The recent incident in Southeast Raleigh in which two students were stabbed by another classmate leading to one death has given rise to concerns about school safety, especially in Wake County. Enloe principal Dr. Jacqueline Jordan believes that these kinds of incidents are due to acts of desperation reflected on a larger community level and believes increasing the sense of community is integral to lowering violence.
In light of the tragic events that took place at Southeast Raleigh High School on Nov. 27, students, parents and school officials are rethinking safety in Wake County Public Schools. Dr. Jacqueline Jordan, Enloe’s principal, spoke out on the issue during an interview on Dec. 8th.
Speaking on a personal level first, Dr. Jordan says she feels deep disbelief and regret.
“[The Southeast Raleigh incident] is a part of your childhood experience and by ‘your’ I mean the plural ‘your’ […] whether it be a student at Enloe or a student at Southeast or a student at Knightdale,” Dr. Jordan said.
Dr. Jordan said the frequency of such violence is “devastating”. She relates this incident to how she felt as a student at UNC Chapel Hill hearing about the Columbine High School shooting. At the time, it was the deadliest school shooting at a high school in U.S. history. Dr. Jordan said that school officials understand that these kinds of events are possible, but that the solution is less about cracking down on safety policy, and more about looking at increasing the sense of community within schools, including at Enloe.
“Schools are a microcosm of our greater community, and we’re seeing increases in desperate acts, even outside of school,” Dr. Jordan said.
Dr. Jordan asserts that when talking with law enforcement in regards to acts of violence she noticed parallels between the “vulnerabilities” that drive people to act in desperation both in school and in the larger Wake County community. She believes that oftentimes, students resort to violence due to feeling they “don’t have a choice” and wants schools, including Enloe, to work to reshape this way of thinking.
Dr. Jordan holds the belief that different student to teacher and student to counselor ratios, as well as shifting away from the idea that every second of the day needs to be academic will allow for more “space and time for genuine and authentic connection between people.”
For Enloe specifically, Dr. Jordan maintains that the school requires a “paradigm shift.” While Enloe parents want their kids to be less stressed, they send them to Enloe because it is “well, Enloe.” She believes that this leads to teachers feeling pressured to push more for academic excellence every minute of the period. Parents are also pressured, she says, because many reflect how successful they are as a parent based on how many AP classes their child takes or how well they do in school.
Dr. Jordan calls for anyone, whether they be student or parent, that feels passionate about the topic to share ideas with administration, which can range from emailing Dr. Jordan herself to the superintendent of Wake County.
“[Wake County] is a big area and the experiences of students within those schools is very different from school to school,” said Dr. Jordan.
This is part of the reason why Dr. Jordan believes procedures and policies to improve school safety and student mental health are harder to implement county-wide.
Wake County has introduced new safety policies this year including the visitor management system in which visitors to any Wake County school are required to register themselves.
“I think everything is effective; I don’t think anything is one hundred percent effective,” said Dr. Jordan regarding the new safety measures. “But what we do know is that when we put those systems into place, we are at least moving in the right direction.”
If you need help or need to talk to someone, call the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
