TW: This article contains sensitive material that may not be suitable for all audiences.
Classrooms were empty and the silence was loud. I walked past the terrified parents lined up outside my school as I was escorted outside by teachers putting my life above their own. Police cars stationed outside, police officers ready to shoot. But let me take you back to the day the threat was made. It was the spring of my junior year of high school when a threat was spread through social media, threatening to slaughter students at our soon approaching spring sports pep rally. Mistakenly, the threats were taken lightly. Yes, the threats were shown to school administrators but even then, they assured us that there was no reason to worry. That is until the morning of the pep rally came and police cars were outside, prepared for the worst. I got the feeling in my gut, the voice in my head telling me to go home but then again- there was no reason to worry. Right?
I walk into my first period class and notice students exchanging looks and fidgeting their pencils, anxious about what is to come. No teachers bothered to teach that day because student’s minds were adrift. Suddenly, by my 2nd class, the classrooms became emptier. Teachers were escorting students outside to their parents so they could go home. When it was my turn to leave, I reached my best friend’s family. “What happened?” I kept asking but no one knew. Despite the tension and confusion, we felt relief being with one another. It was when I arrived home, we were informed that a custodian found guns hidden in a garbage bin which the unnamed shooter intended to use that day. As a woman of faith, I felt as though God placed that custodian at that exact place, at that exact time, with a purpose. Otherwise, we would have faced the same fate as many other schools across the country.
I graduated from high school in 2020 and am now nearing the end of my sophomore year in college. However, nothing has changed. The school did add reinforcements yet this was not enough because several months ago, as my younger brother started his sophomore year at that same highschool, they faced two seperate threats, one after the other, in which he was on lockdown for 6 hours on both occasions. This begs the question, is the youth of America safe if they can’t even be assured security in their own schools? There have been 34 school shootings this year, 24 since August 1. A shooting on Nov. 30, in which a student killed four people and injured seven at an Oxford, Mich., high school, was the deadliest school shooting since May 2018. There have been 92 school shootings since 2018. The COVID-19 pandemic, yet another barrier disrupting our youth, appears to have interrupted the trend line. The definition of school safety has shifted as schooling entered the home in a way it never had before but as students begin to have in-person classes again, we must ask ourselves what approaches can be taken to keep children safe once they return to school. Whether you are a student, parent, or relative, continue to demand policy change on a government level but also in our communities and our schools.