Parents Fear for Their Children on Campuses

With images of the school massacre in Littleton, Colo., weighing on their minds, nearly half of Orange County parents believe that guns are prevalent on local campuses and fear for the safety of their children, according to a Times Orange County Poll released Monday.

“It could definitely happen anywhere,” said Mickey Tedder, a Buena Park parent with four children in school, including one in high school. “You’ve got to worry about your kids. You go to work every day thinking the safest place for your kids is in school, but now you’ve got to worry about that.”

The poll, a random telephone survey of 500 Orange County parents with children 18 or younger, was conducted Thursday through Sunday, just days after the bloody shooting spree April 20 at Columbine High School that left 14 students and a teacher dead.

According to the poll, 49% of the parents said they believe guns are “very” or “somewhat” prevalent on Orange County campuses, and 50% said they fear for the safety of their children.

“That’s a lot of people who are worried, especially in a county that has sometimes felt immune from these kinds of events,” said Cheryl Katz, vice president of Baldassare Associates, which conducted the poll for The Times Orange County.

“I found the numbers on the prevalence of guns in Orange County schools to be quite shocking--that nearly half of the parents think that guns are present is very chilling. I would say that the school violence issue has hit home in Orange County, just as it has throughout the nation.”

According to a national Gallup Poll conducted the day after the Colorado massacre, 55% of the parents surveyed fear for the safety of their school-age children.

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In Orange County, school officials recently reported that guns were involved in 128 campus crimes over the last three years--from a Capistrano Unified School District elementary school student who threatened a classmate with a loaded revolver to an Irvine high school student who stashed a .25-caliber pistol in his locker with his marijuana.

So far, the county has been spared the campus bloodshed visited on some other communities; few of the Orange County cases involved guns actually being fired, and many of the assaults happened after school hours.

Last November, however, a 17-year-old boy walking home from El Modena High School in Orange was shot to death by other students with whom he had quarreled. Parents involved in the recent poll say they fear that such violence could spread.

“My son has seen knives at high school and heard about threats of guns,” Tedder said. “I’ve told him to avoid eye contact with somebody who’s trying to start something--the best thing to do is walk away but have eyes in the back of your head.”

Nancy Lynn of Anaheim said that she urges her 15-year-old son to stay out of fights.

“You walk with people you know, and you just walk straight home,” she said she tells him. “You don’t start fights because you never know what someone’s got on them. People are so volatile and react so fast. Everybody is just so uptight and upset all the time, you don’t want to tick somebody off.”

Debra Madosky, a Laguna Niguel mother of three, said she regularly drives her 15-year-old daughter home from school and plans to enroll her in a self-defense class this summer. “I pick her up every day just to make sure that she gets home,” Madosky said. “It’s a nightmare--I don’t like worrying.”

The parents blame campus violence on various factors, from cliques on campus to abrogation of parental responsibility by baby boomers who grew up as part of the “do your own thing” generation.

“There are no more morals and no more values,” Madosky said. “The people who grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s are the parents of today. I think they have a lot of explaining to do about the next generation.”

One point on which many parents agree is that the complacency of past years is gone.

“This is an issue in which affluence doesn’t protect you and being suburban doesn’t protect you,” Katz of Baldassare Associates said. “Campus violence is such a random and unpredictable event that it strikes fear into the hearts of parents everywhere.”

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Weapons, Worries

Half of Orange County parents think guns are at least somewhat prevalent in Orange County schools. And half are at least somewhat fearful for their children’s safety in local schools. That fear is a more pronounced in North County than in South.

Do you think guns are very prevalent, somewhat prevalent or not too prevalent in Orange County Schools?

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Very/ Not Don’t somewhat too know Total 49% 38% 13% Men 43% 44% 13% Women 54% 32% 14%

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Do you fear for your child’s safety in Orange County schools?

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Fear a lot/ Don’t somewhat fear Total 50% 50% Men 45% 55% Women 55% 45% North 53% 47% South 44% 56%

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Source: Times Orange County Poll

How the Poll Was Conducted

The Times Orange County Poll was conducted by Baldassare Associates. The random telephone survey of 500 Orange County parents with children 18 and younger was done April 22 to 25. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.5%.