Averting the unlikely: fearing, assessing, and preventing threats of rampage violence in American public schools.

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d20002766

Over the last decade, school rampage shootings have taken multiple lives and caused widespread fear throughout the United States. During this same period, there have also been dozens of averted incidents where student plots to kill multiple peers and faculty members came to the attention of authorities and thus were thwarted. This dissertation entails in-depth interviews conducted with school and police officials (administrators, counselors, security and police officers, and teachers) directly involved in preventing what many perceived to be potential rampages at eleven public middle and high schools across the Northeastern United States. Interview data were subsequently triangulated via news media reporting and legal documentation about the eleven averted incidents. Additionally, the perspectives of school administrators at demographically similar public schools (i.e. in predominantly white suburban and rural communities) where no rampage threat took place were solicited as a basis of comparison.