INTRODUCTION

                  The scene is from a movie - they entered a building dressed in long black coats, armed with loaded guns, ammunition, and homemade bombs.[1] They tore through the halls searching for their victims and caused mass hysteria.[2] One-by-one, they killed their enemies at point-blank range until they ended their siege by turning the guns on themselves.[3] Shortly after 11:30 a.m., on April 20^th 1999, this horrific event came to a devastating end with 13 dead plus the two gunmen.[4] “They” are Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two juniors at Columbine High School, who, in those few minutes, changed the face of Littleton, Colorado, and the rest of our nation. The diabolic murder plot executed at Columbine High School has forever altered how parents, teachers, administrators, and students feel about school safety around the country.

Schools across America scrambled to implement safe school programs to protect students from one another. With events like the shooting at Columbine[5] at the forefront of media reports,[6] coupled with a misbelief that school violence was on the rise,[7] parents, teachers, administrators and students were fearful that they might also become the next victim of a student ostracized from school society. [8] The heightened awareness resulting from such events led to misplaced efforts by many schools which, as a result, implemented Peer Mediation Programs (“PMP”) that use “trained student mediators to resolve disputes among fellow students.”[9] However, in acting swiftly, schools failed to examine the nature of the extreme and violent acts as they occurred within their school walls. This examination would have required school to look at both the type and extent of violence, as well as to create a profile of violent students.[10] Such a sudden and frenzied response has produced ineffective and misplaced efforts in addressing the actual dangers posed. Without understanding that school violence was changing qualitatively and not quantitatively,[11] schools implemented programs that were unsuited to prevent acts of violence comparable to Columbine.[12]

PMPs miss those students who are not obviously antagonistic to the system. Considering that violence frequently is a mode of non-communication, a failure of words, it may be that those who do not speak, but who are building bombs at home, are closer to extreme acts of violence than those who contest, argue, or fight. Therefore, PMPs are not the solution for combating high levels of school violence. Instead, many of the programs that have been implemented since Columbine, at best have prevented low-levels of violence, such as name calling and gossiping, from escalating into something more extreme.

                  This note focuses on the ineffectiveness of PMPs to combat higher-levels of school violence. Part I discusses school violence, both past and present.[13] Part II explores the shift from traditional methods of discipline to more proactive and education-based methods that are used in many schools today. Part III addresses the fundamentals of peer mediation including what it is and how it is implemented. Part IV examines which students PMPs should be targeting and why PMPs fail to prevent them from committing violent acts on their schools. Finally, the conclusion recommends ways to reduce conflict in schools.

I.                SCHOOL VIOLENCE

Schools traditionally were thought of as safe havens for children.[14] However, schools were never without violence.[15] Students have always fought on the playground, engaged in fistfights, stole property, and quarreled over friendships.[16] However, since the early 1990s, American schools have faced heightened levels of violence.[17] In 1998, an eighteen-year-old male high school student in Fayetteville, Tennessee, was shot dead by a peer in a dispute over a girl.[18] Three days later in Springfield, Oregon, a high school sophomore killed two students and wounded twenty when he opened fire in the school cafeteria, just one day after he killed both his parents.[19] Earlier that year, the scene was very similar at a school in Jonesboro, Arkansas, where four students and a teacher were killed by two students.[20] In April 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed thirteen in a killing spree at Columbine High School.[21] During the 1997-98 school year alone, forty students were killed on school property.[22]

                  Despite the repeated media coverage of school shootings, youths in America are being arrested for fewer violent crimes today than in the past and are also at a lower risk rate for being victims of such crimes.[23] The national rate for serious violent crimes committed by youths, including murder, non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, declined 33% between 1993 and 1997.[24] The number of crimes in and around schools has also declined.[25] From 1993 to 1996, the combined school crime rate for violent and nonviolent crimes fell 22%.[26] While fewer students are carrying weapons and fewer fights are occurring on school grounds, it does not change the fact that today’s school violence has become more lethal, due to increasing incidents that involve gunfire, resulting in fatalities and, in some cases, multiple victims.[27]

II.               METHODS OF PUNISHMENT

                  With the advent of public school systems came the need for disciplinary methods to keep students safe and in control. Traditionally, school discipline meant “subservience of the individual will to the will of the teacher,” much like that of military discipline.[28] Corporal punishment was the most prevalent disciplinary method due to its immediate and deterrent effects on would-be or chronic offenders.[29] However, with flourishing public education facilities, increasing school enrollment, and an increase of student unrest during the 1960s, new disciplinary techniques replaced corporal punishment, since it no longer had the same immediate impact in a large environment­.[30] During the 1960s and early 1970s, suspension and expulsion gained widespread use by many schools.[31]

These exclusionary tactics provided an efficient way to handle large numbers of disruptive youths, offered protection to the student body, and provided administrators with a sense of control over the uncontrollable.[32] Such methods of punishment were not, and still are not, without dangers. For example, exclusionary tactics are more likely to cause students to drop out of school, lose respect for authority, and feel alienated. Furthermore, such tactics have led to asocial behavior, increased delinquency, feelings of self-defeat, isolation and disenfranchisement.[33] Despite these negative consequences, during the late 1970s and early to mid-1980s, in-school suspension was the most common form of punishment.[34]

The stricter method of zero tolerance policies,[35] including detention and suspension, were adopted in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the U.S. began to see an increase in the violent nature of school violence.[36] These punitive measures of punishment are still employed today as a reaction to an increased awareness of deadly school violence.[37] However, in addition to these more traditional approaches, school districts have looked to preventative measures such as installing metal detectors,[38] video surveillance, campus police squads, and student profiling to deter school violence.[39]

                  The problem with punitive measures of discipline as used in the past, and still employed today, is that they only seem to enhance students’ feeling of dominance by teachers and administrators[40] and create general feelings of distrust.[41] When placed in suspension, a student’s desire not to be dominated leads to thoughts of how to dominate those who treat him/her as inferior. Rather than promoting partnership, dominator regression results whereby thoughts of violence are provoked instead of eliminated.[42] The end result of repressive action “exclude[s] and alienate[s] those very students most at risk of getting involved in acts of violence.”[43] Students view such repressive policies as attempts by the school to marginalize them, and further, as a violation of their rights.[44]

With this reactionary form of domination, it is difficult to support safe school plans that require further dominance in order to achieve control of the school.[45] This type of stampede crackdown on youth violence employs heavy-handed and counterproductive measures that are only likely to lead to further resistance and rebellion.[46] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which defends students whose rights have been violated by their school, reported that nationwide it receives calls about suspensions or expulsions for things typically viewed as self-expression because schools believe them to reflect potentially dangerous behaviors.[47] Despite these reports, almost one and a half million students miss school due to expulsion or suspension each year.[48]

                “In reaction to the deficiencies of reactive, punitive and negative forms of school discipline, several new perspectives on reducing indiscipline and violence in schools emerged.”[49] Starting in the late 1980s and 1990s, school officials and legislators began realizing the need to respond to school violence in a host of new ways.[50] Punitive methods of preventing violence do not work in today’s society where bombs and guns have replaced fistfights and playground brawls as methods of choice among students committing violent acts.[51] As an alternative, schools, often with the support of state legislatures,[52] began using a combination of restorative,[53] rehabilitative, and educational programs.[54] While there is no single, universal solution, a solution that is proactive, concerted, and strategic in putting school violence in its rightful context is a good starting point to minimize confrontation.[55] With this in mind, many educators implemented school-based prevention programs focused on peer mediation (“PM”), or more broadly, conflict resolution (“CR”).[56]

III.              WHAT IS PEER MEDIATION?

                  Peer mediation is a negotiation-based strategy that teaches student mediators techniques to resolve conflicts among their peers.[57] When there is a dispute at school, the mediators, either student-student or teacher-student teams, become neutral third parties and work with the disputants through CR.[58] Schools around the world “have implemented peer mediation programs of various shapes and sizes, with the expectation that violence and suspension will be reduced, school climates will improve, and students will learn and take with them essential life skills.”[59]

PMPs are essential in some form due to the fact that many young people do not know how to effectively manage jealousy, teasing, and physical aggression, all of which may result in juvenile delinquency and violence.[60] Therefore, “[t]he aim of these programs is to teach young people how to handle conflict by making rational choices, to consider the possible consequences of their behaviors, and to work out alternative solutions that do not involve violence….”[61] The National Association for Mediation in Education estimated that there were approximately 2,000 CR programs in United States schools in 1992, and 5,000 to 8,000 CR programs in 1994.[62]

                  PMPs of the 1990s grew out of several older, community-based programs and movements of the mid-1970s.[63] One such community-based mediation program was the Community Boards Program in San Francisco, a grass roots movement promoting dispute resolution alternatives without using official legal avenues.[64] Another such program was the Resolving Conflicts Creatively, enacted in New York City public schools and developed by attorneys and child advocates.[65] In the earliest education programs, Quaker notions of non-violent resolution of conflicts were introduced into schools through organizations such as Children’s Creative Response to Conflict.[66]

                  The goal of PMPs is for students to learn how to deflate a minor conflict before it escalates into a more serious incident.[67] The underpinning of peer mediation is the belief that conflict can be good; it is both necessary and positive.[68] Conflict is viewed as “crucial to the moral development of children, their acquisition of a sense of social order, and the development of communicative ability.”[69] Therefore, one aim of PMPs is to resolve conflict in positive ways.[70] PMPs achieve this objective by giving youth, mediators, and disputants nonviolent tools and skills to deal with these daily conflicts that could otherwise lead to self-destructive and violent behaviors.[71]

Participation in peer mediation is voluntary, and, with the exception of information that is illegal or life threatening, all matters discussed in the sessions remain confidential.[72] Key to the process is the idea that student mediators do not make judgments or offer advice, nor do they have the power to force decisions upon their peers.[73] Rather, students come to mediation and are guided by peer mediators to move from blaming each other to generating solutions acceptable to all parties.[74]

The role of the peer mediator is to help students come to a “win-win” rather than a “win-lose” resolution to the conflict.[75] Mediators achieve this outcome by identifying the interests that lie beneath the dispute.[76] Once the root of the problem has been identified, the mediator suggests solutions or facilitates the disputants to come up with a solution on their own. Once a solution is reached, the peer mediator helps to put it in writing.[77]

                  PMPs can be designed and executed in a host of ways to meet the particular and individualized needs of each school. Some PMPs are used in more informal settings, such as on the playground, while other programs bring student mediators and their peer mediation techniques into the classroom to resolve disputes.[78] Other more formal programs establish a mediation office in which all peer mediations occur.[79] Some schools limit the use of PMPs to certain types of disputes, such as student-student or teacher-student disputes, while other programs require adult supervision.[80] Despite the variety of possible program structures, similar core principles govern most PMPs. These principles include extensive training of mediators; outreach to and understanding by students, school staff, and parents; confidentiality and trust; and full support of staff and administration.[81]

                  In deciding how to structure and implement PMPs, schools need to address many questions: How to choose which students will be peer mediators? What types of problems are amenable to PMPs? How, and by whom, will students be referred? Who will supervise mediation? How much training is required of supervisors and peer mediators? How will disputants use peer mediation? How will the school garner support for the program among students and teachers to achieve a total buy-in? Should there be parent involvement? How should the program be evaluated?[82] The effectiveness of the program depends on how a school answers and deals with these questions. Furthermore, crucial to a successful implementation are committed leadership, consistency, quality mediators, logistics, disputant follow-up, and ongoing publicity.[83] By not devoting enough time to this preliminary planning stage, schools are practically guaranteed ineffective programs. These factors work to either facilitate or impede the program’s success.

                  Perhaps the most important element of a PMP is the training of peer mediators.[84] The training includes the development of basic communication skills such as active listening and clarifying questions, as well as specific techniques to help a student diffuse a potentially volatile situation.[85] Such techniques include separating oneself from the situation, attacking the problem not the people, focusing on the issue and not personal views, communicating clearly, accepting and respecting differing opinions, and focusing on areas of common agreement.[86] Training techniques such as simulations and problem exercises are extremely helpful toward building these skills.[87] Training is crucial because student mediators must feel competent and comfortable with their roles. Additionally, disputants must feel the mediators are competent.[88] However, once comprehensive training is completed, continued support and feedback from peer trainers and administrators are necessary.[89] While peer mediators are the focus of such programs, schools may consider commencing PMPs by first training school staffers to mediate.[90] By doing this, program longevity can be achieve since students will eventually graduate leaving only school staffers to retrain.[91]

                  A second key element to the success of a PMP program is tailoring it to the needs of the particular school.[92] Age level considerations should be one of the first questions raised in this area. While PMPs have been most common at the high school level, many junior high and elementary schools have also implemented them.[93] When used at the primary school level, or even the junior high level, co-mediators or supervisors may be needed. In contrast, at the high school level students may be able to handle the sessions on their own.[94] A second question to address is what types of problems will be addressed by PMPs. Some schools might even decide to mix traditional disciplinary measures with these more holistic approaches creating a dual system of sorts.[95]

The third key element is implementation of the program. Here, schools need to ensure through education that all students, as well as the community, respect the program.[96] Next, these programs must remain flexible, for opportunities to refine and revise the procedures are necessary.[97] Considering that it is important for students to feel like they are a part of the program, PMPs must remain flexible and open to participant input.[98] Finally, some programs might set up a mediation room solely for the program so that students know where to go when a conflict arises. Other schools might elect to designate a point-person who uses his or her office or classroom to conduct the sessions.[99] Either way, it is imperative that students are aware of the locations and schedule of the program beforehand so that disputants can find assistance when the dispute occurs.[100] While these are only a few of the relevant factors that need to be assessed, each one should be given proper consideration. Poor management of even one factor can result in the failure of a PMP.

                  Despite a lack of reliable research on PMPs,[101] there are many comparative and informal studies that report PMPs are a promising strategy for improving school climate.[102] Success rates of 58% to 93% have been achieved at various schools where success was measured by whether an agreement was reached and maintained.[103] In Reece Peterson and Russell Skiba’s article, Creating School Climates that Prevent School Violence, Peterson and Skiba detailed results from one middle school whereby 83% of trained peer mediator reported “win-win” settlements whereas 86% of untrained students reported “win-lose” outcomes.[104] Peterson and Skiba report other positive effects of PMPs. Aside from fewer referrals to the office and decreased rates of suspension,[105] there are changes in the way students approach conflict, attitudes towards negotiation, increase in self-esteem and academic achievement,[106] empowerment of teens to deal better with life’s inevitable conflicts, and appreciation for diversity.[107]

Furthermore, in comparing conflict strategies used by untrained students to those used by trained students, PMPs appear to work some magic. A number of studies have reported that untrained students in the face of conflict withdraw, suppress, force/coerce, intimidate, and generally employ win-lose strategies.[108] In comparison, trained students approach conflict by facing it. They learn, retain, and apply problem-solving procedures to deal with conflict, ultimately engaging in win-win negotiations.[109] Overall, PMPs are viewed as a good alternative to discipline as they target the causes of violence and, unlike the traditional disciplinary methods, do not move the violence elsewhere in the community.[110]

The success of PMPs is not automatic and is highly dependant upon the planning and execution of the program.[111] For this reason, many PMPs have failed to stop the violence.[112] Their ineffectiveness is a result of many factors. Many programs are poorly targeted and program materials do not focus on program implementation.[113] In addition, schools often have unrealistic expectations.[114] In general, mediators appear to benefit more from learning mediation than the disputants benefit from using it. Additionally, mediation often only gets at the surface, failing to address the underlying issues[115] that student mediators are not prepared to address.[116] A lack of shared understanding about the program’s central purpose is also a frequent reason cited for program failure.[117]

On paper, an implementation plan for a PMP might seem to meet the needs of schools to reduce deadly violence. However, the juggling of too many crucial factors, discussed above, often results in program failure. Furthermore, on paper, PMPs appear to be able to resolve all problems in schools through the use of mediation. However, such expectations are dangerous and unrealistic.

IV. PEER MEDIATION PROGRAMS DO NOT WORK IN PREVENTING HIGH LEVELS OF SCHOOL VIOLENCE

PMPs are ineffective as tools for combating high levels of school violence. The reason relates to two major issues: PMPs, at best, can only address low-levels of school violence, and PMPs do not properly target those students committing higher-level acts of violence.

PMPs work best at combating disputes arising from personal differences such as arguments between friends, playground fights, property/theft issues,[118] and verbal harassment like name calling, threats, and gossiping.[119] In one of the larger and more reliable studies,[120] PMPs were implemented over a 2-year period in a high school, intermediate school and elementary school in Honolulu, Hawaii.[121] In this study, the types of conflict seen with the highest occurrences were gossip/rumor (27%), harassment (27%), arguments (20%), and classroom behavior (9%).[122] The issues in these forms of conflict are simple enough for the peer mediation process. However, in dealing with a student who the school fears may commit higher-level acts of violence, such as using a semiautomatic rifle to fire at a crowd gathered in a school cafeteria[123] or initiating a massacre during a false fire alarm,[124] more complex issues are involved, which student mediators are not prepared to deal with.[125] Unfortunately, the reality is that the most potentially volatile disputes entail more serious issues than individual or personal differences and misunderstandings. Therefore, PMPs are ineffective in combating higher-levels of school violence..[126]

The events that occurred at Columbine High School support the proposition that more complex issues are not suited for peer mediation. Fifteen months prior to the massacre at Columbine, both perpetrators had gone through a diversion program for youth offenders after being caught breaking into an electrician’s van.[127] Both boys passed the program with flying colors.[128] Although a diversion program is not the same as a PMP, the goal is the same – to reform offenders.[129] The program failed to get at the complex issues underlying the boys’ robbery and, therefore, failed to prevent their next, more violent, act of terror.[130] Moreover, peer mediation is ineffective if, like the two boys from Littleton, Colorado, the students are smart and highly manipulative so as to fool the mediators.[131] Spotting this manipulation is something a student mediator may not be sophisticated enough to detect and not all programs have adult supervisors.

In a PMP at Brandon High School in New York, peer mediation was not an effective tool to deal with the deep rooted and complex problems students were having. Through a year-long study, it was found that 44 students went through mediation more than once.[132] In one specific case, the same person sat through two mediations in one day with a different disputant each time. Another student, who had lost his father that year, had gone to mediation eight times.[133] In both cases, the underlying issues were left unspoken and the violence continued.[134]

The second major reason why PMPs fail in preventing higher-level acts of violence is that they do not target the proper students who are committing volatile acts. To understand how to target these students, schools first need to understand which students are committing the more serious acts. To do this, families, teachers, and administrators need to look for certain signals or factors to pick out more dangerous students. Common signals include: social withdrawal; excessive feelings of isolation and rejection; feelings of being picked on; being victims of violence; poor academic performance; expression of violence; uncontrolled anger; disciplinary problems; intolerance for difference or prejudice; and inappropriate possession of, or use of, firearms.[135] However, PMPs are often not equipped to find students who suffer from or deal with these factors.[136] The reason for this oversight can be attributed to the tendency of these students to not maintain a high profile among their peers while flying below the radar of administration and teachers.[137] This raises two problems for PMPs. First, to get students into a PMP, there needs to be a problem to resolve. Unfortunately, it is generally the case that students who commit highly violent acts do so for the first time once it is too late to help. The second problem is that even if these students act out in school, resulting in the need for peer mediation, it is critical to the success of PMPs that students are supportive of the forum and buy into it to help spread the non-violent norms of peer mediation.[138] However, such widespread acceptance of PMPs is unlikely among students who are disinterested in school and who see the world as their enemy. Finally, PMPs can be an effective tool that works for rational people with small, resolvable problems.[139] Unfortunately, many disputes are not caused by small resolvable problems, and the disputants can often seem irrational.[140] The fault of PMPs is that they can only treat those who are suffering from normal adolescent or childhood problems and not the more sophisticated problems facing dangerous students.

CONCLUSION

                  PMPs, as a quick and frenzied reaction to an increased fear of heightened levels of school violence, are not an appropriate measure.[141] While PMPs can be an effective preventative tool,[142] it appears that many schools use the programs as a “mop up” for all the problems that may exist within the school. However, PMPs are not the answer. According to William DeJong, of the Harvard School of Public Health, “[t]he best school-based violence prevention programs seek to do more than reach the individual child. They instead try to change the total school environment, to create a safe community that lives by a credo of non-violence and multi-cultural appreciation.”[143]

Schools first need to understand that the implementation of a mediation program is about conflict education in schools, not about using peer mediation to stop violence. Schools also need to view conflict as a natural and a positive thing. Once schools embrace this philosophy or outlook, they need to assess their schools to identify risky conflict, that is conflict that will lead to violence and conflict that has potential to do good. The types of risky conflicts then need to be assessed. Schools might begin by asking such questions as: Is it conflict between students and students? Students and teachers? Is it conflict based on racism among the students? Schools cannot address the problems within their doors without first having knowledge as to the roots of the conflict. After making an assessment, schools can then come up with appropriate responses to violence as it occurs in their school.

In formulating an effective plan, it is most important to view the school as a system in which conflicts are managed and take on a whole-school approach. Management cannot occur only by preventative measures alone, but must embody a holistic approach as well. Therefore, such programs must address the real risks, implementing programs to minimize them and identifying the real opportunities to develop creative programming. The Centre for Conflict Resolution (“CCR”) is a great example of an organization that understands the need for a holistic approach to CR. CCRs Dealing with Conflict Creatively (“DWCC”) program aids schools in dealing with conflict as it occurs within the school.[144] DWCC works with students, parents, and teachers to build a community that can diagnose, prevent, and creatively respond to conflict situations.[145] DWCC offers focused workshops individually tailored to each school’s needs and training for teachers and school staff, which CCR believes is crucial to the program’s effectiveness.[146] CCR’s aim “is to provide a practical and applicable understanding of conflict that empowers a team of staff to develop a greater understanding of issues in their school.”[147] Programs like DWCC can alleviate tension within schools, minimizing violence. However, such programs must be viewed as long-term solutions and not quick remedies.

In approaching violence holistically, schools have many tools at their disposal. By thinking creatively, schools can use a combination of peer courts, peer facilitated discussion on relevant topics, mental health help, classes on coping with adolescent problems, multicultural sensitivity training, guidance counselors, after-school programs, mentoring programs, curriculum infusion,[148] and other types of mediation.[149] By looking beyond the school walls, such programs as community-school partnerships, community gun programs, and parent involvement can also enter into the mix.[150] Selecting the right tools is like coming up with a recipe for conflict minimization. The types of holistic programs are endless with the only limitation being a failure to think creatively.