Students were asked Wednesday if they would be surprised if an active shooter incident happened at their school.

Fewer than half raised their hands to say “yes.”

The focus group, made up of high school and college students as well as recent graduates, was part of the fifth annual School Safety Summit at Slippery Rock University.

Regina Hiler, Butler County Vocational-Technical School principal, and Kurt Speicher, executive director, moderated the group.

“It was very eye-opening, and it really makes you think about what needs to be done,” Hiler said.

Hiler said a theme emerged from students' answers as they became more comfortable being in front of a room full of adults. About a dozen students participated in the focus group forum Wednesday.

“It seems like everything boiled down to relationships and communication,” Hiler said. “I don't think students in any school share what's really happening with them.”

Hiler said she could see a lot of traction with that method of talking to students, and she thinks using a focus group format could be a strategy to open dialogue for administrators in their own schools.

“I think actions will be taken back to their schools,” she said. “I think that talks like this also involving the community would be beneficial.”

After the focus group gave their perspectives, Dr. Mark Matta, a psychologist from New Castle, talked about what psychologists and researchers do know about school shooters.

Matta talked about the different kinds of shootings, the mindsets of the shooters and the lack of data on reasons for the shootings.

“Many of (the shooters) come from troubled homes, and I don't want to minimize that in any context,” he said.

Matta said school shootings have occurred since the early days of America — as early as the 1800s. Despite this, he said, some people think Columbine was the first school shooting in the United States.

“Columbine got the most notoriety because it was the new archetypical school shooting,” Matta said.

Matta said media hype also has played into the mindsets of today's students, who believe that shootings happen regularly.

During his presentation Matta showed a quote used in a New York Times article from Paige Curry, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. On Feb. 14, a 19-year-old gunman killed 17 people and wounded 17 others at the school.

“It's been happening everywhere ... I felt — I've always kind of felt like eventually it was going to happen here, too,” Curry said.

Matta said the media has given students this perception to suspect that they could be next.

“The only way Paige Curry thinks that way is because she was fed that information,” Matta said.

Matta said school shootings happen less frequently than people think.

“The positive news is that these events are rare, despite the media perception,” Matta said. “One in 2 million students will die from suicide or homicide each year.”

Matta said he doesn't want to undermine the work that people are doing to stop school shooters.

“I understand that we want that number to be zero,” Matta said.

Investigating mental health puts administrators on the path to safer schools, he said. And from a psychological perspective, the best way to gather information is simply to ask students directly.

“It's better to approach than to not,” he said.

Herbert Hunt, the summit organizer, said every year the event gets more support and more diverse crowds involved in its discussions.

“What we try to do is pick topics that are current,” Hunt said. “We're always concerned about school climate. That's kind of a standard topic we get into.”

Hunt said schools can take the information or talking strategies home to work on their own plans.

“Every school is unique. They need a plan,” Hunt said. “Unfortunately no one has an exact plan for making schools safer.”

He said the summit is a starting point, not an end to finding the solution to school safety.

“What we hope is that this generates ideas,” Hunt said.