According to The Guardian, a news article website, since January 1st, 2018 there have been a total of eight school shootings which resulted in injury or death in the U.S.

Whenever I hear of situations such as the one that took place in Parkland, FL, the question that pops up in my mind is, “Are the correct precautions being met to ensure the safety of the student body and faculty members in the building?”

A few months ago Hillcrest High School received a threat that alarmed many students. The threat was posted on Facebook, and it read “I’m going to ****** kill everyone in hillcrest tomorrow.”

The next day many students were absent from school; I, for one, was afraid and had actual fear for my life. The administration at Hillcrest responded to the unsettling post that same night by sending out a robo-call saying that school would be in session the following day and that there would be an increased police presence to “ensure our safety.” I don’t know for sure because I didn’t attend school that day, but this “increased police presence” seemed to have drifted off as the days progressed on. And from then there seems to be no change as far as the safety of the students is concerned. The concerns of many parents and students seemed to have gone unrecognized.

This, along with the plenty of times people who don’t even attend Hillcrest have made their way into the building without even being noticed, allows reason for us to be concerned about our safety in school.

Just a couple weeks ago there was a carjacking, at gunpoint, here. After this happened, although it’s always been a requirement that students had to have their ID’s on them at all times, began to be enforced (although it should have been enforced in the first place). It should also be enforced that students are required to wear their ID’s throughout the school day.

Hillcrest, if you want our safety to be ensured how about we start with our security guards making sure that in the mornings when the first period buses are arriving, and students are coming in through lower orange, we have security stationed in both areas, and make sure that the people coming in the building are the people who are actually supposed to be in the building.

Swiping our ID’s to get in lunch and the IMC to be accounted for is good, sure, but what are we doing to ensure our safety overall? What is being done to make sure a threat like the one we received never becomes a reality, or to make sure that being robbed at gunpoint is something that never has to happen to anyone on this campus again?

So again, I’ll ask you, are the correct precautions being met to ensure the safety of everyone in the building at all times?