There have been many school shootings in the United States over the years. Most recently, the Apalachee High School shooting occurred in Georgia on Sept. 4. The result of the shooting left four dead and many more injured.
Shortly after, Warren Central High School received a school shooting threat of its own during the week of Sept. 9. The suspect created an Instagram account to announce they were going to open fire in the hallways. Since then, the perpetrator has been arrested and taken into custody.
As a newspaper staff, we believe that these threats to our school are concerning for a number of reasons. There are issues with the metal detectors, some students and staff do not take the situation seriously, and even the drills students practice for won’t necessarily stop a killer.
First, we worry that the metal detectors aren’t really accurate. We don't have a lot of security compared to other schools, and they aren’t spread out. There are more in one area like the front of the school or by the front office. This is concerning because the shooter could come in through any door without being spotted by security. Many students at Warren do not feel safe. On the day of the threat, the line to get inside the building from the buses was extremely long. The metal detectors do not always seem to detect what they actually need to detect. They start beeping when there actually isn't anything on the person.
“In regards to the metal detectors beeping, it all depends on what they have in their bag,” Principal Masimba Taylor said. “If they walk through and bump it, it might go off. If they walk through and lower their chromebooks then it might go off. It may miss smaller items, but the one thing it’ll never miss is a gun.”
Another issue is that some of the teachers and students take shooting threats and drills as a joke or don’t really care. Some students even said they wished that the threat would've happened.
"It was sad from our perspective seeing our kids joke around about tragedies like these, especially since that tragedy that took place in Georgia,” English teacher Amy Kelley said.
Principal Taylor said she wouldn’t want students to become desensitized when we find out it's not a true threat. She wants the students to still take it seriously.
“We have to continue to communicate and respond to information,” Taylor said. “No news is too little or too small. If something doesn’t feel right, we’d like to know so we can investigate and identify the threat.”
Making a threat about shooting a school full of children of all ages trying to get their education isn’t something to joke about. People who do this are playing with innocent children's lives, and doing so results in getting the police involved and major other consequences. These people are taking away their chances of getting an education and having freedom.
Sophomore Joselyn Cirilo-Ramirez felt like the shooting threat wasn't really something that could happen to Warren Central.
“You usually see this all over the news and not in person,” she said. “It sounds more like a fantasy than in real life, but unfortunately we got one.”
Cirilo-Ramirez said that in order to prevent school shootings from happening, she’d try to keep gun usage under control.
“In my opinion school shootings are so unnecessary,” she said. “You're trying to shoot little kids.”
Senior Daysia Brady, on the other hand, said she is not sure how to prevent these shootings.
“I did not want to come to school after that but I didn't have a choice,” Brady said. “It's not safe and I don't feel safe. There's no reason for school shootings to happen.”
In some cases, they are not random people doing these shootings. They are students that attend the school and know the drills and schedules, and they are bringing their issues with one or a few people to the entire school, whether those issues are from bullying or other conflicts.
School shootings do not just happen for no reason. There has to be a motive for it and a reason why, and there can be ways to stop them. This can include treating others how one would want to be treated. Another way to prevent these issues from happening is by handling differences elsewhere and in a different matter other than violence, potentially hurting people who were never involved in the issue.
Whether it's because of something at home or at school, bringing a gun or any other weapon to a learning environment is not the right way to go about one’s problems.