Lucy Gellman Photos
Pundits Ugly (left) & Rawls-Ivy.
The detention of an African Muslim 14-year-old student who brought a homemade alarm clock to school in Irving, Texas, sparked a New Haven debate on metal detector.
The question involved how far schools need to go to keep students safe.
Panelists Babz Rawls-Ivy, managing editor of the Inner City News and host of WNHH’s “LoveBabz” program, and Ugly Radio’s Joe Ugly agreed that the detention and two-day suspension of Irving, Texas, student Ahmed Mohammed had nothing to do with keeping students safe. It had to do with anti-black, anti-Muslim prejudice, period.
They differed, however, over how far schools should go if they genuinely want to prevent violence in their halls. Specifically, they differed over the use of metal detectors at large public high schools like Wilbur Cross.
Rawls-Ivy said requiring students to pass through the detectors every morning makes school feel like jail. That’s why she sent her kids to a smaller high school without detectors, she said.
She called metal detectors “a band-aid to the real problem”
Ugly countered that “we can’t ignore” the widespread easy access to guns. “The weapons are there. We can’t [just] hope for the best.”
Ugly was a WIlbur Cross student, and in the building, back in 1979 when a student shot a teacher to death. He said there was no need to institute weapons-screening at the time because that was an “isolated” event; it was still difficult in those days to obtain a gun. Not so anymore.
The debate took off from there, and kept going. Click on the above sound file to hear it; the deate on metal detectors starts at 25:40.
Paul Bass PHoto
The program began with a discussion of this week’s GOP presidential candidates’ debate, with “Jason the Greek” — Democratic political consultant Jason Paul (pictured), one of Connecticut’s most incisive numbers-crunchers — analyzing the fallout from the debate. Then Rawls-Ivy and Ugly looked at Donald Trump’s latest anti-Muslim furor, which led into the discussion on school security.
Click here to read Jason Paul’s five takeaways from the debate.
I was a teacher at Cross when the detectors went in and I hated them. For all the reasons mentioned in the article. But the fact remains that in addition to Tony Annunziata's murder, there were four shootings inside the school in the years leading up to the metal detectors' installation (early 90s) and none since. Correlation does not equal causation and there've been LOTS of changes outside the school since (RICCO prosecutions of gang members, the rise fall and rise of community based policing along with the advent of school resource officers, the clearing and renovation of Q Terrace and Eastern Circle, evolving sophistication of the school security department and improved training of staff (sadly mostly in reaction to tragedies elsewhere). But here's the thing....you gonna gamble with kids lives? We live in the world and times we live in. The detectors need to stay.