Seventeen total students were killed and at least fifteen were injured during a school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida this past Tuesday, the day before Valentines Day.

The suspect was a 19-year-old former student who had been expelled for disciplinary reasons and was not allowed back on the school campus. Sources have proven that the student had been getting treatment at a mental health clinic and had also been showing signs of depression.

The point of the matter isn’t that the intruder was ill, but how the intruding happened in the first place. Is it possible that our schools aren’t safe enough? Are students supposed to go to school each day and not know if they will make it home?

“I do feel safe at Chapman, but I also feel like it’s something that can happen anywhere like what happened in Florida, so I feel like it could possibly happen here to us,” Sophomore Molly Foxworth said when asked if she felt safe at school.

School shootings can happen anywhere. Whether it be Florida or even South Carolina, we should be able to prevent it by preventing intruders. There is no telling how safe Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was at the time.

Steps can be taken to ensure the safety of students and schools. Here at Chapman, our administrators and staff work hard for our safety in school.

“I think it’s terrible, I think it’s a tragedy, I think probably everybody in that Florida school would say the same thing we would say if it happened to us, I never thought it would happen to my school. It’s terrible to know that this is our reality, and we have to face it, but it can be prevented,” Vice Principal Amy Walker said about the Florida shooting.

Our school does everything possible to be prepared. This includes having the doors locked, practicing drills, and training with an armed school resource officer. We practice intruder drills, turning off the lights, and hiding in our classrooms making sure we can not be seen or heard.  

“It’s like a ghost town when we call the drill. It’s amazing that 1000 people can be hidden that quickly when we call that intruder drill. I think we do everything that we can to prevent it,” Walker said.

School shouldn’t carry the weight of trepidation of school shootings. We can count on Chapman High School being prepared and protected from the unknown. Anything is possible, but I feel that we have the luxury of safety during our days at school.