Four in 10 Students Report Potentially Violent Classmates

Four in 10 American high school students say they have classmates who might be troubled enough to stage a Littleton-style attack at their school, and as many report anti-social and potentially violent cliques there.  Their parents are markedly less aware of these potential dangers.

Forty percent of students in an ABC News/Washington Post poll can think of a classmate "who might be troubled enough to do something like" the Littleton massacre, and 40 percent report students at their school "who hang out together and who seem to be especially troubled, anti-social and perhaps prone to violence."

Fewer parents – about a quarter – can think of such a student or are aware of such groups, the national survey found. And that’s still millions of high school parents, one in four.

The presence of potentially violent students is coupled with an apparent lack of universal monitoring: As far as they're aware, only about 55 percent of students and parents alike say their high school tries to identify troubled students who may be prone to violence. More than 90 percent say such screening should be going on.

These results are among several in the poll that raise concern about the risk of more attacks of the kind that struck Columbine High School last week. Among others:

• -One in five high schoolers say they personally know a student who’s brought a gun to school – and the vast majority of them, 83 percent, say they did not report it to an adult.

• -Far more students – 54 percent – say it would be easy for them to get a gun. (About half say there’s already a gun at their home). Even more, 67 percent, say it would be easy for them to get information on how to make bombs.

• -Nearly a third of students have heard a classmate at their school threaten to kill someone. Again, most – 78 percent – never reported it, in most cases because they didn’t take it seriously. Five percent (one in 20) say someone’s threatened to kill them.

• -One in five students report classmates at their school whom they consider to be neo-Nazis or skinheads. Parents are less likely to know about it.

NO PANIC - Still, Columbine has not incited anything like panic among most students or parents. Three-quarters of students and parents alike say violence is not a serious problem at their school; 88 percent of students feel personally safe; and 70 percent of students rate their school security as "excellent" or "good." Sixty-one percent of parents agree.

But clearly there’s room for improvement. Well under half of students, 42 percent, feel "very" safe from violence at their school, and 40 call it "somewhat" or even "very" likely that a Littleton-style attack could occur there.

Anxiety runs higher among parents, even though they're less likely to know of potentially violent students or cliques. Just 27 percent of parents think their child is "very safe" at school. Forty-nine percent call a Littleton-style attack somewhat or very likely. And fewer than half of parents, 45 percent, say their child's school is doing enough to prevent violence there.

SECURITY - The survey points to several specific areas of improvement in school security; in addition to broader screening of potentially violent students, these include the use of metal detectors (now very rare), random searches of student lockers and even random searches of students themselves. Among the measures:

-Random searches of lockers. Barely over half of students say their schools currently do it. Far more favor it: Sixty-eight percent of students, and 81 percent of parents, say their school should randomly search student lockers.

-Random searches of students. Not the norm; just a quarter of students say their schools currently conduct random searches of students themselves. But 50 percent of students say such searches should be instituted, and 56 percent of parents agree.

-Metal detectors. They're rare now; only five percent of students (and parents) say their schools have metal detectors in place. Again, 50 percent of students, and 59 percent of parents, say the devices should be installed.

-Screening. As noted above, 55 percent of students (and about the same number of parents) say their school tries to identify troubled students who may be prone to violence. (Thirteen percent of students, and 25 percent of parents, don’t know whether or not this is done.) More than 90 percent of students and parents say it should occur.

Most students and parents also support having police or armed guards patrol their school. And there's near-unanimous support for effective counseling of troubled students, which most say is already in place.