RIBBONS OF PROMISE, RIBBONS OF REMEMBRANCE.

Byline: Dennis Murphy For The Register-Guard

The Ribbon of Promise National Campaign to Prevent School Violence was founded on May 22, 1998, the day after the violent attack on Thurston High School in Springfield. A string of school attacks in Pearl, Miss.; Paducah, Ky.; and Jonesboro, Ark., came first - but the outcome in Springfield was different. We decided to create a community-based organization to respond to the threat of school violence.

Equipped with miles of blue plastic ribbon, tiny blue lapel ribbons and a desire to help, volunteers decorated trees, lamp posts, mailboxes, cars and people with blue ribbons in support of the victims, their families and a traumatized community.

Within a few days, donors had given the organization modest office space and all of the necessary tools and equipment, right down to a brand new Web site - www.ribbonofpromise.org. The organization mourned with the community through the candlelight vigil, the community gatherings and the funerals.

Then we rolled up our sleeves and got to work on a national problem. In the five years since then, ROP programs and approaches have been adopted, studied and adapted by school districts, government agencies, the media and other organizations across the country. Our experience, and our determination to learn from it, has made a big difference in how the country thinks about, responds to and acts to prevent school violence.

Getting started: Organizers decided that the main role for the campaign was to bring communities together with the institutions of government - specifically education, law enforcement and the juvenile justice system - to address the problem jointly. The mission would be to "unite the nation in an effort to prevent school violence by acting as a resource for communication, education, planning and action."

Within 30 days, we developed the "Unified Plan," a document that became the foundation for action and remains largely unchanged today. Most of the plan has since been embraced in one form or another by government agencies in their strategies to deal with school violence.

The symbolic expression of our determination began to spread. As President Clinton stepped off Air Force One in Eugene to address a memorial at Thurston High School, there it was - that tiny blue lapel ribbon with the word "promise" engraved on it, symbolic of the new campaign. Later that month, crew member Wendy Lawrence took the blue ribbon into outer space on the shuttle Discovery. Many members of Congress also wore the ribbon as the 1998 session resumed.

While it was clear that ribbons wouldn't end school violence, they were becoming an important tool in spreading awareness of the campaign. More than 250,000 lapel ribbons and lapel pins have been distributed across the county and abroad.

Tapping kid power: Campaign officials intuitively understood that student support would be important. It took a little while to really hear what the kids were saying: "This is about kids killing kids. We don't think you adults can be effective by yourselves. You've got to let us develop a program and a message to reach kids or you'll never stop it."

ROP board members listened, and the kids were off and running. These students were first in the nation to correctly identify that student-to-student communication would become the most important and effective tool against school violence.

Students from the Distributive Education Clubs of America class at Springfield High School took the lead role. DECA is a business and marketing program that is available on thousands of high school campuses. As part of their DECA class project, students developed the By Kids 4 Kids campaign and planned for the creation of a video and printed materials. BK4K became the student arm of the ROP campaign.

The school attack on Columbine High School happened as BK4K prepared to take its blue ribbons and its message to the national DECA convention in April 1999. Students from around the nation were naturally very interested in what they could do to help stop the violence. Thousands of blue ribbons were worn by students at the conference.

Within a year, BK4K completed its literature and released a video titled "Not My Friends, Not My School." Videos and CDs have now been distributed across the nation, and these materials have been widely acclaimed.

The BK4K concept is for students to break a self-imposed code of silence and take action to protect their friends and their school by reporting anything they hear about weapons or threats of violent attacks to authorities. According to media stories tracked by ROP, students speaking up about weapons and threats have since helped stop more than 25 school attacks.

Developing parent power: Initially powered by families of Thurston High School students, Parent Advocates for Safe Schools became the parent arm of the campaign. They were first to identify the need for an easy access 24-hour hot line for kids to report (anonymously, if desired) threats of violence, plans of future attacks, or other acts of harassment or hostility. Hot lines are now set up in several states.

Now known as the Parent Resource and Development Group, their portion of the campaign Web site offers a school safety checklist, parenting tips and online parent-to-parent dialogue. They are also responsible for the Safer Schools Bullying Resolution project, including online information and printed literature.

Cruel teasing and physical abuse is prevalent in schools. What has been less clear until now is the relationship between bullying and violent attacks. Many of those who have carried out school attacks were themselves the target of constant teasing and harassment.

The connection between bullying and the desire to get even is now well documented. Anti-bullying programs are being developed by the ROP Parent Resource and Development Group.

Even though most parents will admit privately to making mistakes in raising their children, few would like to make it public, particularly after catastrophic consequences have resulted. Nevertheless, the campaign has the sometimes unpopular responsibility to help prevent reoccurrences by reporting what we find.

The three most prevalent mistakes are allowing unsupervised access to weapons and Internet information; allowing children to lock parents out of their room; and not knowing where the child is, with whom and what they are up to.

Parents want to love their children enough to trust them. Experience in this campaign shows they also must love their children enough to remember that they are not adults and are subject to all sorts of influences for which they are not prepared.

There is significant literature describing the possible connection between violence in youth entertainment such as movies, music and video games. Entertainment's superheroes frequently break all the rules and resort to violence to even the score for perceived injustices. We should not be surprised when youths in crisis who have become so despairing of their life would consider getting even with those they think are responsible.

The campaign is in contact with national experts such as the Entertainment Software Rating Board and the Killology Research Group that offer useful information and solutions in this area.

Communicating through the performing arts: Nationally known playwright William Mastrosimone created a play known as "Bang Bang You're Dead" to be performed by an all-student cast. The play delivered a powerful message about the horror of school violence. All he asked for was a national sponsor to underwrite premier production costs and he would charge no fees or royalties.

The campaign adopted the play, and it premiered at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene. Since that time, the play has been performed thousands of times around the nation and abroad and has received widespread acclaim in violence prevention.

In September 2002, Showtime announced the production of a made-for-television movie based on the play, "Bang Bang You're Dead." The movie added a new and powerful dimension to the play by establishing a connection between bullying and violent school attacks. The movie was then aired several times before a national TV audience and is now available for schools through the Cable in the Classroom program.

School shootings as terrorism: When the campaign first noted that youths were capable of imitating terrorist acts in their attacks, this concept was unpopular and it took courage to advance it.

The idea was to face the mounting evidence that some attacks were cold, calculated, well-planned killing assaults more akin to terrorism than to a random act of a troubled youth.

By October 1998, the campaign called on U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and President Clinton to assign the nation's leading intelligence and security agencies and military experts to this problem. In March 1999, in an ROP campaign address to the media in Denver, policy-makers were encouraged to prepare for the worst and "not let it happen here." They were warned that would-be student attackers might plan for multiple youths using assault firepower and bombs. Less than one month later, the assault on Columbine High School only eight miles away in Littleton removed all doubt. This concept is now well accepted and mainstream to strategies developed to foil such attempts in the future.

After Columbine, the U.S. Secret Service was assigned to study school attacks through a process called threat assessment. Subsequently, a document was produced by the Secret Service to assist schools with determining threats and taking action. The new Department of Homeland Defense is the lead agency in preparing the nation to handle terrorist attacks, and funding has been identified to help schools prevent violent attacks.

Developing new partnerships: ROP, in conjunction with Chambers Communications Corp. and its television station affiliates, established a prime-time school violence prevention awareness campaign.

The new program features ROP school violence prevention messages that are run during prime viewing hours, rather than off-hours that are more typical of public service messages.

Thus was formed a partnership between businesses, the communications company and ROP. The messages began airing in April. If the project is as successful as expected, it may serve as a model for national distribution.

We've also established a strategic affiliation agreement with HeartCore International, publisher of Teens Under Fire magazine. TUF will serve as the primary print communications tool for ROP.

Where do we go from here? Are we now safe from attacks on our schools? Are other schools that have been attacked less likely to be attacked again? Is it true that lightning won't strike twice in the same place?

Unfortunately, statistics suggest that several school attacks are likely in the planning stage right now.

However, the same statistics have shown that in nearly every case, one or more kids have information that might prevent these attacks. It looks as if the No. 1 defense is the kids themselves. Currently, the only known working project that uses this defense is the BK4K program.

Lest we wake up to a nightmare headline in the future describing hundreds of students wounded and killed in a school attack using extensive firepower and bombs and multiple attackers, we need to remain diligent in our efforts. Students reflect the culture around them.

Springfield Fire Chief Dennis Murphy is the founder and board vice president of the Ribbon of Promise National Campaign to Prevent School Violence ([e-mail] or 726-0512).

CAPTION(S):

Greg Deedon of the Springfield Fire Department ties a blue ribbon on a tree on Main Street in remembrance of the 1998 Thurston High shootings. The Register-Guard, 1998 Two young girls hold candles during a moment of prayer at a vigil that was held at Springfield City Hall in 1998. Remembrance: The No.1 defense against school violence is the kids themselves Continued from Page B1 Continued from Page X1 Please turn to REMEMBRANCE, Page B4 REMEMBRANCE