By Lilia Quevedo, Staff Writer
C.K. McClatchy was under lockdown on Wednesday, February 18th. A McClatchy student posted on a social media site that they were going to bring a gun to school and shoot students. Threats are not taken lightly, especially with the increasing amount of school shootings in the past three years. Someone alerted the school, and the lockdown was initiated during third period. The police arrived shortly and began to inspect the main building, in the end finding no weapon.
Due to the nature of social media, the whole story and numerous other rumors spread like wildfire. Within moments of the announcement that the school was under lockdown, students began to send text messages and Snapchats to each other, asking what was going on. In less than ten minutes, the most popular story of what was going on was that a student in Mr. Ho’s Physics class had been apprehended by the police because they were carrying a gun. They searched the backpacks of all of the kids in his classroom, and then the whole science quad. Whether or not this is true cannot be confirmed, since it is unlikely the administration will reveal any more than we already know.
It is still unclear who was involved or what really happened. “I heard it was a freshman, and he posted something on Twitter, like, he was going to blow up the school.” said Ariana Gomez (‘17). There are some students who believed there were many people involved and that there was a bomb. Sergio Farias (‘16) commented, “I thought that there were multiple students involved, and that some of them were in the D-Wing and others in the main building. That way no one could escape.” In order to respect their privacy, faculty kept the name of the student who was apprehended for threatening the school a secret. The lack of information has created many rumors, even one that the whole thing was a set up.
There were many mixed reactions from students that experienced the lockdown. Joseph Buck (‘15) said, “I was in government during the lockdown. I didn’t really care ‘cause I got to miss class.” Another student, Mark Lantin (‘16), laughed as he said, “Me and my friends just played ‘Halo: Combat Evolved’. We didn’t duck or hide or follow the drill.” There are some kids like Joseph and Mark who weren’t worried about the lockdown. This is probably because all the ones we’ve had have been false alarms or nothing too serious. There are other students, however, that were worried the situation would turn into a shooting. “I was scared because I heard the announcement repeating ‘Take cover! Take cover!’ which is [an announcement] I’ve never heard before,” recalls Grecia Huang (‘16). Thankfully, the school had reviewed and gone over the lockdown and fire drills several days before.
The staff was able to communicate effectively with parents and guardians about the lockdown, so there wouldn’t be any overly-worried adults coming to the school. They left voicemails and sent messages when the lockdown began and ended.
The best thing to remember from this experience is to participate in future drills like they are the real thing. It’s tempting to just go walk with your friends to the soccer field when there is a fire drill since you know there isn’t a real fire, or to watch YouTube videos or send Snapchats on your phone when there is a lockdown. And as surprising as it sounds, there are teachers who do not care as much as they should about what students do during drills. Hopefully in the future, a real drill will not be necessary again. At least now we know what to do.