The primary purpose of attending school is to become enlightened by educational knowledge in a safe learning environment. However, the presence of school shootings prevents many students from attaining this knowledge safely and effectively. According to CNN, school shootings have recently begun to exponentially increase, taking lives away from countless innocent children and faculty.
Besides students acquiring weapons in the first place, many factors can directly contribute to school shootings. GA must take these factors into account to prevent any violence that may happen on our campus.
One of these factors is a lack of a strong security team. School security departments are often evaluated to assess safety and prevention of potential school shootings. From a conversation with Mr. Greg Keenan, Director of Security, I have deduced that the GA security Department is being proactive about preventing this type of violence on our campus due to its robust and up-to-date protocols.
“We constantly evaluate our procedures and training as far as how we look at security as a whole: we take a holistic approach to security,” Mr. Keenan said. “We employ a multi-tier approach: things you see and things you may not see. These include having security officers at doors, a reduction of entry doors that students are allowed to use, wearing of ID badges, and looking at our camera systems and weapon detection system. Not one thing is the solution to school shootings.”
The department’s most recent addition was ZeroEyes, a weapon detection system that runs in the background of all cameras. The system includes software that immediately notifies the department and law enforcement when an unauthorized weapon is identified on campus.
“We also get live video, picture and location of the individual with the weapon,” Mr. Keenan said. “It was added during our ongoing assessment of our capabilities and how we can best protect our students. We are one of the very few schools in the area that employ this resource.”
This system will be crucial in not only the event of an active shooter but also in preventing an individual from causing gun violence in the first place by potentially detecting the weapon sooner.
In response to national school shootings, the security department makes sure they receive information in an objective and unbiased manner to decide on the best course of action for GA.
“We look at factual reports that come out, such as FBI and law enforcement reports, causations and motivations, and where some facilities lack in protection recommendations,” Mr. Keenan said. “Based on this, we move forward with any changes and how they fit into our culture here.”
Receiving information in this manner is crucial to keep potential security improvement at the center of attention. Disregarding the political aspects of media when doing this will very much help.
Students seem to feel safe in school and trust the security department’s precautions.
“I feel pretty safe because GA takes security pretty seriously,” said Ansh Kakadia ’24.
“I feel very safe at school: the GA security guards are very attentive to making sure me and my friends are safe,” Barrie Davis ’25 said. “While really enforcing everyone to wear keycards may be extreme, it does make me feel safe.”
While providing physical safety protection is vital to good quality security, it is also important to balance this with ensuring that our school promotes a welcoming learning culture and environment to prevent mental factors of shootings as well.
According to WRAL News, recent UNC shooter Tailei Qi had expressed concerns of severe mental illness and delusions to the very teacher that he murdered months before the incident.
Furthermore, according to ABC News, more recent Maine gunman Robert Card displayed open signals of the decline of his mental health, which his immediate family members knew about before he committed his shooting.
I believe that these shootings could have been prevented if psychological interventions were put into action. At GA, one important resource we have to help with this factor of mental health is the robust and well-trained counseling department.
“I think it helps a lot, as it gives troubled kids a place to turn to and express their feelings, so if something goes wrong they don’t express themselves in violent and harmful ways,” said Davis.
Another resource we have to address this issue is Safe2Say, a state-mandated app that is used to report suspicious and concerning student behavior to promote student well-being. However, the practicality and real-life application of this tool has, at least above the surface level, not been as prominent as the counseling department.
“I think people treat it as a joke. And if it’s even mentioned, people always joke about it by saying things like ‘Oh, don’t Safe2Say me’ or ‘Oh I’m going to Safe2Say you’,” Davis said, “I don’t think people actually use it, even though it is a useful thing that people should actually use…Some people can be immature.”
However, it may very well be that this tool is effective behind the scenes of what students are exposed to.
“I haven’t heard of a time where it has been used to prevent a school shooting, but that’s kind of the point: it’s anonymous. I would be less likely to hear about a report,” Kakadia said.
While ensuring that both physical and mental precautions are made to promote a safe and welcoming learning environment will be constantly improved upon, the GA Security Department certainly provides a vigorous prevention mechanism for school shootings and other potential events that may threaten the safety of the Academy.“
“No other school in our area has a security department with as many employees dedicated to our campus as GA does,” Mr. Keenan said. “The trustees and administration have truly made the security of our community a priority by committing numerous resources.”
Sources:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/22/us/school-shootings-fast-facts-dg/index.html
https://www.wral.com/story/unc-shooting-suspects-mental-capacity-in-question/21055744/