On February 26 at around 11 am., a bomb threat was written inside a boy’s bathroom stall. Soon after the discovery of the threat, administration was notified and students were told to evacuate the building. Contrary to the misinformation being spread around the school, a teacher witnessed the administration immediately calling the police along with a warning sent out directly after the student reported the threat. There were no alarms set off, but a simple intercom announcement telling students to evacuate the building. Originally believing that the evacuation was due to a fire drill or a drug search, many students left their belongings, like laptops, phones, identification, house and car keys in the building overnight.
After the evacuation, students stood in the back parking lot waiting for instructions for as long as ten minutes, where attendance was taken. Once all students arrived at the bus garage, they were first separated by what class they were in, and later, by grade level, causing confusion. Directions were unclear, so no one knew what they were supposed to be doing or what was happening. When interviewed on the evacuation, a senior girl said, “Everyone was kind of all over the place, and if they knew it was gonna be something that was important, they could have told us, ‘Hey bring your bag or your phone or anything important.’” However, protocol states that students can’t grab belongings during an evacuation since everything in the building has become evidence. Since many students were left without their belongings, they couldn’t contact their parents to update them about the situation or drive themselves home. These students were forced to take the bus. “It was scary how routine it felt.” - Senior girl Many students also left coats inside the building and were required to stand in the cold for about 30 minutes until they were able to get into the ESB. Over time, students were filed into the bus garage that was filled with mechanical equipment. The bus garage was extremely crowded, with a couple people pushing and shoving each other around. However, most students were respectful of the area around them. The students would then be sent home on buses or were provided a ride home from a friend who happened to have their car keys with them. Some of the cars providing students with rides were filled to the max, which could be considered dangerous, especially with teen drivers behind the wheel. Some students who did not have their house keys had to make last-minute plans with friends or wait outside their homes for their parents to get home in the winter weather, as was overheard on one of the buses. Some students were asked to reflect on how the evacuation procedure was carried out. A sophomore boy remarked, “[The school] handled it in the best way they saw fit,” but the evacuation procedure could/should have been, as the same boy said, “A lot better.” When a group of senior girls were asked if there was anything specific the school could or should have done to make the situation better for everyone, the almost unanimous response was, “Let us know,” and, “No one was in the loop, and with some us being 18 and adults, we just wish we knew what was going on.” The bomb threat had quite dramatic effects on the school in the wake of the incident. New, more strict bathroom rules were implemented and some students created protest pages on Instagram. The bathrooms are separated by grade, with seniors and juniors only allowed to use upstairs bathrooms and sophomores and freshmen only allowed to use the downstairs ones. However, the single stalls are allowed to be used by any and all grades at any time. Only one person was allowed per bathroom. There was also a new sign-in system with the bathrooms with a faculty member sitting outside the bathroom to check it after each use for vandalism. This poses a new problem: that students have to wait in line for the bathroom, causing them to miss more class time than they would have if multiple people were allowed in the bathroom. There is no clear solution to this problem as of now, as both options pose prominent issues. After interviewing many students and seeing the changes being made for the daily lives of students and faculty, there is no telling how the school will actually change because of the threat. Stay tuned for a follow-up article that will include interviews of administration members about how the school will move forward. Will there be more emergency drills? It is known that many students are being taught violence response drills at a young age. Is that the future of our district in rural Maine? The bathroom monitors for the upstairs bathrooms have since been removed, allowing students to enter freely, which poses the next question: how long until the next threat? - Editorial Staff of The Laker Letter Comments are closed.
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