On Guard Against School Violence
By Laura Quarantiello ©2004 Tiare Publications Group
 FISTS
TO FIREARMS
To qualify as school violence an incident must happen within a
school building on school grounds (playground, quad area, parking
lot). School, in this case, is defined as an institution for learning
for children from kindergarten to 12th grade.
Although colleges and universities are schools most of the students
are adults and violent crimes on adult-level campuses are not included
under the popular definitions of school violence.
Studies and surveys of the subject have traditionally also included
incidents occurring on the way to and from school when they involved
students because threats made at school are often carried out at
these times,
School-based violent victimizations include the following:
Physical attack or fight - The actual and intentional touching
or striking of another person against his or her will, or the intentional
causing of bodily harm to an individual.
Simple assault - An attack or attempted assault without
a weapon resulting in either no injury, minor or undetermined injury
requiring less than two days of hospitalization.
Aggravated assault - An unlawful attack by one person upon
another when the offender uses a weapon or displays it in a threatening
manner, or the victim suffers obvious severe or aggravated bodily
injury involving apparent broken bones, loss of teeth, possible
internal injury, severe lacerations or loss of consciousness.
Sexual assault - Covers a wide range of victimization, separate
from rape or attempted rape. These crimes include attacks or attempted
attacks generally involving unwanted sexual contact between victim
and offender. Sexual assault may or may not involve force and includes
such things as grabbing or fondling. Sexual assault also includes
verbal threats.
Forcible rape - The carnal knowledge of a person, forcibly
and/or against that person's will or not forcibly or against the
person's will when that person is incapable of giving consent because
of his or her temporary or permanent mental or physical incapacity
or because of his or her youth.
Robbery - The taking or attempting to take anything of value
from the care, custody or control of a person or persons through
force or threat of force or violence and/or making the victim fearful.
Homicide (Murder and non-negligent manslaughter) - The willful
killing of one human being by another.
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