A Michigan school district has banned students from carrying backpacks | Hacker News Reader

A Michigan school district has banned students from carrying backpacks

npr.org

28 pointssegasaturn24 comments

A lot of people don't seem to understand the message these policies make. This district has now made it clear to students that they are not trusted by default. I graduated high school ~6 years ago, active shooter drills occurred twice a year. It always felt like being numbed to the violence, forced to picture traumatic violence in my head over and over again.

There's a term for that feeling you get when you start casually scheming up ways to sneak through TSA security -- reactance. It's a psychological effect in which being ordered to do something can make you want to do the opposite. Pair that with a developing brain and the notion that your authorities don't trust you, and it can backfire tragically. Someone predisposed to committing violence at their school is now being reminded every day that sneaking a gun into school is a common enough occurrence that they have to use a plastic backpack. And even worse, they are nudged towards thinking about alternative places they could hide a deadly weapon.

That and “insider threat” policies. You can’t have a publicly accessible building also be secure from extremely low probability terrorist attacks.

By principles, it's hard to accept this and similarly oppressive measures. But the schools have to cope with the reality, which is that there is a serious problem with gun violence and that they are not in a position to address it on a societal level.

There has to be a way back. Even with firearms being available and more easily in the (increasingly distant) past, there wasn't a problem to nearly this degree. What has changed? Not asking for navel gazing, there must be legitimate research in the topic by now.

> Not asking for navel gazing, there must be legitimate research in the topic by not.

Too bad federal funding for such research was banned for so long, and until so recently, because research takes time.

Is it really serious or is it media trying to make it look serious? Out of a million randomly selected first graders, how many are going to witness a gunman before they graduate?

Clear and netted bookbags were a thing in Baltimore City public schools over 15 years ago. It was a pain then too. Noone was even checking the bookbags so it was still easy to bring whatever you wanted. We also had to bring gym clothes, so you could easily just wrap it in your gym uniform.

If you think not being allowed to carry backpacks is an oppressive policy (and yeah, you may have a point there), think how it would feel like to watch news of school shooting every month, and still having to go to school every day, while watching grown-ups blaming everything but the prevalence of guns to make it sound normal.

Maybe the next generation of Americans would be finally fed up enough to do something with the gun culture.

It's probably also the mental health [1], less intimacy with their peers (imo reflected in [2] teen sex plummeting), less face time with peers in general in part due to increased homework loads (if you went to school in the 90s, your kid is prob doing 2x the hw you did) [3] which is of dubious effectiveness anyway [4].

I'm not saying it's not the guns. But I am saying that the US is the only developed country with the problem on this scale and it's a probably a far deeper cultural issue than just access to weaponry.

Forcing students to wear clear bags is ridiculous security theatre to the particular detriment of students with needs from (possibly undiagnosed) scoliosis etc. Thank God that there are no winter coats which could easily hide a pistol and several mags or a knife! All this policy achieves is scaring people.

1: https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/04/amer...

2: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2023/04/28/teenag...

3: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/02/20/the-way-u...

4: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/homewo...

So if it is already illegal [1] for anyone under 18 years of age to possess a handgun in Michigan, what laws do you think the next generation are going to pass?

[1] https://www.michigan.gov/dnr/managing-resources/laws/firearm...

Michigan is a cold place. How are they going to prevent kids carrying guns etc in jackets?

Is it that much easier to smuggle a weapon in a bag than a coat?

Fair point. There's apparently a market for transparent winter clothing.

Might sit well with the flamboyant ones.

This is somewhat unreasonable, but it's difficult to argue with its effectiveness even if unpopular and inconvenient.

The high school I attended (Leland of SJUSD) in the mid 90's ripped out all of its lockers in the 70's or 80's. (The lockers were on the exterior of buildings of an open campus.) The legend is that unknown person(s) were placing incendiary explosive devices in them and blowing them up, causing a real safety hazard due to shrapnel caused by the lockers themselves. Supposedly, they couldn't allow the risk of having an explosion during school hours and associated injuries. Therefore, all students had to carry heavy textbooks.

https://www.google.com/maps/search/leland+high+school/@37.21...

> This is somewhat unreasonable, but it's difficult to argue with its effectiveness even if unpopular and inconvenient

Is it?

Its not the first school to adopt such a policy, so if the effectiveness is so clear, where is the data?

Anyone got some local context? The talk about safe spaces and how guns can be disassembled and carried in pockets, which somehow is solved by clear bags makes it all sound like a bad PR campaign against weapon laws.

> how guns can be disassembled and carried in pockets

Perfect is the enemy of good. The point is to create obstacles to hinder the assailant and expose them.

Yes, you can smuggle a handgun into school and assemble it onsite. That involves preparatory steps that, ideally, lead to detection and intervention before execution. It stopped the guy who was caught loading rifles in an Atlantic Station bathroom.

Being a nuisance to aspiring school shooters is preferable to the Columbine kids hauling duffel bags of loaded rifles and ammunition into the school for instant and sustained deployment.

I thought it was (sadly) common now to have metal detectors in schools? That seems like it would be a simpler approach somehow - if your dangerously opaque normal backpack only has textbooks in it, it won't set off the detector?

Maybe in inner city schools; I've never seen them myself.

Apart from the general insanity of the thing, why single out backpacks? Are briefcases ok? Violin cases?

Are all textbooks and materials now electronic? Otherwise it’s going to be a bear schlepping books and notes around without a means to carry them. Even a laptop has a bit of bulk and weight that grows tiring in one’s hand.

My local school district issues all students Chromebooks and all material is now electronic. By law the school district still has to select physical textbooks every few years which they do including going through a review process which involves making sample copies of the proposed textbooks physically available for review by the community, receiving comments from the community and several votes to accept the textbooks. They then don't purchase the physical or electronic versions of the textbooks. Electronic material from other sources is used instead.

Schools have been doing this for decades. Why is this news?

Not all schools. And the question is, SHOULD they be?

> Not all schools.

That continues to be the case.

> And the question is, SHOULD they be?

The conversation doesn't have to be limited to only one topic. There are an unlimited number of things which people can discuss on these forums, and my point is simply that it's odd that this topic would trend when nothing particularly interesting has happened here.

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