By ABBI CLOUSER
Sheridan High School Student
Editor’s Note: The Sheridan Student Column is brought to readers by Sheridan High School’s 10th grade English class, taught by Abigayle Williams.
When I say school shooting, how many schools pop into your head? Sandy Hook Elementary School, Columbine, Stoneman Douglas High School, Noblesville West Middle School and Santa Fe High School are just a few that come to mind when I think of school shootings. In the last decade, people have heard more about school shootings than ever before. It’s an unfortunate truth, but no matter how much we wish we could go to school and not have to worry about these things, there’s always the chance that it will happen to our school, no matter how many times we say it isn’t going to.
Every time the news stations interview students and parents after a school massacre, the same things are always said: “I never thought it would happen to my school,” “How many people have to die before we say enough is enough?”, “Why aren’t there more things being done?”. In the past year, students have started speaking out more about what we need to do to prevent these tragedies happening in our schools across the country. If everybody keeps speaking out about it, then why has there been little to no change?
In early May of 2018, I was sitting in my choir class when an announcement came on the speakers. Our principal spoke to us in shaky voice, telling us that we were on lockdown and that it was not a drill. Frantically, my classmates and I rushed to hide in our small classroom. Thirty-one students and my teacher crammed together, and my teacher stood, trying to protect us if bullets were to come through the door. I could hear muffled cries in the room and the girl beside me stood shaking, whispering over and over again that she was going to pass out. In that moment, I held hands with people I didn’t even consider my friends and I told them that we were going to be safe. The entire situation turned out to just be a misunderstanding, but it was still one of the scariest moments of my life. I remember calling my mom afterward and crying because the Santa Fe shooting had only happened a few days before and resulted in multiple deaths. For weeks after the incident at our school, I was scared every moment during class because I feared that somebody could gain entry into the school. I knew in the back of my mind that if somebody really wanted to get in, they most likely could.
Student activists have been demanding change for years now, saying that something needs to be done about gun control. Sure, gun control might help to a certain extent, but if a person wanted to get a gun and murder students, he could. Maybe gun control isn’t the answer. Maybe we should start turning to our schools and seeing the holes in our safety regulations. This year, Sheridan High School had a new security system installed on the doors. The doors are supposed to make it harder for somebody to gain entry during the school day, but there could be loopholes around these doors to give an intruder just enough time to gain entry before an alarm starts going off. Other schools have given students clear backpacks in order to see what students are carrying into school with them. This will make sure that students aren’t bringing shotguns into class, but that doesn’t mean that a student can’t sneak a different kind of weapon in. Different schools have installed metal detectors at every door, but the metal detectors can’t protect us against every weapon.
Perhaps it is time that we start looking at the heath of the human population. The symptoms of people who commit mass murders are feelings of anger, lack of friends, social alienation, and making threats about hurting others. According to counseling.org, one-third of school shooters have had mental health evaluations and out of that one third, one-fifth have actually been diagnosed with mental illness. Not only that, but 61 percent of all school shooters have reported feeling depressed and lonely. Even though one-fifth of one-third does not sound like a lot of people, one-ninth of all Americans are taking antidepressants, which sometimes can cause symptoms of depression to worsen. Antidepressants aren’t made for all people. We as a society need to find a way to solve the mental health issue that is affecting people across the country. Most people who have depression aren’t going to harm people, but there is always the chance that it could happen and the chance is greater when the perpetrator has suffered from mental health issues. There are other ways to cure depression besides taking antidepressants, and we should find different solutions that will fit different kinds of people.
I am by no means an expert, so I don’t know what is going to stop tragedies in schools. I am saying that we need to find a way to prevent harm from getting into our schools. Maybe the solution is gun control, or better security, or the solution could be to stop prescribing so much medicine to people because it could actually be causing our society harm. I don’t know how we are going to figure out what to do, but something needs to be done. Something needs to be done, and instead of everybody just saying that it needs to be done, we need to actually take some action. If we don’t take action, we are just going to keep hearing about these tragedies more frequently. In conclusion, I think that not only do we need to find a way to better the security systems in our schools, but we also need to look at the mental health side of things and see if we can prevent people from being so far gone due to mental health that they end up creating these tragedies.