On Tuesday, April 16, Findlay High School went into a level 3 lockdown due to a hoax active shooter call. This event was terrifying for both students and teachers, and left many people wondering why we don’t have active shooter drills in the highschool.
“I don’t remember doing any active shooter drills during school at all,” FHS sophomore Sabrina Heldman said.
One thing students have been taught in elementary school is to run, hide, and fight. Those three words outline what students and teachers are supposed to do in the event of an active shooter. Run if possible, hide if needed, and fight if necessary. This is something that schools all across the country have been teaching students, but just knowing the words might not be enough for some students in terms of being prepared.
“I think we should have active shooter drills as often as we have fire drills,” Mckenzie Milam said, “I feel like at this point active shooters are more common than fires anyway.”
On the FBI website, there are videos of Run, Hide, Fight training so that everyone can learn outside of school, or so that schools can show the videos in order to teach students to use these tactics in a necessary situation. But people are still concerned at the lack of training that FHS students have had.
“We are actually planning right now for some upcoming active shooter training drills through safe defend,” FHS Principal Megan Simon says, “I think that it’s a difficult balance of trying not to induce panic and worry people.”
In light of what happened that Tuesday and the panic that followed, the school is hoping to get more training for students, but will more training even help to dissipate panic?
“Many students still have a lot of fear and panic from being at school. The hoax call on April 16 rattled a lot of students and suddenly the idea of having an actual active shooter felt way more real,” Nyla Wolfrom says, “I personally don’t think that having more training will help. I mean, we will have a better idea of what we’re supposed to do in that type of situation, but it won’t really make us any less scared.”
