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Newman: A Sociological Look at School Shootings Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings The following is an excerpt from Rampage, the newest book by Katherine Newman, a professor at the Kennedy School and dean of social science at the Radcliffe Institute. When Bill Bond, the principal of Heath High School, heard the first shots ring out, he ran from his office to the lobby, just in time to see the leader of the prayer group, Luke Fallon, confront Michael, demanding to be told why he was shooting people. By that time, Michael had put the handgun down on the floor. Michael turned to Luke and pleaded, “Please, just shoot me!” Instead, Bond hustled Michael into his office and turned him over to Ron Kilgore, his academic adviser at Heath. Teachers came running to help the injured, and those who knew what to do began to pump chests and blow into the mouths of students who had stopped breathing. Moments later, word leaked out of the school that a shooting had occurred. Terrified parents began streaming in from all over the community as the local radio and television stations started to broadcast the news. John Carneal, Michael’s father, heard the news at work; his wife Ann got the word at home. They jumped into their cars, Ann bringing all the blankets she could carry. Neither parent knew the details of what had happened or that Michael was involved; they simply rushed to the scene to see if they could help. When they arrived, Bill Bond and Michael’s sister Kelly pulled the Carneals into a private office to break the bad news. Initial accounts of the shooting were confusing, and chaos reigned at Heath as a consequence. No one knew which hospital the injured had been taken to or what their condition was. Distraught parents ran from one emergency room to another. Lacking identification, the hospitals often didn’t know exactly whom they had in their care. Shaken parents such as Gwen Hadley, Nicole’s mother, were placed in the terrible position of having to identify their children’s bodies. [Hadley said] “They said that there was a girl in surgery and a girl coming out of MRI…They said the girls looked so much alike, they didn’t know who was who. So [they] came and got Jessica’s picture…and…Nicole’s picture. The pictures were both taken into the operating room. They…still weren’t sure who was who. I remember a doctor running and screaming, “A mom’s coming, a mom’s coming, get her ready.” And we went into a trauma room. And Nicole was lying there on a gurney in the middle It was definitely Nicole, and I immediately knew she was gone…I [prayed] with her a little bit, but they were bagging her. She still had a smile on her face.”
The Geography of Ethnic Violence Monica Duffy Toft In The Geography of Ethnic Violence, assistant professor Monica Toft seeks to understand why some ethnic conflicts turn violent but not others. Finding the answer to this question, according to Toft, is critical if we are ever to reach greater global stability. Nearly two-thirds of all armed conflicts include an ethnic component, says Toft, and ethnic conflicts are almost twice as likely to break out as fights over governmental control and four times more likely than interstate wars. To help answer this question, Toft introduces the theory of “indivisible territory,” arguing that the likelihood of ethnic violence rests on how a conflict’s principal antagonists (the state and its dissatisfied ethnic minority) think about or value a disputed territory. Looking at the problem from this perspective, which is largely absent from most discussions on the subject, Toft says, will help advance greater understanding of political conflict.
Regulating Infrastructure José Gómez-Ibáñez Drawing on economics, history, and politics, professor José Gómez-Ibáñez looks at the regulation of private infrastructure, which increased in places all over the world during the 1980s and 1990s. Britain, for example, sold its public sector telephone, electricity, gas, water, and railroad companies to private companies, hoping they could provide better service at lower prices. Most of the telephone companies and railways in Latin America were also privatized. However, by the 21st century, there was backlash, he writes. Investors were unhappy with their returns and customers complained about service and high tariffs. Catastrophes like the demise of California’s wholesale electricity market in 2000 and the collapse of Britain’s private railway a year later made the situation even worse. Gómez-Ibáñez contends that the future of private infrastructure rests on the ability to come up with regulatory systems that treat utilities, investors, and customers fairly while also allowing regulators to respond to unexpected circumstances.
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