felt like we had just had a bomb basically dropped on our school. the worst part of that entire day was getting home. growing up, i always imagined and dreamed of seeing my friends and myself on tv someday. i always thought it would be so cool. but seeing my friends faces are on tv -- collapsing on the cold hard floor on my house knowing that i friends were missing or dead on the floor of my school , where i laughed with them, was the worst part of that day. the things that i went through, the things that my friends went through, having to walk over our friends bodies, no one in america or anywhere in this world should have to go through that. i would just like to add, as part of the never again movement, i would like to elaborate on sunday that hasn't been that public. i would like to talk about mental health and our educational system. we need mental health curriculum in our schools. we are forced to take sexual education and physical education. but we were never asked or even given the option to take mental health education. i find that absolutely absurd.

if anything, it is as prevalent and important as any type of health. if we were forced to take it, whether you liked it or not, it could help you. whether it be yourself, and you see the signs in yourself, and you seek out help, or you see them in someone else, and you go and talk to them, you walk up to them and talk to them. or you go to a consular and say, i think they're having a hard time. if one person in america could this, byomething like learning about mental health, that could make a world of difference. it could save people's lives. like to sayte also is, most schools are not 's social, the school emotional and mental needs of the students. most of them are more concerned about our standardized test

scores, then our mental health state. i did a little math. at my school, according to our online website, we have 18 people in our counseling department. as of 2015, 2016 there are 3158 students. that means that for every single guidance counselor, there are 175 students. hmm.. we have no outlet in our schools to talk to somebody. and this is in schools all across america. a guidance counselor have time to meet with 175 students? i went to my guidance counselor the other day, she didn't know my name. we need more therapists and more trained social workers at our school to talk with us. i think when that happens, that is when the real change is going to occur. when people learn about what mental health is. thank you.

and we need to get rid of the sticky stigma surrounding every type of mental health. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, so much, for sharing that. ron is a professor at usc. run studies on climate and school safety include thousands of schools and millions of

students in countries across the globe. his studies. he has spoken and written about schools.eate caring he will share some of his thoughts and findings with us. ron? ron: i don't know if that is to say, thank you for being here. i want to first thank you. that touched me. i know you are living it to right now. you are still going through it. we are talking too much in terms of the school is very much now, withight helicopters and police officers, so the message that we have here is that it is not something that is done, it is ongoing, even at the school. i wish we could have those folks listening to you right now. and maybe they are, through c-span. >> thank you. >> i'm going to read the first part. i'm a bit emotional.

as you heard, we are amid a national battle about the vision of what our schools should be. how to create citizens in a society that are a plus human beings in addition to a plus students, as you so wisely said. how to create a learning and thriving, optimal environment teachers and and students can create a better union within our schools and for the future of our fractured society. indeed, we are debating not only what we want our schools to be, but also what we want our society to be. our students continually put forth the voices of truth, the present, as well as the future. and again, thank you. context, we gather here today focused on the voice of science. specifically asking, how do we protect the students of our country from feeling unsafe,

victimized, physically and mentally injured, or as we have seen too often. the fact is that shooting death happen at higher rates in other settings, but it should not reduce our resolve to reduce or eliminate intentional and unintentional harm, where students are mandated to attend. that is a major reason we are here. go to the next slide please. we have two visions of our schools. one vision believes that the path comes from welcoming, caring, and support of schools, -- supportive schools. but focus on school safety, social and emotional learning and community is a great addition to academics. this vision advocates for humane , social support, institutional linkages and community resources for students struggling with mental health, family and community strife. we have somebody who is doing

that first here, every day. thank you. another vision focuses mainly on the shooting and after the shooting itself, using tools that originated in law enforcement, prison architecture, military strategies and a more restrictive approach that aims protect students from extreme forms of murder and a firearms. but this is not just an opinion or a societal debate. there are decades of well-conducted large-scale studies conducted all over the world. they support one vision and not the other. comprehensiveple reviews covering hundreds of international studies, large scale epidemiological studies. i have done many of them with my colleagues. we found in the studies, done over decades and in many different countries, that when schools have positive climates , with integrated social and emotional learning support as you requested, they have

improved student isolation on campus, all kinds of bullying, verbal, physical, sexual harassment. the relationships between students and teachers or students and students, in a natural way, not just a reputed quay, is healthy. and healthy students thrive. our students all over the world, also show that when you have a very good climate and strong social, emotional measures integrated into the dna of the schools, not just programs whatg from the outside -- the teacher believes, what the students believe, what the students are actually doing -- you see weapons reduced. for news, being threatened by weapon, even knowing about a weapon on the school grounds. we find that when the schools

have this naturally, and it becomes part of the dna, what i called central rather than window air-conditioning -- that you have all of these groups, they all have reductions. inare talking about violence the schools, reduction in substance use and a whole array of other things. military groups, , countries lgbtq such as taiwan, kosovo, albania, serbia, those are all countries we can see the reductions in. but when you try and change culture, through large-scale interventions, when this climate is integrated into the school, you see positive things happen. not only the reduction of negative things. you see communities being built, empowerment, connectedness that

goes way beyond just fixing a problem. we see in our most recent reviews that academics are actually better. whenever our recent work shows that not just violence, but reading,cs got better, writing. they are connected to each other. most importantly, it shows that it increases inequality by reducing the achievement gap. so there is a lot of value in early prevention of social and emotional. what happens when you integrate these things into the dna of the school? we just got these results a few weeks ago. after seven years, this is 145 schools that were part of a grant working with military-connected kids, we also had a whole school approach -- a combination of moving climate

and bringing resources to the schools, it produced a 55% reduction in guns carrying on school grounds as reported by the students. 70% carrying of knives and other items to school that could cause an injury, 40% of students actually seeing a weapon on school grounds or knowing about it, and a 44% reduction of gang affiliation. when you talk about seeing a weapon on school grounds, people think of a climate issue. to 30% of kids20 and california in the last 20 years actually report that, and we look at those schools, we have the data for all 10,000 schools in california, we see that actually affects climate, knowing there is a weapon. it is not a separate issue. knowing there is a weapon on campus makes you feel differently about your peers, about how you feel about the school, about going. that becomes a very important

climate issue. the way we have done this in israel, is that we have taken the national public health strategy, and i suggest we do the same thing here. had -- some flyers better put out that we captured -- ourl over the world work is based on student voice and empowerment. we use those surveys to bring the data back to each of the 3000 schools in israel, to hear what the students actually think. we actually then bring the teachers. teachers ando the we have them see it. done the same with cafeteria

workers, yardage, to build upon this. the resources are matched to their needs and desires. each school gets something catered specifically to their grounds. california, if you just take the statistic of between 20 and 30 percent of students, we know what each of the schools are right now. schools where students have seen weapons on school grounds. we can figure out which ones we have, and instead of just targeting students or people, we can look at schools that have very, very high rates, low climate, and actually provide more resources, more care, more training and unwelcoming. giving the students more voice. i'm talking about doing this at scale. even though it has to happen when a student at a time, it can happen at scale with the data that we have. one thing we found in our work both here and in israel and in chile is we have to pay special

attention -- to students and teachers who have obsessions with arsenals. this has been coming up over and over again in our quantitative and qualitative work. they are particular red flags. what we are advocating for is again, not kicking everyone out, but actually providing support from a very young age and going on for a long time. i just want to raise this particular issue of alternative schools. brings aild or a youth weapon to school grounds and threatens others, there are many things that could happen in terms of working support. when this happens multiple times , we have a system of alternative schools. the climate and the resources has not been looked at carefully. i can tell you right now, the

climate does not look very good for the california schools we are looking at. those things apply especially to this group that has been excluded from public schools for these kinds of reasons. we have entire systems of special ad, community schools, that have been unattended to and neglected. i would like to make sure we stop this. everything i said here, the method is in the mapping. all proceeds are donated to anti-bullying efforts. as with all of our prior books. this is the welcoming book. this is how you create good climates and how you create a welcoming environment, particularly for students in transition. these are extra resources if you need them. between the books and these, you should be in good shape, and with the other speakers as well. i would like to thank you, because you're the reason why we are here, it is your activism

and your voice. and yours too. we appreciate that. [applause] >> thank you, so much. i am confident that each one of us can remember times in our school years where we experienced trauma, depression, disappointment or what we thought at the time was failure that would irreparably doom our futures. it's not hard to identify a student who is going through such a period at those times. it is important to non-judgmentally inquire and provide guidance to help him or her move through these times. david is a federal -- david, with a federal expert panel, identified these signs to help us how to raise respond to them

and have them understand. david? david: thank you very much. i also want to thank lauren and ron. you don't think i'm on? i will just talk louder. i would like to thank lauren and ron. in work i have done in mental health and in climate as well as early warning signs over the past 20 or 30 years, i have learned more always from young people than anybody else. in the book that i have coming out next year that was written before the events, i talked about the most under tapped resources in our schools, that they are our young people. i've learned so much more the last few weeks, but also have been learning from black lives matter and the young people who have been really talking about these issues and helping us understand much more. i am keeping with my slides. i really did learn from you, lauren. on the one hand schools are relatively safe place.

they are well produced and are in the position to reduce the likelihood of aggression and violence. schools are contained places. what lauren is talking about is actually possible. we can make schools safe. it is not just physically safe, it is emotionally safe. it is identity safe. it requires, as you heard from both lauren and ron, access to social, emotional and mental health supports. it's also how we allocate resources. there may be someplace where one needs to invest some money in security personnel. but oftentimes at that the expense of another counselor, of a mental health person. it's very important understand these things are connected. schools can be made safer by developing the capacity to reduce the likelihood of

aggression. that there are early warning signs which understood in context, signal that a child is troubled and needs support. i had the privilege in response to shootings, which were not much different than right now, other than the fact that the weaponry is more governmented -- the pulled together an expert panel to try to identify what the warning signs are. the work we did there is not different from the work we are doing right now, and at some point this work will be updated. all we know now is enough to headlly, as lauren said, off these problems. we are particularly able to do

it when we are in the type of caring and supportive environment that ron was talking about. these early warning signs must be as fast and addressed in a culturally and developmentally-appropriate manner, in a way that minimizes harm and maximizes benefits. anytime you intervene you have a risk of harm. so safety, often times we think about physical safety and we think about that moment. but i think about valentine's day and i think about your class before hand, i also think about, when do you feel emotionally safe? when do people feel psychologically safe? if someone is different in any way, when do they feel identity safe? as we go to black lives matter people are talking about, when do you feel like you

are being treated in a fair and equitable manner? when are you safe from not just short-term problems but long-term problems. perhaps, health problems, that can happen when the cafeteria is unsafe, or you are afraid to go to the washroom? if we want to use warning signs, and i think we can, schools need to each develop the capacity to identify and assess the response in a manner that reduces the in ncidence of problems, the oflification, and the impact those problems. class in school, i think the connections that you talked about -- what we know are .lso supportive as horrific as everything that you have gone through, and i can only guess, what we know from science is that when you have a

that justiends, buffers the effect of horrific things. we want to avoid them, but we also want to have those supports. as i said, this can be best done in a caring manner. it has three tiers. it's what we do universally for everybody. it is the care ron was talking about. it is social and emotional learning for everybody. it's support for teachers through good and equitable instruction. then, what we do for people who are at some level of need -- warning signs can help us if we do it right. if students know about that, it can help them as well. they may see their friends in ways that other people don't see. but they have to trust the adults will know it when it happens. then there are people who are harder levels of risk who actually need more intensive

interventions area there are people, and do we will talk about it after me, that are exhibiting behaviors that require immediate threats assessments or suicide assessments, because we cannot wait, no matter what! i would just want to add quickly, that what we also know, is that if you do these things, you don't only make schools safer, you also do things or you make schools more academically-productive. he also help people become more healthy in the long run. my research is consistent with ron's in terms of that fact. in rural china as well as in the u.s., we see the same things. these things are not a trade-off. andmore safe that you people feel in class, the more safe teachers are, the more people can handle these issues, the more able they are to engage in deeper learning and attend schools. when we do this and when we use

warning signs, we have to make sure we minimize unintended consequences. for example, suspension and expulsion. removing people. punishing people. the criminalization. the criminalization of behavior rather than providing people with the service they need. these behaviors can create what studentswe learned -- think about this all the time. why should i tell and adult something when i cannot trust them to do something in a responsible way? at the same time it wastes resources, doing things that can be handled preventively and providing more resources for counselors. quickly, what are these warning signs? remember here, any one sign at any one moment is anything more than a signal. -- is it nothing more than a

signal. you are looking at someone who through his life has exhibited warning signs. it is all of them together. excessive feelings of isolation, excessive feelings of rejection. being a victim of violence, loan -- lowell school interest and poor academic performance. expression of violence in the writings and drawings, uncontrollable anger. history of discipline problems. a history of violence and aggressive behavior. intolerance of differences and prejudicial attitudes. bullying behaviors. the use of drugs and alcohol. affiliation with gangs, inappropriate access to possession and use of firearms. these are not just my lists. it goes to the expert panel. -- it goes through the expert panel. all of these are our signals.

we have to do them in a way that we make sure they don't do harm, that we don't stigmatize. that we understand that what we are seeing in the context, including the fact that these may be set up in behaviors in part of the school. we need to avoid stereotypes. we need to control for the effects of implicit bias. we have to understand that students typically have multiple warning signs. no one signed alone is inefficient. -- is sufficient. we need to assess before acting, and that requires a mental health expertise. we don't want use the signs as a checklist. and we don't want to confuse early warning signs with imminent warning signs or signs that require immediate action. the early-morning signs to best the early warning signs are to provide students with help. let's think about where he can

we can intervene if there are signs. i think that no matter what, a thee to intervene is student. we want to build his or her emotional and social skills. if the student has an anger problem we want to cook them we now know as people social, emotional, and cognitive skills are so inextricably interrelated. we also know that who i am is not just the product of myself, it is also the people around me and the experiences we have. maybe we need to intervene in my classroom with my teacher, with my friends and family. intervention is supposed to be supportive, not harmful. we need to think about the entire school environment. and as we will hear in other

places and later on as we have to think about societal factors, the access to guns in our society, the messages the people receive in our society really do matter. last slide, please. let me end by saying we have decades now of research. the have decades of successful federal interventions. when implemented with quality and implemented at scale actually make a difference. now you have a graphic that was introduced that i'm happy to share with people.

examples are the safe and supportive school grants went to 11 states across the country to use climate to try to improve outcomes. the local evaluations that were done at each of the 11 states showed that in all cases when people were intentional in types of ways that ron were talking about, they did things like improved attendance, improve academics and some others, reduce instances that make people feel unsafe in others. this is not just trying to do new things. i think in the case of the warning signs, we have the accumulation of work that really provides us with messages, which really suggests and indicate that we can make our society and schools safer, and that doing that really requires that three-tiered model that i talked

about. it requires coordination of people. it involves actively listening to and using the voices of the young people. it requires being culturally competent and culturally responsive. and it requires a vision that we got from lauren in terms of her aspirations. what everyone of our children and youth in our society deserve is a school where they can be expanded, where they can develop collective resilience, not just individual recipients. where they can thrive together and learn together with equity. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, david. i want to introduce dr. dewey cornell. i remember in the aftermath of columbine,

social scientists ran the question, asking how we can apply, how we could apply threat assessment principles to schools without increasing rates of student unrest and explosion, and at the same time promote safety. they developed a model for school-based threat assessment that has been rigorously evaluated and used throughout the country. >> i will even turn on my mic. thank you for the opportunity to be here. i want to talk about evidence-based school threat assessment. i will talk about a model my colleagues and i developed about 18 years ago. we have been doing research

since then and potential value, not just preventing violence in schools but preventing violence in general. first of all, our decisions in about school safety have to be based on a careful analysis of the facts and not just be given -- driven by fears and emotions, however important they are. and to recognize that school violence is a small part of a much larger problem of gun violence. it would be a terrible mistake to assume the only problem we have is in our schools. i want to say we need to place much more emphasis on prevention than on security. one prevention strategy is evidence-based school threat assessment. certainly, school shootings have had a traumatic effect on survivors, family members and all of society that had to witness this and think about this and contemplated. one of the effects is to

convince us somehow that we need to turn our schools and to your tresses, that we must spend billions of dollars on security measures. i want to suggest to you that is missing the total picture, the larger picture and will lead us in the wrong way. we have two processes going on. we have a process of recovery from trauma, which is important and must be careful for the individuals, such as lauren. we also have to have the process of stepping back from the trauma and saying what is the most effective and efficient thing we can do to keep our young people safe? and keep them not only in school but out of school. many people have seen charts like this. think there have been over 300 shooting since the sandy hook shooting. i think this chart leaves out something important, which is how many shootings we have had outside of school as well. you do a little digging you will

find, like me, that in the last five years we have average over 100,000 shootings every year. we had half a million shootings were someone was killed or injured outside of our schools. for every shooting in a school we have 1600 shootings outside of schools. i'm interested in keeping our young people safe and the people in our communities. we averaged 22 young people who are killed every year over the past 20 years. we average over 1000 young people were killed outside of school. even if we spent the billions of dollars that business people tell us it would take to make our schools absolutely impregnable, that would stop only less than 1/10 of 1% of the shootings that take place. let me suggest to you that if we put a policeman in every single

school, we may stop one shooting in one building. if we put another counselor in that school, we have the potential to help young people long before they go down the pathway to violence and prevent shootings all across our community. the real problem is gun violence, not school violence. when we look at where gun violence occurs, where homicide occurs, some colleagues and i looked at statistics. and we down at the bottom of the list are schools. schools are one of the safest places in our community. we want to make our schools safer. let me point out that restaurants have 10 times as many shootings and homicides as do our schools. anyone who recommends that we need to arm our teachers logically should be advocating that we need to arm our servers

too. and put metal protectors at the entrance of our schools. those places are 10 times more dangerous than our schools. we have to do more than just security. we cannot turn every poll of space, every open area into a fortress. after the sandy hook shooting folks told us they spent about $5 billion on security measures. maybe it never would be enough. we need to recognize that when that $5 billion go to security measures, school budgets are not elastic, that money has to come from somewhere. what i have seen in the school systems as they have to cut back on student support services. counseling and mental health services because the money is going to security measures. the other negative reaction we

have to fear school violence is an increase in the use of zero-tolerance discipline. the idea that we have to get tough to send a strong message by kicking kids out of school. since the school shootings we have seen a racking up of suspension policies, of exclusionary discipline that had documented negative effects on juvenile dropout rates, juvenile court rates, and the school to prison pipeline. we need to be careful we don't react to school shootings by making the problem worse by using exclusionary discipline and increasing the drop-off rates at a rate of kid that kids turning to crime. -- and the rate of kids turning to crime. security measures are largely preparation for a shooting.

we need to think prevention has a start long before there is a gunman at your door. long before there is a gunman in your parking lot. who is that person before he picks up the gun? when theyat person were in high school, middle school, and elementary school. what could we have done differently? 20 years ago actually law , enforcement, the fbi, the secret service working with the u.s. department of education recommended the use of threat assessment in schools. this was a very unfamiliar concept, we weren't really sure what it meant. a group of colleagues and i have been trying to adapt threat assessment. it's for kids who make threats. we know kids make threats a lot. mostly they don't mean them. they are in a developmental phase. they are immature. we know some threats are serious.

we need up process. threat assessment in schools is a process of problem solving the violence prevention. working with young people who have made a threat or distressed in some way. it begins with people care about one another in school. family members, friends, teachers recognize someone is unhappy. alienated, withdrawn, resentful, maybe a threatening statement. a threat assessment team can look at a situation, assess the seriousness of the threat and what actions ought to be implemented. it starts with identifying someone who is in need. all threats are not equal. we don't want to overreact to

student friends that are not serious. nottudent threats that are serious. we field tested them and disseminated them and had 17 years and 11 studies in evaluating their outcomes. we know the schools need to avoid overreacting the threats that are not serious. probably the chief example is this young boy who shaped his pop tart into the shape of a gun. under the zero-tolerance policy, they suspended him from school. the only thing dangerous about this young boys behavior is what he eight. we also have to avoid the opposite error of under reaction in a truly serious case. we have seen more school shootings have been prevented , have been averted that have taken place -- then have taken place.

someone came forward and said, i am concerned about something he said or did. there were school authorities ,ho listened and who responded who took the threat seriously. in threat assessment we try to determine why a student made a threat to we can prevent it from being carried out. i mentioned we have done a lot of studies. i will spend the next three hours going through each of our studies [laughter] i'm sure i will have your rapt attention. i would be happy to send you copies of any of these. you can review any of these on the virginia school violence project. let me give you a summary of our research. according to our studies 99% of threats are not carried out. the 1% involved no shootings, stabbings, or homicides, they were fights with no serious injury.

we also know that schools administering threat assessments don't administer harsh consequences except in very extreme cases. only 1% of cases result in a student being expelled or an arrest. in fact, those schools show a decline in the use of suspension. racial disparities in those schools are reduced or absent. our most current study found there were remote -- there were no differences in twin black, white and hispanic students in the ways they were suspended or expelled. they also use counseling more often and have a positive school climate. ♪ >>sorry! >> that's great music. i guess that means i'm nearing the end of my time, when they start playing music for you. [laughter] let me wrap up by saying, after

the sandy hook shooting virginia actually mandated threat assessment in all schools. we found threat assessment needs to be adapted but it can be a process that minimizes targeting students and provides healthy students. all this and a larger perspective is contained in an eight point plan that many of us here devised after the parkland shooting. this plan has gun control, school climate improvement, threat assessment and improved mental health services for young people. you can obtain it from our website. school violence is a small part of a much larger problem we need to address comprehensively. schools are much safer than the public believes and safer than it feels. but the threat assessment is one of many important tools we can use in schools to respond to student threats and prevent

violence in schools and communities. thank you, very much. [applause] >> thank you. david. i have known david since his days at the yale child study center years ago. david knows through experience, far-reaching insight and study, more than anyone else i know, about how to most effectively, therapeutically and humanisticaly respond to school crises. david? david: thank you. if you could put the first slide up. advance to the next slide. i want to begin by acknowledging their is a wide range of reactions that may be seen after school shooting. most appreciated by the general public archer medical reactions and disorders. but those are not all you will see. for children who lost someone

they care about might be the predominant issue. i remember responding to one community shooting that occurred, and one man had the unfortunate circumstance that the person on either side of him was killed but he was uninjured. i met with him several weeks after the shooting. he had come back to school once and was unable to remain there. i asked him why he wasn't receiving counseling and he said, i had trauma symptoms for several days but it wasn't aware of what was happening in the shooting, and those symptoms went away. i had trouble sleeping, i was jittery, i was distracted. but he said that is better now and i don't want to talk about the shooting anymore. i asked him why did you leave school and he said, it didn't feel right to be there without her. he was on a date with a girl he wanted to marry. and being in school without his girlfriend didn't seem right. and i said to him, maybe you are

grieving the death of your girlfriend. he looked surprised and said, that's it. he is willing to talk to me about that, i will go for counseling. so the issue is, it is not just one set of actions. a crisis is followed by a secondary wave of stressors. as an example, after school shooting there may be a drop in enrollment at the school for the number of reasons. students may transfer because of discomfort returning or remaining. the students doing well may also transfer, because teachers and other students who are struggling may be impacting their academic career. future students and their families are often reluctant to join the school. and the drop in enrollment then has a financial impact. budgeting schools is based on the number of schools there and when they have less students, they have less money. i have even seen property values drop in these towns and that leads to a drop in income through taxes from property, as

well as the inability to pass tax levies. the schools have fixed expenses, and they cut school services when they are struggling, and you can see how that leads to a downward spiral. but it is also everything that precedes the school crisis. major crisis events also uncover prior trauma or loss, even if it is completely unrelated to the event. i got a phone call left of the las vegas shooting, from a school i provided training to before hand. and they said, we looked for this and found it. we were fortunate none of our students were at the concert and none of the members of our community died in that event. but we have a student here sobbing because she's afraid her mother is going to die of cancer. so the issue is, you uncover other concerns and students and staff. go to the next slide. unfortunately, there is a lot to

uncover. great trauma and loss is just as common in children as adults. one in 20 children in our country will experience the death of a parent, and nine out of 10 will experience the death of a close relative or friend by the time the complete high school. in contrast to this high prevalence of loss in the lives of children, training among educators in this area is limited. less than 10% of educators receive even a single lesson on how to support grieving children. teachers report this is the main reason they don't invite support to grieving students. they are afraid they may say or do the wrong thing and upset children or make matters worse, so they often say nothing. but saying nothing says an awful lot to children. it lets them know you are either unaware, unwilling or unable to help. i don't want to fault the educators. we need to recognize school professionals are impacted by these events at least as much as the students, and often more so.

i remember talking to the superintendent of the school system that had a bus accident that led to the deaths of multiple students two years prior. he became tearful and he looked at me and said, it still bothers me that these kids died. and he said, maybe i should retire. and i said, if you ever wake up in the morning and don't care that the kids died, you have to retire. the issue is a low bar, in my opinion, to be a leader in a school system. let's go to the next slide. it is important to provide support to students and staff until recovery is completed, and that may take many months and often years. if the timeframe for federal funding for recovery isn't aligned with timeline for recovery, and the grants often end too soon, the amount of funding is often less than the scope of need. new york city schools conducted a needs assessment of students in grades four through 12 about

six months after 9/11. they found approximately one out of four students surveyed reported symptoms consistent with at least one mental health disorder. that included it separation anxiety disorder, panic attacks, agoraphobia, ptsd or major depressive disorder. that suggested more than a quarter of the sister -- more than a quarter of the students in that school system needed counseling. additionally, nearly nine out of 10 students reported at least one trauma symptom six months after 9/11, still persisting. the majority of students who work self reporting system -- self reporting symptoms and daily impairment in their functioning, also reported they did not seek mental health counseling despite the fact that there was help available through funding from fema.

so we can't rely on individual treatment services alone to address the broad range of needs after school shooting. the school response is not the same as providing individual evaluation, referral, and treatment to everybody in a school building. you need to look at additional approaches to support children beyond the traditional mental health service model. teachers, administrators and staff can have a positive and profound impact on children by providing compassionate support, as well as identify children who need additional mental health services. the preferred model to reflect a compassionate, supported school community is to educate the child and build their capacity to respond long-term. we have seen excellent examples of resiliency and strength among students and staff. i had the opportunity to spend much of the week in broward county, meeting with staff and administrators. but no matter how resilient one

is, it doesn't mean they are not experiencing stress. it simply means they have the capacity to cope with the traumatic loss they are experiencing. they need help as well. i think the students have come -- students have done a job by coming forward and recognizing the needs of their peers, but they are not representative of all the members of that community. and there are members of the community that are particularly struggling to the point they cannot speak about it. and they see other examples of kids who appear to be doing much better, and that can even add further to their distress, the sense that they are not competent. this training has not been a priority in teacher preparation, coursework or professional development. instead, it is often sought only in the aftermath of a major event. in the disaster field we refer to this as just-in-time training. but to be honest, it is not in time.

i remember being put in touch with the parent and educator in the new county community -- in the newtown community. he had a child attending sandy hook and was struggling and he wanted advice. i spent an hour on the phone with him and at the end of the call he said, i really want to thank you or this. this is the first insight that i have gotten that is practical. i don't want to be judgmental, but i want to ask why wasn't there someone like you in my community sooner, brought in by the school system to give me this advice? and i said, there was. the shooting happened on friday and on monday morning i did and in service with the entire school system. you were either home with your family, which i completely understand, or more likely, you were there and don't remember a word that i said. but i went over the same things i just went over in the phone call. we need to recognize preparedness for not just responding to a crisis, but preparing to recover. we have to invest the resources.

these skills and strategies are not just important to communities such as newtown, connecticut, or parkland and coral springs, florida. i heard repeatedly how shocking it was that violence such as these shootings could occur in communities such as that. it reminded me of a presentation i conducted an an urban community known for gang violence. i talk in that community about how communities characterized by chronic violence and loss, the students don't get used to the death of their peers. although they may stop seeking support from adults because they have come to believe adults in their community are either unable or unwilling to stop, prevent or help them cope with these events, and this falsely leads people to believe they are not impacted anymore. one of the staff spoke up and said i didn't understand the community, and that here it was normal for children to be part of gangs. and he added, in this community it is normal for children to

murder other children. and i looked at him and said, that is never normal and once we call it normal, it means we stopped doing something about it. i'm not going to be ok about that. i don't think any of us should. so yes, i think we should be outraged a school shooting happened in these communities but we should be outraged when it happens anywhere in our community or our country. the solutions we seek need to be broadly relevant that apply to all schools in our country. one recommendation was that congress and the education department should award funding to states to implement and evaluate training and professional development programs, to teach educators basic skills and providing support to grieving students and students in crisis. they will see those students every day in their classrooms. they should also establish statewide requirements related to teacher certification and recertification. a similar recommendation was in

the report from the disaster subcommittee of the federal advisory commission and the sandy hook advisory commission. this training should address the trauma of bereavement on children and their learning. some likely reactions that they might see among themselves and others in school, and most important, practical services for first day, bereavement and academic accommodations. the goal is to help educators create a supportive environment. i want to end my comments by highlighting one free resource that is available. the new york life foundation convened 10 leading professional organizations to form a coalition to perform grieving -- coalition to support grieving students, with the goal of remedying the gap so that no

child has to grieve in isolation. this is a listing of the 10 leading organizations that were founding members of the coalition, representing both major teachers unions, school administrators, superintendent, school counselors, psychologists and social workers. if you go to the next slide, there are 30 more organizations that have endorsed the material and added their logos to it. the american academy of pediatrics, the boys and girls club, save the children and many more. and if you go to the next slide, we have had another 30 members that joined as friends of the coalition. so the coalition is now up to over 60 organizations. some materials that i have left ear, i want to add they are publicly available, they are free of charge, you can get them

at my website. it has a wide range of materials and you can see materials for our center that provides free technical support and consultation. thank you. [applause] >> daniel webster. in these times of great division and acrobat, it is -- division and acrimony, it is hard to find somebody with the single-minded goal of promoting the safety and well-being of all. david is one such person -- daniel, i am sorry. we do have too many davids are. -- here. daniel: thank you, very much. it's an honor to be part of the panel. i'm here to talk about -- there are a number of reasons why we are here but i don't think we would be here if we didn't have a problem with guns in the united states.

dewey cornelle set they table for me well, noting that we are safe in our schools. we need to make people safe in all places. all of the data i have will not be specific to schools, but i think the concepts are transferable within schools or externally. i want to point out through this slide how abnormal we are when you compare the u.s. to other high income western democracies. this is simply plotting the ratio of our homicide rates involving young people, versus that of the average, the weighted average of these other nations. the yellow bar is our overall

homicide rate, which is in the five to 14 group, a little more than four times, four times higher than the average of these other high income countries. in the 15 to 24 age group, it is 14 times higher. the next two bars, the red bar being the homicide rate with guns, and the great bar being with all other -- the grey bar being with all other means. you can see from this slide what the issue is. rates from the sides involving five to 14-year-olds with firearms are nearly 20 times higher and nearly 50 times higher, 50 times higher for ages 15 to 24. we do not have unusually high rates of mental illness and our population, among our young.

we don't have unusually high rates of bullying. what we have is unusually high rates of access, ready access to lethal weaponry. next slide, please. that is also evidenced in this next, very simple slide. 88%, if you look at victims of gun homicides of high school age, 14 to 18, 88% die with firearms. there is a real racial imbalance in what this looks like as well. over nine times the rate of firearms homicides among blacks versus whites, whereas among suicides, and this age group of 14 to 18, the white rate of homicide is twice that of blacks. next slide, please. i'm going to briefly go through four main issues connected to gun policies.

one has to do with our standards for legal gun ownership. the second has to do with mechanisms to keep her him and people from having guns. the third has to do with concealed carry and public carrying of guns, and finally, the fourth has to do with the design of guns with respect to assault weapons. let's start with this basic fact. i don't think most can actually see well enough, the axis, but this is our age-specific homicide rates, and you can see how dramatically the escalating adolescent years. the years that they peak are the years between 18 and 20 years old, and they really don't dramatically decline until mid-20's. so this is a very relevant age as a relates to win the young

man who committed the horrendous act of violence at marjory stoneman douglas high school acquired his firearms and carried out the act. next slide, please. in all 50 states and the district of columbia you have to be at least 21 years of age to legally consume a beer. 12 states, actually maybe 13 because of florida, set their age for minimum legal age for having a handgun, at 21. the florida conversation in policymaking was focused on long guns. what people are missing from the discussion, unfortunately, is that while you have to be 21 to purchase a handgun from a licensed dealer and have a background check and record, in most states, if you just go

online or a gun show and have a private seller, you only have to be 18. so that makes a lot of logical sense, doesn't it? i think we have some serious things to address as a relates to minimum age for legal firearms. next, please. i talk about standards, and this is a simple way to illustrate this. the bar on the left represents the 13 states with the weakest legal standards for being able to possess a gun, and in those states, if you look at the individuals who are in state prisons because they committed violent acts with firearms, 60% were illegal to possess the gun when they committed that act of violence. so much of our conversation of a gun policy bifurcates one group

as, everybody is law-abiding because they are legal to have a firearm, and there is another group that is hardened criminals. if you look at the states with our weakest gun laws, that's not what it looks like with respect to who commits acts of violence. i will explain more about that in just a minute. it also want to compare this with all the other states. in all the other states, one third of the individuals who commit acts of violence with guns and are imprisoned, were legal to possess their guns. so there is a real difference across our states, depending on where they set standards for people being able to legally possess guns. this illustrates basically, what that difference between the week-law states and the strong-law states, what explains that difference. it has to do with prohibitions, and these are temporary prohibitions for young people,

either in this 18 to 28 group -- 18 to 20 age group, or individuals who committed serious crimes that were adjudicated in the juvenile system. all the things we identified that most explain this were things that, in these stronger-standard states are temporary prohibitions, they are not lifelong prohibitions. and that is because the risk is not static over time? -- over time, ok? that's an important standard that applies to safety and fairness regarding how we establish effective gun laws. whenever there is a mass shooting, the conversation is, this is all about mental illness. well, in mass shootings you have

a higher rate of people going through very specific mental illness episodes. but if you look at our problem largely, of violence in the united states, the best epidemiologic evidence suggests you can explain about 4% of our violence problem due to mental illness. so if someone brilliant enough could come up with some vaccine to completely eliminate all mental illness within our entire country, we would have a whopping 4% reduction in our violence rate. so, while mental illness is a very important thing, an important part of public health as has been discussed, it is not going to address our gun-violence problem, only a small portion is a relates to interpersonal violence. suicide is a completely different matter, very important with respect to suicide. so, in the months soon after

sandy hook, some academic experts and other groups actually met at johns hopkins to sort through the very difficult issues, both on the science and legal aspects of what you do about this issue of mental illness and guns. i have to say i was skeptical anything useful was going to come from this, but what actually emerged was one of the most powerful things i think i have seen in done policy in my 25 years and it, the formation of the consortium for risk-based firearm policy. we looked at the data and when we said, how can we have the biggest impact on violent crime with guns, we said, mental illness is not going to take us very far on this. what is the best predictor of violence, is prior violence. so the group came up with very specific recommendations.

some of them are now really being, a bright light is shined upon them, in part because of parkland, sadly, of extreme-risk protection orders. that's one recommendation that came from that, that really recognizes that risk and crises emerge rapidly and our prohibitions or conditions for keeping guns from people are not as flexible as they need to be. and that is one policy that does that. the other recommendations that flowed from the consortium have to do with temporary prohibitions of people convicted of misdemeanor crimes of violence. there are studies that show significant reductions in violent crime, 29% in one study, and reduction in intimate partner homicide of 25% as well. another important risk factor in some states address but most do not, is repeated problems with

alcohol abuse and alcohol-related crimes. an incredibly high risk for serious act of violence in net that subgroup. sadly, we do not -- we do not have a lot of data but that it should be a priority in the years to come. also addressed by this group, in part where the extreme-risk protection order emerged from, is looking at current policies with firearm prohibitions for domestic-violence restraining orders, that when you expand those two temporary orders and dating partners that you have significant reductions and dating homicides. i want to describe the most effective ways to keep guns from individuals who are prohibited, and that is through a system of comprehensive background checks, ideally as part of a licensing system. i will show you a few slides.

this is simply, there are different ways to get guns. you can go through law enforcement, which is the permitting system. you can go to gun dealers, who are sometimes shady, and there are other options as well. here is what we found when missouri repealed its permitting relicensing law for handguns in 2007. this is the difference between missouri's homicide rate versus all the other states, the other 49 states. you can see a dramatic jump in 2008, precisely after the law was repealed. you also saw a city rise in firearm-related suicides as well. when you put it all together in a variety of forms and analysis the control for everything you can control for, you get about a 20% increase in firearm homicides connected to this, and a 16% increase in suicides.

when missouri adopted the same kind of policy that missouri repealed, we found a near opposite effect, this time in the protective direction. 40% lower rate of firearm homicides over the first 10 years, and 29% over 18 years. again, and a significant reduction in suicide. we can come to assault weapons later, i'm going to show you one data nugget, if you will, as it relates to concealed carry. we have had dramatic changes in concealed carry laws over the past 30 years. this gives us a look of the map -- look at the map of how this changes, with the orange and yellow signaling very restrictive issuing of permits to carry concealed weapons in 1990. next slide. and now, here we are in where we are right now, and in the vast

majority of our map there is little or no restrictions related to concealed carry. what has been the effect of that? many say the solution to problems with bad by -- bad guys with guns is good guys and gals with guns out there. what have we learned from that social experiment? the next slide would be a simple explanation of this. this is from research from stanford and what you see at the bottom is, with each year a state has a right to carry law in place, violent crime grows with each year, and more permits, and more good guys and gals with guns out there. we do not see a lowering of violent crime. we see it growing greater and greater. i will end my discussion there. we can come back to assault weapons perhaps in this discussion, if we have time. [applause]

>> thank you, daniel. i want to recognize dr. diana fishbein from penn state, our codirector and one of the creators of this organization that made this all possible. thank you, diana. our next speaker is julie phillips pollock. dr. phillips? i'm sure you have heard over and over again that the worst thing that can happen to a parent, and i am a parent, is the death of your child, particularly a death that occurred so prematurely and senselessly. i'm so sorry to have to repeat that truism today. i suspect that the spirit of your daughter, 18-year-old meadow pollock, is what inspires and strengthened you and your husband in doing all that you

can to put an end to gum rampages -- to gun rampages that have occurred in way too many schools, schools from places that are now hot -- that are now, sadly, household names. julie: i am here for meadow and i want to show her pictures, but it want to mention to you the names of the other 16 people killed that day. i had a chance to speak to their families since that time. alyssa al hadef, scott beagle, martin takei and we honor them, aaron feis, and i like to say he died a hero, he used his body as

a shield, jamie gothenburg. chris hixson, another hero, a coach who went in unarmed. luke lawyer. cara lofgren, she and meadow were trapped on the third floor. meadow had been shot four times and she was stuck outside a classroom. the classroom doors were locked and she was stuck in a hallway and she laid on top of cara who had not been shot, and he shot them both five more times, killing them both. joaquin oliver. delano petty. meadow pollack. helena ramsey. alexander schachter. peter ring. this is a picture of meadow with her grandmother. we all went on a family cruise for 80th birthday. this is her grandfather who died a few years ago they had a very close relationship.

and her brother, hunter, and her cousin, becca. a family vacation at the cabbage patch kids museum in georgia. and, at hockey game. and, san francisco obviously. that's hunter at one of our favorite ice cream places. this is a picture of her with her father, i think i have a few more of those. meadow and andrew. this is something that was put together, her cousins and friends made collages in pictures and decorated these rocks, and now it is displayed in our house during the shiva.

this is just before homecoming. this is all of us cooking in the kitchen. this is a picture of meadow with her brothers and cousins. this is actually how she lived, surrounded by her family. i just wanted to and with this picture, -- wanted to end with this picture, a picture of her boyfriend, brandon, at the end of her funeral. i am here as meadow pollack's mother. i'm just one of the people love her. she was a beautiful, 18-year-old girl with an amazing family, great parents, grandparents, two brothers, stepsister and many in -- aunts and uncles, cousins. she had a boyfriend of four years, rendon. and really her entire community loved her. she planned on going to university and she had many more

plans for the future beyond that. in my work as an emergency physician, i work in a level one trauma center and over and over again i witnessed the effects of violence and i treat the effects of violence. too many times, i have had to tell other parents that their child was murdered and that they did not survive. usually it is easier when i maintain clinical detachment and allows me to treat my other patients who are still alive. you just have to keep going. before this, i never have been personally affected by violence, so none of us were really prepared for this. not at all. in the past, i tried to advise the girls how to cake -- how to take care of themselves. r hanukkah i gave meadow one

of those loud alarms to use. i always told her where to park at night. but this kind of thing was not on our radar as all. the day that all of our lives were forever changed was valentine's day, my husband and i were on a bike ride and we started getting phone calls there was a shooting at douglas. and initially i thought, there was no way it could be meadow. what are the odds that it could be her in a school that is so big, 3100 students, how could it possibly be her? and then, the slow torture started. it lasted 13 hours while we waited for final confirmation. i was searching trauma centers where i worked in calling my coworkers, sending pictures, hoping we would find her at the hospital. i started to really worry when a good friend of mine, i spoke to him, he's a director for ems, he called and told me about all the bodies that were still in the school, on the floor, that he was looking at.

and as the hours went by, we knew that she had to be there. we had all hoped meadow just lost her phone or was detained in all of this, but as time went by we knew it had to be more than that. suddenly, i developed a newly logistical framework. how do i tell her grandmother that she recently lost her husband, that that is probably where meadow was too, and i was in the car for her to come and be with us. when do you tell her brother and your husband, who are away, that they should come home because after so much time it had to be her? i wish that i could but somehow i temporarily relieved the pain i was watching her mother go through, but mental anguish is physically difficult to watch. the day after the shooting, i got more logistical type of

questions. how do we get the body released by the medical examiner? when should we have the funeral? where should we pick for a cemetery? and as we walked around the cemetery, we had to pick a spot. and how do you pick the best plot? i don't know. thankfully our rabbi was there constantly with us, and he guided us through this time and helped us with decisions that nobody wants to have to make. we were aware of what happened to us but it was hard to imagine what had happened to other people, and it was hard to even imagine there was something more going on than what we were experiencing. but during the shiva we had thousands of people come to our house. i talked to other families and listened to how they made their

funeral arrangements, and met their children, their surviving children, and how they were reacting to their own loss. thousands of people came to our house to honor meadow, some i don't even know, most we did. our family really pulled together to care for each other. a lot of volunteers donated their time, and it was really a collective effort. and the pictures there, the balloons and the decorations and things that we had at our house. many of meadow's friends gathered at our house and i started talking about their experiences, similar to what lauren had, and their fear of returning to school was palpable. for the first time, i hadn't thought of it too much before, i realized how vulnerable our kids are, and that this wasn't the first school shooting. a friend of mine from medical school was at the shooting in

paducah, kentucky. that was 20 years ago now. i spoke to her and to really broke my heart that 20 years later, that this was happening and i had not even thought about it, or thought that it could be something that we could live through. so it begs the question, why do we allow it? as i listened to the students in my community that were there my house, that were afraid to go back to school, they were just asking for somebody to tell them that they were safe, and there were literally begging for their lives. so i think we do have to face the ugly reality that children are not safe in schools. there are going to be predators that don't respect school boundaries. in this case, his goal was to maximize casualties, like he was in a videogame. it is not fair for a student to have to worry that she could be hunted and murdered in a hallway, like meadow was.

how can a student focus on learning, and how can a teacher focus on educating, when they are worried that this will happen to them? it is a problem for the teachers, that they are not secure as well. in the past month i have focused energy on the issues facing schools. when you lose a child, there is no sleeping. i am fueled by the injustice of meadow's death, especially after i learned there were over 200 previous shootings, and i understand up to 300 depending on how you calculate the numbers. since then i've listened to students, parents, teachers and law enforcement. i spoke to parents from columbine and sandy hook and i read the research and their proposals, and my husband and i have been doing a lot of work trying to understand this and see what we can do to improve things. in that time we have met with secretaries of education, health and human services and homeland

security, a few of us met with the president and in florida i spoke with governor scott and state legislators. i do feel like lawmakers are listening and things are being changed. in florida, i am very proud to say that my family with other families went to tallahassee, and went to pass the safety bill, 7206. no bill is perfect but it is a comprehensive bill. it includes funding for school hardening, reasonable gun control measures, threat assessments, access to mental health in schools, like warren mentioned that is a big part of it. they will have a mental health personality school right now. the counselors are just there for career guidance, they are not mental health experts. and it also improves communication between dcs and police and the schools. that's important because there

has been a lack of communications, in this instance in particular. in my work as an emergency physician, we treat critical patients in a systematic manner. we first assess airway, then breathing, then circulation. we then moved to treat the acute condition. later down the line we consider secondary prevention, which is treatment of early disease such as diabetes. and then lastly but not at all least importantly, diet and vaccination, primary prevention. that what public health is all about, but we are discussing here. so i feel that we need to apply similar strategy here. our abcs in this situation are security. i feel like we need a secure perimeter. it is way too easy to walk on campuses in america with a

weapon of some kind, a goner whatever else. -- gun or whatever else. and it is time for security and it is time for security analysts to evaluate the security we have and implement changes that would make the school more like entering a courthouse. it doesn't have to be a fortress. you don't have to have armed security at every door, but it could be similar to this building that we walked into, even a little less security, a few cameras at the entrances and -- i'm not a security expert but the homeland security department is willing to go to the schools and make recommendations. i think after the teachers and students are secured, the focus can turn to secondary prevention such as treating the school environment, like the mental-health initiatives.

what i have sadly witnessed over the last 20 years is the debate on gun control after each shooting, which is a valid question. but this approach has done nothing to secure our kids. this lack of action is what killed meadow. i believe gun control is an important topic and should be included in the discussion of primary prevention, but i do not believe we should let politics and bureaucracy stand in the way of securing our schools. again. i have heard people describe they are concerned that spending money on security would take money away from funding mental health. but i think that we don't have to compromise. i think we can have both and our children are worth it. people ask me every day if there is something they can do. what we can all do is not allow this to happen again. there wouldn't be a better way to honor meadow and the other 60 people killed that day. i appreciate everybody being here. i think an important aspect of

secondary prevention is the mental-health measures we have all been talking about today, the social work, mental health, and primary prevention with gun control measures. i appreciate everybody having me here. [applause] >> thank you, julie. i want to say two quick things. one, i want to underscore what david in particular highlighted, that everybody has different ways to mourn, and we need to respect the diversity of that mourning. i also want to say this has been fabulous. we are going to put this entire discussion on our website at the national prevention science coalition. it will be up in about two weeks.

this is a lot of material, even for somebody who is familiar with our literature. i want to commend the speakers. it's incredibly hard with our vast knowledge to say something cogent and moving and true in 12 minutes. so i want to thank you all for doing that. now i would like to introduce dorothy. with the highest standards and integrity, dorothy has published more scientific articles in the area of school bullying and harassment than any other scholar. i do not need to count -- i just know that every time i look at the literature, dorothy is one of the co-authors more frequently than not. she is compared to joyce carol oates, writing with deep insight and wisdom. i will turn it over to dorothy to make some comments about what

she heard, and where we go from here. dorothy: i'm an emotional person. i'm not the typical academic who shuts down and says here is what the data say. i appreciate your comments and i appreciate your recommendations. you are brave to make those recommendations when so many of the academics sitting up here were not brave two decades ago, the -- to put ourselves out there to make some measures. i like that you started with science, with humanity, because my students hear from the university of florida, that's what they do. i'm going to try to hold myself together here. what i did hear, and i want -- perhaps their appearance of your listening -- there are parents out here listening, there is administrators listening, there is teachers listening. many of these recommendations are grounded in research. there's a big divide between what you heard about today and what is happening in our schools. i only have time for a few examples.

what comes to mind is mental health. mental health and social emotional learning are words that are not allowed to be spoken in some of our states. i was in texas a month ago, and i was told before two days of -- i'm probably going to get in trouble and might not have a job anymore for this -- working on health education standards that are 20 years old, not to mention social emotional learning. so as much as we want to say social emotional learning in our communities and in the academics, we are not allowed to use that word. i also want people to recognize, parents and teachers and administrators, 70% of our counselors in schools are trained to do mental-health work. most of them are not doing it. they are scheduling computer labs. they are scheduling testing. two weeks ago when i sat with a focus group of high school

students in urbana, illinois, they said, i can't get an appointment with our counselor because she is scheduling testing. that is real. how about having them doing mental health, instead of clerical work? actually, this is a crisis of counselor education. [applause] dorothy: what are the barriers to all of this implementation? we live in the schools. we are not just sitting in a computer looking at data and crunching numbers. why can't principals find time for social emotional learning? why is it the teachers feel restorative practices and problem-solving that would address inequities in disciplinary methods, why is it that we are letting somebody off the hook? why is it that when we sit in a restorative circle, we get pushback from adults, that it

takes to down that much time and too much -- it takes too much time and too much training, when research is starting to show that when you take a restorative approach to discipline, people feel safer. they stay in school. they feel connected. why is it that when we go into every school and have teachers and administrators and counselors have names put on post-its, kids names put on post-its, and we ask kids -- we ask them, put the names of kids on post-its that you know and have a significant relationship with. 20% to 25% of the kids are not named. usually i would be a little mo and little more coherent, but i am emotional and were done. little more coherent, but i am emotional and worked up. i hear this data and i live in that world of data, and i have to do this work for the funders and we have to published so much with my students to fight against the nonscientific base that is out there in our schools. there is plenty being implemented but it is not rooted in science and until we disseminate this and publish it

on the large scale. i want to end it on a positive note, as much as we can be positive when we think about the way in which we are failing our children in our schools and our communities, we have been funded nicely by the national institutes of justice for the last two and a half years. we have been in the trenches with high school students. we have been talking to them. high school students, two years ago, when we were trying to develop a reporting app, we wanted to talk to kids. kids know about kids that have mental health issues in school. they know who is bringing weapons to school. they know who is talking about it. they watch them on social media. what is the breakdown? why are these high school students not telling adults or their parents? what did they say two years ago? they said, "i don't want to be a snitch." you cannot talk about this reporting without this idea of a snitch culture. two weeks ago, those same kids we talked to two years ago said they would use the reporting app that they developed, in this situation.

there is also great pushback in the schools that if we create a mechanism such that kids can communicate if we have the trust between teachers and students, if we do create this, what is going to happen if we identify mental health issues and don't have resources for them? we hear this. we have something the kids have designed, and the kids say, we want to report emotional and physical safety issues, i want to get resources for my friends who have challenges or mental health issues. and i hear from superintendents and principals what happens if we identified that 25% of our kids are isolated and have made suicide attempts? i said, then we take care of them. so it is part of the adult attitudes that have led to the never again movement, and to all the great people in florida, and to all the black lives matter, where i lived and worked in chicago public schools where these conversations were daily conversations. but those kids had to get up and walk to that school and know they might lose a family member, they might hear gunfire on a

regular basis. i think, in fact, i can't wait to march with my students tomorrow. they are the next generation. we have failed. we have failed. and i just promise you that we will do what we can, but we have a lot of work to do. if you are a teacher or you are a principal and you are always using the word but, rethink it and use "and." thank you. [applause] >> i want to give ron a moment to make a quick comment. to follow up with all the panel comments and what dorothy just said. if there is one thing you could talk to your legislators about, we are challenged in our teacher

education programs, in our superintendent programs, and in our principal programs, to teach any of the things you have heard over here in a systematic way at the state level. we need to challenge our universities and provide funding so that every teacher, principal, and superintendent program has the social know-how that is important, that is core, but also the research behind it. and what we hear here is that there is not enough funding as well. what some people mentioned here, if there is not funding built into the district system that is ongoing -- i don't just mean a grant, i mean ongoing for supports -- then this stuff is experimented on, we have evidence-based programs, and it disappears. those are two big areas that would like to urge the crowd

as you think about universities and funding these systems long-term so they are sustainable. thank you. [applause] >> we are going to have to wrap up. everybody is invited to the reception. what room is it? 2044. i am sorry we did not have time for questions. i also want to say that both ron and david -- we know much of this has been hard to hear, but if you want to go down to the reception, they would be glad to talk withith you and you, if you just want to say anything. i think that is important. again, thank you all for coming. we look forward to seeing you all tomorrow on the march. take care.

thank you. [applause]

areuncer: organizers holding the march for our lives rally against gun violence tomorrow in washington. our live coverage begins at noon eastern on c-span. >> you have the right to a presence of an attorney. if you can't afford 1, 1 will be appointed. announcer: that right was guaranteed in gideon v. wainwright. cases,"k on "landmark we explore that case and its legacy. three eighth-graders selected "he topic "the right to counsel as part of the studentcam competition. here is a look. >> you cannot have a fair trial without counsel. ♪

>> and there, clarence earl gideon, defend yourself. in 1961, an unruly man broke into a pool hall and stole liquor, cigarettes, and coins. clarence are gideon was charged solely on account. a lawyer,ot afford and he was forced to defend himself against a change -- against a trained prosecutor. towhen gideon was brought his trial, he said, your honor, without a lawyer. i am too for. -- poor. >> he was sentenced to five

years in prison, but to get again this was unjust. he argued under the sixth amendment, he had a right to counsel. from jail, he wrote a letter appealing to the supreme court. the supremeed to court, and his principal argument was, i have been denied my constitutional rights because i did not have a lawyer to represent me. >> initially, the right to counsel was not a right to a public defender. it was a right to hire euro lawyer in the assured that lawyer would be allowed to represent you in court. >> it was decided that in all federal criminal cases, courts had to provide a liar to the accused if they cannot afford one. >> in the state courts, there was no such requirement. case decided that accused criminals do not have a right to a state appointed lawyer and less certain unlesstances applied --

certain circumstances applied. man, certainly no plaintiff, can conduct a trial in his own defense so that the trial is a fair trial. not know how to defend himself. he does not know how to cross examine witnesses, how to object to evidence. he is helpless. >> the prosecution has on its team the entire government. they have the police and all of the resources that they put to bear on a single defendant. 1960's, judges, lawyers, and prosecutors were ready for change. the justices accepted gideon's case. the state of florida is represented by an anonymous lawyer. on january was held

15, 1963. we start with the proposition that the 14th amendment requires a fair trial, and we say that the defendant in a criminal proceeding cannot get a fair trial unless he has counsel. >> on march 18, 1963, the supreme court decision was announced. unanimously ruled in favor of gideon. >> states and localities have a constitutional obligation to provide counsel to anyone. >> gideon had a retrial that summer, this time with a lawyer. he was found not guilty. around 2000 prisoners in florida alone were sent for you without a ruling. -- were set free without a whirling. -- ruling.

i think one of the things no one things about is how hard it is to be alone in the system. you are someone who has a judge looking at you literally from up on high, looking down at you. you have the prosecutor in court literally pointing the finger at you. strangers and jurors are staring at you with skepticism. the public defender is the only person on your side. >> if there are still changes that must be made to our public defender system -- that weeality is struggle to uphold the right to counsel honored in gideon. >> [indiscernible] the war on drugs, arising arrest rate, and mandatory minimums have caused state courts to become of related and our system to collapse. >> it often has been undermined

by crushing caseloads, inadequate funding, and other obstacles. offices, public defenders have hundreds of cases at a time and cannot and investigate them, and some offices have lawyers that are only able to spend a couple hours per case. >> court-appointed attorneys are often not experienced more competent. -- or competent. >> it is very shortsighted to not have a system where every person will be adequately represented. >> [indiscernible] >> as a former prosecutor, i would support virtually any increase in the resources that are given to criminal defendants. states, public defenders are also very understaffed and under resourced. each lawyer may carry as many as

2000 misdemeanor cases and 700 felony cases in one year. >> gideon does not have meaning if individual states, counties, and cities do not find their public defender offices. the need lawyers to have the resources to do their job in a way that the constitution requires. >> our failure to hold the sixth amendment undermines the premise that in america, everyone has the right to a fair trial. was aeon v. wainwright landmark case that ensured low income citizens are provided an attorney. the case made remarkable advancements and changed the way we interpret our right to counsel. announcer: watch "landmark cases" monday at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. announcer: