Dear Editor:

As a Boothbay Region High School junior who has completed three years of education at BRHS, I have not once been through a “lockdown” drill. Living in our Boothbay Harbor bubble, I often hear statements regarding this topic like “well, we don’t really have to worry about it” and “things like that don’t happen here." Well, now they do.

Just 3 months ago, there was a shooting less than three miles from the high school. We can no longer use the excuse of “things like that don’t happen here,” because they do. In the world we live in today, we should be educating students in our school on what to do in the case of a threat to our school. 

In the Boothbay CSD Schools Policies under Emergency Evacuations SubSection: EBCB, it states that “Each school will hold at least one lockdown drill during the school year. A lockdown drill should be held during the first two weeks to familiarize students with the procedure.” We need to be following this policy, or amending it.

87.5% of BRHS students who filled out my survey say that they do not know where to go in case of a lockdown, and 81.3% of students say they feel they have not been properly instructed in what to do in case of a lockdown. Those statistics are shocking and should not be as astronomically high as they are.

While administration/school security may believe that pursuing lockdown drills may cause anxieties within the student body, 92.9% of students surveyed feel as though we should be doing lockdowns more frequently.

When asked if we should do lockdowns more frequently, two anonymous students said “yes I don’t wanna die” and “Yes – Daily, I am worried something will happen and I won’t know what to do, or even where to go.”

Although a common argument from the other side is “if the shooter is from our school, they will know our plan,” none of us truly know what we would do in the moment, and every situation is different. I believe each classroom should still be educated on what to do in these situations. Teachers should at least be having a conversation with their students, so students can have somewhat of an idea on what to do. If not drills, there should at the very least be discussion.

Ariel Alamo

BRHS rising senior