ALICE drills are a kind of safety training used in schools across the country and that WHS participates in every year. The structure of the drill was designed to train both students and teachers in how to handle the dangerous situation of an armed intruder in the school.
The drills were originally created by Greg Crane, a law enforcement officer in Texas, out of the desire for his wife to have a better safety plan in school. After the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado, Crane and his wife, the elementary school principal, worked together to design a method by which students could think more independently in such crises.
Of course, for these drills to be effective, students must have an experience that is at least relatively close to how they would behave if this kind of event actually occurred, including taking the process seriously and thoughtfully. I think that this year’s ALICE drill was not taken seriously and that in the future the mindset of executing ALICE drills should be changed. I wasn’t the only student who felt this way about the first drill this year.
“For this particular drill, I don’t think the students took it seriously in the moment,” said freshman Amy Huang. “I do know that if it were to actually happen, students would take it more seriously. It’s not like they were goofing around, but they were just much more relaxed, [and] it didn’t portray a seriousness.”
During the drill, some classes demonstrated a more laid back approach to the drill as some only partially barricaded, chose to leave their classroom even when the “intruder” was reported to be nearby, or generally had slower movement than what would typically be expected of people in this situation. This may be due to the fact that Weston is an incredibly safe town in which most people would never believe such an event could actually happen.
“People don’t take it as seriously because we’re in a town where we are privileged enough to not have so many concerns about it,” said junior Kirsten Choi.
While Weston is a safe town, the United States is not the safest country when it comes to school-related gun violence. According to a study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, at gao.gov, “suburban and rural” as well as “wealthier” schools “had more school-targeted shootings” with those shootings also being the most fatal. With Weston being more suburban and wealthier, there could still be risk for school shootings. This is why ALICE drills are so important even for a safe town like Weston.
As of November 11, there had been at least 76 school shootings in the past year alone, according to CNN.com. Of these, 24 shootings were on college campuses and 52 on K-12 school grounds, which have left a total of 36 dead and 104 injured.
The data for the past 10 years is even more startling, with a total of 594 school shootings happening in the United States.
Some argue that these kinds of statistics cause some students to stress about the drill, so a more relaxed atmosphere might seem better.
“Sometimes we act silly when we’re anxious or scared because we don’t want to take it seriously [and] we don’t want it to happen,” said English teacher Mike Kelley.
Although there is merit for taking a more lighthearted approach, I believe that ALICE drills are experiences that, in no matter what circumstance, have to be taken seriously. While I understand that some people may react with humor to cope with stress, maintaining a relatively serious tone would help WHS shift the perceptions of ALICE drills as an unimportant event to an efficient and well executed drill.
Even if situations that require this type of training rarely occur, it is still important to be in the right mindset when training for them, especially since the goal of ALICE is to provide safer and logical ways to handle dangerous situations. That doesn’t mean we need to be incredibly serious all the time, but simply that we should not be joking around.
“I feel like it’s really dependent on how you perceive the ALICE drill,” said junior Yohan Pareek. “If you really take it seriously you would obviously have a different perception on what it’s like than someone who thinks it’s just to [let the school] check a box.”
Stress and anxiety is something that ALICE drills are meant to decrease, and these emotions should not be sought out during a drill. It is, however, still inevitable to have a small amount of these emotions if a more serious mindset for ALICE drills is to take place. The more frequency with which ALICE drills happen, and the more generally calm and serious WHS is during them, the less anxiety it will cause for students during drills and especially in the event of an intrusion.
“Having ALICE drills can increase stress on students. I think reading the newspaper and hearing about awful events in schools also increases stress on students,” said assistant principal Todd Whitten. “By doing the drills, we can somewhat normalize the response, [and] will lighten people’s stress of the unknown.”
