Mass Shootings: Schools Lack Security

Still Image via “The Facts About The Florida Mass Murder” Citizen Nikolas Cruz was charged for premeditated murder. Still Image via “The Facts About The Florida Mass Murder”
Citizen Nikolas Cruz was charged for premeditated murder.

By Cassandra Sedler
Staff Writer

Last Wednesday, a mass shooting occurred at a high school in Parkland, Fla.

It took the lives of 17 people, most of whom were young students.

Within the past year, seven school shootings have taken place in the U.S.

An unfathomable circumstance has become far too commonplace for us to simply shrug our shoulders without acting to instigate a change.

The impulsive response to any tragedy relating to armed weapons is gun control, a topic lost in a continuous battle that always ends with the same result: nothing.

When mass casualties took place at concerts, stadiums or other public venues, we enacted an immediate increase in security.

Why don’t we provide the same level of security and safety measures to our schools?

Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old who had been expelled from the high school a year before, was able to walk into the building, fully armed, and carry out the heinous crime with no hindrances.

Conducting regular active shooting drills and going over the procedures of a lockdown are good in practice but are evidently not enough.

In the instance of the shooting in Florida, these safety drills may have also provided the active shooter with a loophole to carry out his attack, as he pulled the fire alarm first to make it more difficult for the school to enforce a lockdown.

Instead of having long-winded conversations about gun control and enforcing new laws, administrators, law enforcement and other local officials should take immediate action to boost the security around school buildings.

We guard high-end office buildings, banks and jewelry stores with an optimal level of security, but fail to provide the equivalent in schools to protect the lives of innocent children.

The high school in Parkland, Florida had only one security officer trained to respond to an active shooter.

However, on the day of the shooting, the single security officer was not even on the premises.

This minimal amount of security is the unfortunate level of preparedness most schools across the country currently have in practice.

Security measures such as having a monitored entrance, metal detectors or armed law enforcement should be present in each school.

Lives have been senselessly lost where children are supposed to feel safe and secure.

It is long past due that we stop allowing students and teachers alike to be sitting ducks in classrooms.

Instead, we should do something to prevent such senseless violence.

Email Cassandra at:
csedler@live.esu.edu