From the interschool football brawl in September to the January gun incident, our school has had a memorable year when it comes to safety.
These events, plus a new superintendent and ICE raising tensions nationwide, have led to endless conversations about safety, often with student voices excluded.
Many changes have come as a result of conversations, but often what the changes are meant to accomplish is inconsistent and unclear.
One example is the newly implemented parking gates. Mysteriously introduced after winter break, many students were confused about their purpose. When the Voyager staff writer Kima Gossett-Smith reached out to administrators to investigate, they offered no response.
The pattern repeated itself with the random security checks implemented after the gun incident.
The checks’ purpose was clearer than the parking gates’: to reduce the chance of any students with potential contraband or weapons from entering the school.
However, it was implemented with an extremely fast turnaround, the day students returned to classes after the incident, leaving no time to ask for students’ input before they were added. Many students felt they were invasive and were confused how security staff chose who to search.
Regardless of how people felt about the searches, they were gone by the end of the week.
On Jan. 19, superintendent Jennifer Norell released an official statement through ParentSquare stating, “In addition to current security measures and safety plans developed in collaboration with local first responders, the district is implementing new and cutting-edge weapons detection software within the coming weeks. Additional correspondence will be shared with details.”
At least to my knowledge, no additional correspondence explained what measures would be taken to ensure safety besides an audit from the security consulting company Vulnerable Solutions Group.
Students were able to share their thoughts with the group through an email from March 12 to March 19. However, communication around this forum was limited.
Both of these examples illustrate a disconnect in our school’s culture: the disconnect between students’ and adults’ definitions of safety.
Students, who are most affected by the changes adults make are expected to accept and adhere to them quickly and without objection.
Feeling safe at school is a uniquely difficult problem in America, where “13% of high school students did not go to school because they felt unsafe either at school or on their way to or from school at least once during the past 30 days,” according to the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2024.
But when students are left out of conversations deemed ‘too adult,’ it leads to gaps in what adults think is best for students, and what actually makes students feel safer.
Additionally, it reinforces the idea that students’ voices don’t matter just because of their age, even when it comes to issues that directly affect them.
So, I wanted to provide students with an opportunity to share their thoughts, and ask “What does a safe school look like to students?”
ANAYA MOOTRY
Senior/School Board Liaison
“When I was sitting in with the school board [meeting] and the board was describing everything that they were doing, or going over the worries that the student body had as well as the community, they didn’t really address any of the concerns and describe how they were going to fix them. They just said, ‘Oh, that’s not gonna happen.’
I feel like the random checks thing… I don’t think that that would work because you’re not really getting to the root of why people feel like they need to bring [weapons] to school. Checking randomly is not a good way to keep things safe, because you’re not gonna just magically get the person who’s carrying something every single time. I think metal detectors or like a wand or something that would be beneficial.”
JACOB GOLDEN
Junior
“For the most part, the gun incident was a little scary, but I feel that with the new safety features that they put in, the metal detectors, and having more police on campus is making me feel safer. … I feel that it’s a good step forward. I also feel that they could just let the students know that they’re gonna be safe for us more often… I feel that their communication could be a lot faster, but I also understand that it can be difficult.”
HAROLD OWENS
Senior
“Honestly, I do feel like I am more safe. [The school] has a lot more staff that just looks like grown adults. The majority of our school have come together as a community, and every day we just come to school happy. A safe school looks like a happy place. Less negativity.
KENDALL YOUNG
Sophomore
“Majority of the time, yeah, I do feel safe. Those incidents kind of made me feel unsafe, but majority of the time, I do feel safe here. I just wish that there’d be more security guards looking out to see if there’s anything bad happening.”
LEE WATKINS
Junior
“I do still feel safe at the school, only because we did implement new safety measures, especially with the the handheld metal detectors and the, like, gates outside the parking lot… I would implement more good propaganda, like posters to support safety.”
