TRAVERSE CITY — Students submitted more than 56,000 tips through the OK2SAY program in the past 10 years, helping to identify, and stop, student violence in schools and at home.
The OK2SAY Student Safety Program Week in Michigan just celebrated the program’s 10-year anniversary.
The program offers students, or anyone else, a way to submit a confidential tip about a safety threat. The tipline is not just for school-focused threats, tips on everything from alcohol and stealing to child abuse and domestic violence are monitored.
“School should be a place where students feel empowered to achieve their full potential in a safe environment,” said Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist in a press release.
The 2023 OK2SAY Annual Report shows the program received the most incident reports last year since its inception in 2014.
The top five cumulative tip categories since the program began have been suicide threats, bullying, drugs, other (anxiety, depression, harassment), and planned school attacks.
Last year, a total of 9,686 tips were made, with the top five categories being bullying (1,769), suicide threats (1,462), drugs (1,286), sexual assault/misconduct/exploitation (815), and threats (741).
Bullying and suicide threat tips broke records last year, but the percentage of tips for these categories is only slightly higher than last year (0.2 percent and 0.7 percent).
Having a confidential way for students to warn authorities of possible violence or abuse may make it easier for them to speak up.
The 2023 report stated that 70 percent of the time, tips investigated by authorities were unknown prior to the tip.
As for school shooting concerns, 76 percent of the threats were from concerning communications or elicited concern from others. A total of 460 tips were received on threats of planned school attacks in 2023.
“Early intervention is crucial to reducing violence and saving lives,” said Col. James F. Grady II, director of the Michigan State Police. “We are immensely proud of the positive impact OK2SAY has made during the last decade.
“We are confident that, through the use of this tool, school violence has been prevented, and resources have been provided to students encountering mental health issues, bullying and substance misuse.”
Trained technicians are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to receive, analyze and disseminate tip information to school officials, community mental health service programs, and/or law enforcement officials.
OK2SAY is housed in the Office of School Safety, which is part of the Michigan State Police Grants and Community Services Division.
Their goal is to deliver services to schools that promote safe and secure learning environments to reduce threats, build trust and improve the quality of life for K-12 students.