When I was in high school, we had a fire alarm, and that was the only alarm. There were millions of guns in America back then and of course we had the Second Amendment — but mass school shootings were virtually unheard of.
The active shooter alarm recently went off at Willard High School [1]in Willard, Mo., near Springfield. “Hard lockdown — this is not a drill! Hard lockdown — this is not a drill!” repeated over the school PA system, sending students and teachers into complete chaos.
Sixteen-year-old Willard junior Raelyn Schapeler described the experience: “The school has false alarms of different kinds all the time. This time the teachers took it a lot more seriously, but instead of following any sort of organized protocol, they started yelling and freaking out. Everyone was in a total panic. Kids were banging on doors and trying to get into rooms that wouldn’t let them in. Everyone was so scared and panicked, and this feeling continued throughout the day even after the apologies from the office.”
“A hard lockdown shakes people, especially when we see firsthand that our teachers and administrators don’t really have a plan for those kinds of situations,” she said. “If a real intruder had been in our school that day, with kids walking in and out of the building, people running around and teachers falling apart, someone would’ve been hurt.”
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The alarm went off before school hours, but Willard has conducted drills only
