This week, Green River High School’s theater students are performing a play titled “Lockdown,” about a group of students facing a lockdown situation at their school as an entry into the state theater competition.
The play features a group of students locked in a classroom with a teacher as the group tries to determine if the lockdown is a drill or a real event and how they should respond to it. Tensions mount as the students and teacher cope with the situation in their own ways, many of whom try and fail to hide the fact they’re scared.
This comes one week after a school shooting in Michigan left four students dead. A TikTok video filmed by a student showed students grapple with letting someone identifying themselves as a sheriff’s deputy into the classroom. The students fled the room after the man used the word “bro” when talking to the students from behind the door. The sheriff’s office later issued a statement confirming the man was in fact a plainclothes deputy.
Green River High School isn’t immune from the threat of violence, as administrators dealt with an incident last week regarding a threat made by a student. While the exact nature of the threat hasn’t been released by the district, considering the fact the Green River Police Department became involved would lead me to believe it was something that greatly concerned the district.
School shootings are a uniquely American experience that somehow have gotten normalized in our culture. New schools are being designed with natural cover built into the floor plans while taking other security cues seen in prisons to keep children safe. Lockdown drills are hosted at schools throughout the nation, prepping children for the possibility of a gunman entering their school. Much of this is being met with a collective shrug that says, “This is the way things are.”
Yet, why do they have to be this way? Admittedly, there is a lot more to the issue than I can dive into for the few hundred words on this page. But, I have to wonder what the longterm psychological impacts of learning in such an environment are. Is all of it taken in stride as if it’s no big deal? Does the concern of a school shooting inhabit the back of the mind? Do students imagine what they would do in that kind of situation?
The answer definitely varies from student to student.
The other end of the equation is access to firearms. Owning a firearm of any type is a right that carries a tremendous amount of responsibility with it and there are people for whom that responsibility is too great. Simply put, not everyone should have access to guns. I legitimately think most gun owners are responsible and take ownership of firearms very seriously and that the few who don’t act responsibly are the people making everyone else look bad.
Is there a solution that would make everyone happy? Not at all. Yet, it might be time to investigate doing something different because it takes a uniquely apathetic philosophy to simply shrug our collective shoulders every time an armed person enters a school with evil in their minds.
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