by Houston Hilton
The Goddard USD 265 administration recently discussed the issue of school lockdown drills –drills that are to be run periodically, just as with fire and tornado drills, but are designed to keep students safe from intruders with a violent disposition. Such drills haven’t been performed for more than a startling five years – as such in-school violence at Goddard High School is minimal when compared to that of other schools - such as Wichita East High School. However, because of the relatively recent incident in Newtown, Connecticut, which involved a gunman murdering multiple elementary students, new controversy has spurred discussion on the subject at GHS. Such popular discussion involved making it mandatory for having recurring school lockdown drills – just as with the fire drills.
It’s a pretty hot topic right now, one could agree, based on the recent incidents of school violence that have occurred in the past three months alone. But are these additional school security efforts necessary to be put into GHS.
The extra efforts are futile in prevention of such a potential tragedy. Thus, it is not really necessary to have a school lockdown drill. An event as likely as a dangerous person entering the grounds of GHS is just as likely as an asteroid landing right on the campus and killing all in the area – obviously it is very unlikely. This tragedy has occurred once in this school district’s history1, but the district has been in existence for over 100 years - so something like that would be bound to happen after a whole century.
The only importance of this drill is to give the student body “something to do” to make it seem like their efforts have a point – like when children were advised to duck down by a wall during the nuclear holocaust crisis in the 1950’s.
