Better safe than sorry

Are you safe at school?

Isabella Kreticos, Lindsey Laudenslager

Issues regarding safety have been arising here at Triton High School. With all the recent past shootings, do Triton students feel safe? Is Triton prepared if an unfortunate event were to happen? These questions were brought up in the safety assembly.

   Students met in the auditorium on the 21st of March to talk about school safety and lockdown procedures with officer John. R. Lucey lll and Sargent Stephen Jenkins.

      “I think it was good to go over all the safety procedures, especially to ensure that everyone knows what to do. I feel safe at this school, the only thing that worries me is how much chaos occurs during any real emergency” said junior Mackenna Faucher.

       During the assembly Lucey and Jenkins talked about some ways to keep safe if anything should happen in the school building. Such as silencing phones and barricading doors. Jenkins brought up the Avoid, Deny, Defend system. You want to try and avoid the situation. If you cannot, deny them access to you, such as locking or barricading the door and if you must, defend yourself any way possible. At the end of the assembly, students were able to ask questions and have Jenkins and Lucey answer them.

“They were prepared to answer the questions asked. I thought it was a little rude when kids started to ask situational questions trying to be funny” said senior Stephen Baiardi.  
According to everytownresearch.org there have been 33 school shootings so far in 2018. The most publicised shooting this year was in Parkland, Florida, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14th. 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder and 17 counts of attempted murder which made this one of the deadliest school massacres. After the Parkland shooting many students here at Triton started to question their safety and the type of lock down procedures that our school had in place.