...and Just Plain Stupid

My son informed me Tuesday afternoon that the bulk of his school day had been canceled because someone called in a bomb threat at Grand Junction High School.

It sounded to me that the District and local law enforcement applied a greater sense of urgency to this latest scare, perhaps because it was actually called into the 9-1-1 center, instead of the school itself.

This happens frequently in lots of schools around the country. That's not to say these threats shouldn't be taken seriously, and the school did the right thing by responding the way they did.

I hope that they track down the idiot that did this, and I think the possibility exists that the perpetrator may not be a student. One back story to this that was reported but not expanded upon was that a 'media event' was scheduled for about the same time as the suspect stated the bomb would go off. This 'event' was a ribbon cutting and dedication for upgrades to the school's existing track and field facilities.

The project was part of an agreement between District 51 and Mesa State to accommodate the women's track team while also providing enhanced facilities for District 51 students. Mesa paid for the work on District 51's land, perhaps as an offset to District 51's contribution toward the new soccer facility last year. On the surface this sounds like a win-win proposition in resource sharing, but there are many in the community who reacted negatively.

Hopefully not negatively enough to engage in an ill-conceived, essentially juvenile action that put hundreds of students at increased risk just by the action of having to move them into designated locations in the evacuation plan. This includes my boy, and while he's pretty good at taking care of himself, I join many parents, administrators and public safety officials who are not amused.

If the jerk du jour is a student, you did your thing one day early to obtain an extended Thanksgiving break. This lends a little more credence to the possibility that someone with a more sinister motive is behind this, in this case disrupt the dedication of the new track facility. Besides, I don't know that many teenagers who are crazy or stupid enough to call a threat into the police department.

Either way it was a stupid move that put people at unnecessary risk and made the job of our educators just that much harder.