Low Down on the Lockdown

Malcolm Koers-Hansen, Staff Writer

Our lockdown drill at Edison High School is raising some questions for both the students and teachers. Basically, a lockdown drill just test how well students can handle a lockdown situation without any real danger to make sure that the students are safe when the time comes of a real lockdown. However, different people have different views on the lockdown drills. A good chunk of people feels unsafe during the drills and there is another group of people feel that they are too safe, and they shouldn’t know about the drill because it takes the point out of the drill.  

In some cases, students don’t feel safe during drills. Quite a few people think that the drill, when not notified by an administrator, is scary and invokes chaos across the campus.  

However, some people believe that the school lockdowns should not be announced. For example, Mr. Martens, a math teacher at Edison High School, says that he wishes that lockdowns weren’t announced because it takes the point out of the drill and there is no use to the drills at that point because then kids will just goof off and won’t take it seriously and then when the real deal rolls around, children won’t know what to do. 

Eric Williams, a senior student at Edison High School has a very similar view to Mr. Martens, he doesn’t feel like he’s learning anything from the drills, and it seems useless to announce it.  

All-in-all, lockdowns raise questions as to if they’re worth the efforts because students may not take them seriously, or maybe they are stressed too seriously and it stresses kids out. Hopefully, Edison can have a survey for students and review the benefits of having and notifying people about the drills and the cons of these things as well.