How can a clear school policy reduce weapons on campus?
Many weapons violators, if they understand what you want of them, they understand that there will be consequences, they understand that they are likely to be caught, will follow your policies. One of the things we sometimes see is school policies that aren't very well thought out and very clear when it comes to the issue of weapons. Make sure that your policies differentiate the different categories of weapons. There is a difference between a box cutter in a student's vehicle and a 9-millimeter handgun in a student's waistband. Both are serious weapons violations, and both should be addressed with a significant consequence, but they are probably going to need to be dealt with a little differently and having a zero tolerance policy per se is proven not to be very effective. We want to make sure that we have graded punishments, that we clearly identify the type of weapons that are prohibited and clearly outline the different types of consequences for weapons violations to not only our students, but our staff and our visitors. We found short video productions to be very effective to help reduce weapons violations in our district by clearly notifying students what type of weapons were prohibited, what would be done to catch violators and what consequences would occur when a violation was found.
