In recent years schools have found themselves in an uncomfortable situation as threats become commonplace to the point where anxiety about safety runs high daily.

According to the Los Angeles Times, there have been 186 school shooting since the Sandy Hook Shooting in 2012. However, according to the Daily Dot just this year alone there have been 91 mass shootings in 2017 in the U.S. However, there have been countless fake threats across America.

These incidents have left administrators and students on edge, on a slim chance that the threat is legitimate. While this response is extremely justified to protect lives on campus, some students are taking this chance as a means to play a joke or shut down regular classes by making false threats on social media or other means.

It’s hard to understand why someone would make a false threat targeting a school, perhaps has a way to cope with the situation or maybe out of immaturity or attention seeking. All across the country you can see examples of more and more students breaking from poor mental health and a system that fails them. Meanwhile, students continue to make these jokes to be funny or edgy.

But violence on campuses is no laughing matter. Just this month at the University of Texas at Austin, there was a knife attack by a student on other students, that left one dead and three wounded.

And while there are real, actual threats happening at other schools, we have dealt with students making jokes about killer clowns visiting Akins, which led some students to not to come to school.

Those who continue to make these false threats make a serious situation into a laughing matter and this dangerous habit cannot continue.