Five Students Arrested In Warren Schools For Making Threats

Five students arrested in the Warren County School opens up a larger conversation about the consequences of our words.

That’s according to School Director Grant Swallows. He said the school system and law enforcement take threats seriously and want students to as well.

“We feel like as a school system our job is to educate our students, our community, our families about the importance of what words are being used and what’s being said and how we’re treating each out,” Swallows said. “While I would like to not be dealing with this, we’re taking this as an opportunity to teach our kids about the importance of that.”

Swallows said this can also apply to how adults speak to each other online. He said it’s important for everyone to work together as a community to ensure the safety of every person.

Swallows said these kinds of incidents are not unique to this school system. In Warren County’s situation, Swallows said investigations found these instances were not limited to just one grade level. He said that in his opinion the events snowballed from one to the other.

“Anytime things like this happen, there are repercussions,” Swallows said. “Those thoughts enter people’s heads that someone got on the news for this and I did this, and I think it’s snowball effect more than anything (…) I’ve been in school administration for a while now, and anytime you see something happen, you can almost bet something similar is going to happen in a not-too-distant future.”

Swallows said they’ve been taking time to speak with students directly by going to schools and discussing just how serious the repercussions are for these actions. He said they want to equip students with the tools to be able to deal with conflict without resorting to threatening or violent language and action.