Continued violence on school campuses calls security measures into question

BY DAIMLER KOCH

THE MIRROR ONLINE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

School shootings are nothing new in the U.S. Last year alone, the country experienced 153 shootings across its elementary, middle and high schools. While this number is a decline from 2022’s 240 school shootings, it still represents a disturbing trend.

Though it has never faced an actual shooting, the school has had its fair share of close calls. On Dec. 7, 2022, two teens were stabbed outside of the school on Cedros Avenue.

A couple months later, police arrived at the scene after there was a report of an armed student on campus. This student was later found to be in possession of a toy gun.

In spite of these events, however, senior Nathan Perez believes that, on a daily basis, the school provides adequate security to all of its students and staff. During school hours, counselors are given posts to supervise students from while deans are allowed to roam around.

“The school has helped us a lot security-wise,” Perez said. “The deans and the counselors are around protecting us during nutrition and lunchtime and supervising the area properly.”

In addition, he feels that the school has done fairly well with handling extreme situations in the past. But he also questions whether the school has enough security on hand to deal with more extreme situations.

“They told everybody that day, ‘Quickly, we’re on lockdown, move into a class, there’s a gun threat,’” Perez said, recalling that day. “They rallied us up real quick in a safe and orderly manner. But I also think about whether they would be able to handle it in a situation like that quickly enough to control an actual gunman.”

Campus aide Carlos Araujo was one of the people helping students into classrooms on the day of the toy gun incident. He pointed out that his role as an aide is severely limited in curtailing violent situations. Aides like him can physically step in between a threat, but cannot touch them. However, if a student is acting suspiciously, aides can take the student in for questioning by the dean.

“There was a fight a couple of days back,” Araujo said. “We weren’t really sure what to do, because we had one side telling us we had to separate the students but then on the other hand, there’s people telling us we can’t touch the students. So in situations like that, what do I do? You don’t want to get