Why Would Trump's Shooter's School Deny He Was Bullied?

I had barely finished posting my last article relating to the viral news story about the bullying that Donald Trump's attempted assassin allegedly experienced at Bethel Park High School when another story went viral denying the bullying. The original story, first broken by the New York Post, relied on eye-witness accounts by several of Thomas Crooks's schoolmates, who said he had earned the nickname "School shooter" and there was a video showing Thomas being intentionally antagonized by another student in class.

The newer story reported on Bethel Park High School's official statement asserting that Thomas had not been bullied. This was followed by a CNN interview with former school counselor, Jim Knapp. Knapp sounds tense and defensive while asserting that, had Thomas been bullied, he and the school’s three other counselors would have known about it and put a stop to it. Since the school has no record of Thomas being bullied, this is considered proof that he wasn't. While keeping mostly to himself, Knapp informs us, Thomas was a smart and friendly boy who took his education seriously, missing only one day of school during his senior year. While the interviewer was polite throughout, he didn’t sound overly convinced that Thomas had not been bullied.

Can Mr. Knapp be right and the student witnesses wrong?

Yes, it is possible. But it’s not likely. It is well known that students tend to have more knowledge about the social lives of their peers than does the staff, especially in high school when students switch teachers each period. It is also well known that the older kids become, the less likely they are to inform the school about bullying because little is worse than being seen as a snitch by their peers.

Why, then, was it so urgent for the school officials to insist that Thomas had not been bullied? So what if he was? There would be nothing surprising about it. In the aftermath of mass shootings, we often discover that the shooters had been victims of bullying.

The answer is probably obvious to any school administrator or counselor: They don't want to be sued. The psychological field of bullying has declared that schools are responsible for bullying among students, and this responsibility has become embedded in school anti-bullying laws. Today, when a bullied child is harmed or dies, the standard procedure for the parents is to hire a lawyer and sue the school. These lawsuits have been growing in frequency and in the size of the settlements awarded, with a recent record of $27 million! Imagine the trepidation the Bethel Park HS personnel must be experiencing now that one of their former students committed the most-televised assassination attempt in history! It’s no wonder they are denying that he was bullied.

The underlying travesty

There is something, though, that should be of far greater concern to schools–and to all of us– than the question of whether Thomas Crooks had been bullied at Bethel Park HS. Namely, the very premise underlying the school’s need to deny the bullying. The denial implies that if Thomas had indeed been bullied, it would be the fault of the school, and to the extent that bullying is a motivating factor in mass shootings, the school would share in the guilt of July 13. This is a horrendously unfair implication.

I have been arguing ever since the adoption of school anti-bullying laws two decades ago that they are the greatest travesty perpetrated against schools. They hold schools legally responsible for accomplishing the impossible: guaranteeing that all children can go to school without being bullied. How can we hold schools legally responsible for bullying when research has shown unequivocally that the most highly revered bullying prevention programs and state anti-bullying laws at best achieve a minor reduction in bullying and often result in an increase? In fact, the very act of conducting the bullying investigations required by law tends to immediately intensify the hostilities among the parties involved, as each side and their parents argue that they are innocent and the other is guilty. How cruel it is to punish schools for the failure of the anti-bullying policies they are mandated to follow!

In virtually every news story about bullying lawsuits, the plaintiffs accuse the school of having done nothing, or not enough, to stop the bullying, while the school insists that it has zero tolerance for bullying and followed mandates to make it stop. Even when schools agree to pay settlements, they always deny the accusations against them. The reason they agree to settle is to avoid the time and expense of going to trial, and especially to avoid the mind-boggling sums they would have to pay if found guilty. Actually, another reason they settle is because the staff doesn't pay from their own pockets. They pay with other people's money, via insurance.

The unfairness to schools

But even if Thomas were bullied, why should it be the school’s fault? Since when do schools have the ability to micromanage the social relations among students and make sure they are always nice to each other? Most parents can’t get their own few children at home to stop bullying each other, no matter how hard they try. What can we expect of schools that have hundreds or even thousands of students? Schools don’t purposely instigate bullying among students and the chances of them stopping it are small. That’s why bullying is still considered an epidemic after a quarter century of anti-bully warfare.

After all these years, it is high time that we question the premises of the crusade against bullying, and relieve schools of the Draconian demand to guarantee children a school experience devoid of it.