Created in the fall of 1993, the North Carolina Center for the Prevention of School Violence has pursued its original charge of serving as the State's primary agency for dealing with school violence. The Center has been instrumental in promoting S.A.V.E. (Students Against Violence Everywhere) as representative of a student-initiated and student-directed approach to addressing the problem of school violence. Research to date has shown that the most successful programs are those that empower students by enabling them to take part in making their schools safer. This effort is one part of the Center's Safe Schools Pyramid. A second component of the Pyramid is the School Resource Officer Program. SRO's are law enforcement officers who work full time in the schools. They fulfill the roles of law enforcement officer, law- related counselor, and law-related teacher. At this time the Governor's Crime Commission efforts at applying a "tiered approach" to school violence by focusing on two of the strategies in the school violence initiative appear to be having a positive effect. 9 figures