What would happen if a movie became reality? There are many movies about school shootings, even commercials, but those are just movies and commercials, right? 

Wrong. In 2022 alone there have been 30 school shootings; 58 were injured and 38 were killed. How are students supposed to feel safe when we walk in our school halls knowing that anything could happen, that we can turn into another movie or another statistic? If it happens to someone else, it could happen to us. Adding more cameras and guards isn’t aiding students’ anxiety, so what can? What can the H-F staff do to make us feel safer? 

It’s not about adding more cameras and guards, it’s about paying attention to those coming in and out of the school. Many people can walk in and not get checked by security. Many students, including myself, have come into school late and were able to simply walk to class. If I know I can come into school without being checked, it doesn’t aid in knowing someone else can. With almost 3,000 students in school, there is no possible way each guard knows or at least recognizes all of them. 

Let’s talk about the school shooters themselves, there is no way to ‘detect’ school shooters, but there are noticeable signs and statistics. According to The Behavioral Analysis Unit, 75% of school shooters felt bullied, persecuted, and threatened by others; having this information makes preventing school shootings a bit easier. 

You can’t prevent a school shooting as a whole, but you can prevent or decrease the motives those have to do so. To help us with this, the staff can be more attentive to what happens in school. Along with myself, students have many comments about the safety of our school. Senior Sean Ramos says that he “wished the school paid more attention to our safety instead of things like girls’ shoulders and hoodies.” 

With school shootings being on the rise, everyone is afraid, educators, parents, and students. Students as well as staff members being targets, it’s important for H-F staff to separate their own fear in order to decrease ours. Our new principal, Clinton Alexander, clearly cares about us students and says he thinks we are well advanced in security, adding more guards at posts and following legislative mandates aids in our safety. “We’ve increased the presence of security…and deans assistance.” While that boosts physical security, it does not help to feel secure.  Senior Brooklyn Edwards says the security we have now is just the bare minimum. There’s so much more that can be done. Many of us have been going to H-F all 4 years of high school and still do not feel that clutch of security. 

Being secure is an emotional feeling, maybe there’s nothing the school can do to help, and maybe we’re just apprehensive about what could happen. Then again there could be so much more the school could do, you never know unless you try.