In the wake of recent shootings at high schools throughout the country, Ames Community Schools will be hosting a forum on school violence tonight at 6.

The public forum will feature a panel of people with various roles in the Ames Public School District, Iowa State, the Ames Police Department and Mary Greeley Medical Center. It will be held in the Ames High School Gymnasium, 1921 Ames High Drive.

They will each “share their perspective [on school violence] from their role in the community,” said LaDona Rowings, panel member and president of the Ames Community School Board.

“The forum is an opportunity for people to express concerns in a public way,” she said. “This is part of being proactive instead of reactive to issues of this sort.”

In addition to a five-minute presentation by each person on the panel, the forum will allow audience members to express their views, Rowings said.

“Probably the No. 1 purpose is for us to listen to the community and listen to what things they draw to our attention and want us to address,” she said.

Panel chairman W. Ray Richardson also said it is important to provide citizens with the opportunity to discuss issues relating to school violence.

“We want to make sure that we’re allowing this community to express itself regarding us being a safe community and a safe school district,” said Richardson, deputy superintendent of Ames Community Schools.

The two main topics the panel will address are prevention and crisis procedures, he said.

“We want to make sure we’re looking at all the issues before something happened, and if it did happen, what we would do, how we could handle it,” he said. “We want to eliminate confusion.”

Richardson said he does not know if acts of violence comparable to the recent shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., could happen in Ames.

“I think the issue of Littleton has shown us that this has happened anywhere,” he said. “I don’t have the crystal ball to say when and where, and if it could [happen in Ames]. We want to take the initiative to prevent it.”

Ames Police Chief Dennis Ballantine, who also will be a panel member, said he plans to address police departments’ roles in these kinds of crisis situations.

“Clearly we need to talk about, from the police perspective, what kind of things we can do to prevent problems before they reach that level,” Ballantine said.

He said the shooting in Littleton has brought the idea of school violence closer to home.

“Everywhere something like that happens, we think, ‘Hey, that couldn’t happen here,’ but now we know it could happen anywhere, even Ames, Iowa,” Ballantine said.

Rowings said although there have been several acts of school violence in the news lately, the forum was scheduled after the Littleton shooting because it has made the largest impact on the public.

“The Littleton incident seems to have really caught the attention and the conscience of all of America,” she said.