From the days of duck and cover to the implementation of our school’s Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate (A.L.I.C.E.) system, safety in schools has evolved. These changes have greatly affected procedures for students and responsibilities of teachers and administration. New rules, new plans, and new drills have taken the traditional shelter-in-place drill to an unprecedented level. But while teachers and faculty are working together to nail down the new system, it seems like students are really just left behind.
With the introduction of A.L.I.C.E., teachers and students are now given permission to leave the building in a lockdown situation if the teacher deems it safe enough to do so. Students, as always, are first and foremost supposed to look to teachers to make smart decisions in an emergency situation.
While students are always encouraged to follow the instruction of their teacher, part of the implications of being able to evacuate is that if a student were to refuse to leave teachers are not supposed to hesitate.
On Sept. 24, teachers and faculty ran through a lockdown drill in which two blank rounds were shot in the school and teachers could evacuate as a part of a simulation of what a lockdown due to a shooter in the school might feel like. Students were not involved in the simulation.
Instead, students participated (and I use that term loosely) in a different lockdown drill, the traditional “remain in your classroom” version, this time, during third period on Oct. 28.
I tried to fathom what making a decision of whether to leave or not leave in this life and death situation would feel like, but it was hard to think over the giggling and chatter of my classmates. Not everyone was as involved as they should have been. Maybe it’s because they don’t take this type of thing seriously, or maybe it’s because they haven’t been given a realistic opportunity to take it seriously.
Students have never once been formally introduced to all the aspects of A.L.I.C.E. or even participated in a drill of the abridged version of school lockdowns.
In fact, I’ve heard so many different interpretations and instructions that I don’t know how anyone has it straight.
As I understand it, administration uses the security cameras to find the shooter while simultaneously announcing on the P.A. system, where the shooter is and where he or she is headed. In the midst of a very demented version of Where’s Waldo, individual teachers are either in their classrooms with students, in transit out of the school with some or all of their students, or evacuated in a dead sprint to somewhere “safe” in the Downers Grove area.
While I’ve embraced A.L.I.C.E with open arms, students should be involved in simulated lockdowns, so we at least know what we are up against. If the school is really looking to act in the best interests of its students, it would consider the implications of what leaving students unprepared could mean in an intruder situation.
Unfortunately, we live in a time when this scenario is not unheard of.
Now, I am not an unreasonable person. I understand that there are some students at our school who are not capable of being a part of a simulation with live gunfire and evacuation. But that should not deny the right of other students to be able to prepare for a situation that could become very real. Perhaps the next late arrival teachers participate in a drill, students could, consent of their parents, participate, too.
Rachel Krusenoski| Editor-in-Chief
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