Feb. 14 marked the two year anniversary of the Parkland School Shooting. And ever since then, students at West High have had many concerns about whether it could or could not happen to us. Specifically at West High, there seems to be a low level of safety, other than the new lock features on main doors, and what’s dangerous about that is that some fail to work, with their locks not working, which leaves the school easier to get into for intruders. There’s little talk of how to stay safe and improve safety at West High. Through interviews and polls, many will answer how to change this. It’s obvious we need to talk about safety in regards to school shootings here at West High more often, because of the fact that we don’t already. In a poll I took on Instagram asking “Do you think schools should talk more about school shootings and how to stay safe?”, 90% of people answered “yes”. That means 173 out of the 193 people who answered think teachers should talk more about school shootings and safety. Over the last decade, we’ve had over 180 school shootings, which means the number of those injured and killed is extremely high. So what can we do, and why haven’t we done it? Our students don’t get to experience the talk of safety and don’t understand how to help if a dangerous situation occurred. Alyssa Skala ‘21 has strong feelings about this subject. “Our school doesn’t take as many security precautions as other schools have, we need to be taking more because with recent things that are happening all around the world, we need to be more prepared.” Coming from a student’s perspective, schools in the ICCSD including West High could do more to prevent shootings to occur like the major one at
Parkland. I also asked a question on Instagram, “What do you think schools could do to improve safety?” The answers range widely, from “Observing students more”, to “Walkthrough metal detectors when people walk in schools”, but in general, it has remained unclear to students why West High hasn’t done more to improve safety, which I also wonder about. West has even had a student bring in a bb gun into school, which scares people even more and worries those about what could happen, but they still don’t do much to ensure safety. Even considering what’s happened in the past. Currently, we only have locks at the front doors that you can open with a key fob or by pressing a button, for the main office to then unlock from the inside. The students simply show their ID to the camera on the button, and it’s then unlocked. This is the only safety “precaution” West High has done. The one thing that is clear though, is that students remain to feel unsafe. Gabrielle Burns ‘23 is one of the many students at West High that continues to feel somewhat safe, but also unsafe. For her, it changes. “I feel safe at school most of the time, I don’t though when I’m in choir and in the temps because those feel really
accessible to a possible shooter. I feel like kids need to know how to protect themselves with classroom objects, and take drills and practices seriously.” Just two years ago, the Parkland Shooting in Florida occurred. Sam Nester ‘21 is a student that does feel safe at school but strongly feels that West High should take more steps for safety. Ever since the Parkland Shooting in 2018, Sam has felt, “as if schools weren’t as safe as they used to be and it scared me a bit.” This seems to be the way all students feel, they’re scared because it was fairly recent, but since they’ve had time to get used to this worry it seems to go away. What comes with these school shootings and danger is fear. That tends to be a lot of what students feel. They fear the outcomes, they fear having low security because they worry about what can happen. West High lacks safety that we could possibly have. So the question is, why don’t we have it? That seems to be the most confusing aspect of these situations. Students have done walk-outs and done protests on their own time, but why doesn’t West High do more to add safety? We need change, not just for the safety of the students, but for all the staff members as well. Other schools around the world have installed mechanisms like metal “ I FE E L LI KE KI DS N E E D safety detectors already. By adding small things like a hall monitor or even TO KNOW HOW TO adding safety drills we could easily PROTECT TH E M SE LVES, make West High safer. Adding similar things like this could help ease our way up to a higher level AN D TAKE DR I LLS of safety at West High. We can’t have yet another shooting happen SE R IOUSLY ” in the world, especially if it’s here GABREI LLE BU RNS ‘23 at school.
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OPINION MARCH 23, 2020