June 7, 2018 I woke up, brushed my teeth, threw on random clothes and waited for Jake to come pick me up. It was a normal day, we walked into school together laughing and making fun of each other. Deep down I was hoping that today would have been the normal day out of the week that didn’t include any threats. A normal day of no worrying, no threats and no anxiety. I was wrong.
Never in my life have I ever felt so scared. Never in my life have I felt like I was not protected at school, even with police surrounding the campus. Three whole years at MTHS and I have never seen such a poor response by administration to something that affects all of the students and staff in the building.
In my third period class, my teacher was talking to the whole class about the situations occurring at school. The whole class talked about how they felt, this was before students found out about the new rumor. The new rumor was that someone was going to attack the school at 11:20 a.m.
When I first found out, I was sitting in my choir class and I instantly thought about not only my life, but my boyfriend’s life, as well as the lives of everyone in the building.
What shocked me the most was administrators saying this rumor was caused by students, although I heard that a person called the anonymous school tip line saying they’d come attack the school.
I don’t understand why administration would phrase it in such a way to make it seem like us as students, students who were crying, calling their parents saying they love them and their loved ones, blame us, US, to be the ones to spread this.
The majority of students that I talked to after the event agreed with me that they did not hear about this rumor until teachers mentioned it. Something has to be missing that we do not know and it’s driving my brain crazy. I want to know the real hard truth behind this situation.
The line by the attendance office to leave school was incredibly long, filled with students rushing to leave before and after the lockdown. I went upstairs to see the line and I noticed that the majority of kids in the line were not sad, not worried and not freaking out. The students were laughing and joking around with their friends.
The kids who were crying for their life didn’t go home but rather stayed at school through the pain. I was sitting in the Hawkeye room during 6th period that day, I texted my mom asking her to excuse me from 6th period because I needed to calm down. I felt safe in the Hawkeye room, I was around people I spend a majority of my time with.
Although I was still in the building, I was not in class. That day first and second period had an average amount of people and same with my third period class. Then, fourth period, my class kept getting smaller and smaller, and by fifth period there was around one-third of the students in my class. How can we have school when students can’t focus and feel unsafe?
This topic is serious, any kid who jokes about this is not being funny. This can happen at anytime and unfortunately we as students have to think about it. We should not have to worry about someone shooting up the school.
I don’t know what was going through that person’s mind. They could of wanted to get out of school with an unexcused absence. Maybe even put fear into young teenagers who will now, because of all of the mass shootings, be affected by this for the rest of their life.
This event could have been real and the thought that so many students did not care made me very disappointed. You are risking your life and others around you yet you so carelessly were yelling in classrooms thinking it’s funny. I don’t care if that’s because they didn’t know how to react but risking other people’s lives is not funny and needs to be taken seriously.
I was sitting in my choir teacher’s office, as I mentioned earlier, and I was about to bawl my eyes out. This is not a way to live throughout high school. There should never be a fear of being shot by another student.
The most disappointing part was how administration decided to handle the situation. You have people in the school who are bawling their eyes out and they handled it so poorly. The students were not well prepared and there were only one or two lockdown drills. The only problem with the drills is no one takes them seriously.
This generation is careless, the majority of students don’t care about other students. They bully them indirectly, talk crap behind other people’s backs, backstab their friends, but those people believe they should be treated respectfully.
I know there are people in this school who don’t feel like their voice is heard, not only by other students but by administration. I have no one to blame for this, but I think that this event made students uncomfortable.
June 8, 2018 the school held a community forum, where they did confirm that this was only a rumor and not a phone call. We found out that it was spread by someone who used to go to our school but currently lives in California.
I believe that students want to see results with what happens to this kids who threatened our school. I understand the school said they can’t punish or do anything to show results to this kid, but in order to effectively comfort concerned students and families, administration needs to take further action.
