On October 24, 2022, at around eleven in the morning, the deafening sound of the fire alarm pierced through the halls. All students and staff were suddenly rushed out of the building onto the fields and courts. Everyone waited the typical five minutes that follow a fire drill, expecting the standard return back to class. But five minutes passed, then ten, and then twenty. The security officers began to push the students back towards the baseball fields. Something was wrong. This wasn’t your ordinary fire drill. Students began to grow anxious and, even worse, rambunctious. Another ten minutes passed. At this point, almost all of the students that filed onto the tennis courts were directed to the back of the fields and track. By this time, it had become common knowledge that it wasn’t a fire that rushed 1800-plus students and staff out of the building, but that there may have been a bomb in school.

This seemingly terrifying prospect was met with disorganized leadership from staff, and an either apathetic or violent response from students which ultimately led to the intervention of the Norfolk Police Department. Many students around the school have agreed that the whole ordeal was extremely chaotic–Students hopping the fence and walking home, or anywhere that wasn’t school, students on their phones trying to ease their very worried parents, and even students rushing from one end of the track to another to watch the next fight that had just broken out. Very few were actually concerned about whether or not there was a bomb, or if everyone was safe.

The first, and of course most important issue, raised by this incident is that of our safety. Are we as students safe in our classrooms? Since 2018 there have been over 140 School Shootings in the United States, 47 of which have occurred in 2022. The problem has yet to be resolved and is possibly worsening each year. On December 13th, 2019, a student at Maury High School fired ammunition in the school, setting off a lockdown and resulting in one injury.

This bomb threat came along with several others directed at high schools in the region including Deep Creek, Oscar Smith, Western Branch, and Indian River. With a growing amount of school threats and incidents around the country, students begin to view situations like these as being closer to normal than they should. When they have to go into a lockdown or evacuate for a bomb threat, their demeanor does not change much. This has the potential for extremely problematic consequences in the future. We begin to question whether we would be prepared if we were ever put in a real-life active shooter situation. Will our entire student body take matters seriously so that everyone can be as safe as possible? It will be hard to answer these questions without going to the students and staff first to get deeper insight in how students feel about their individual safety.

This incident is one of many that has caused pause for thought at Granby High School. Last school year (March of 2022) students were put through a several hour lockdown because of growing suspicion that one of our students brought a firearm to school. Throughout the lockdown, several students were detained, one of which being a 15 year old charged with brandishing a firearm.

The Granby Spectator will continue to investigate the safety of our schools in the future. Looking forward into the new year, we will publish articles highlighting our security staff and their responsibilities, our surveillance and detection procedures, as well as how decisions are made when we encounter threats such as these.