February 14, 2018, a terrible tragedy occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. At 2:19 p.m., armed 19 year old Nikolas Cruz walked on campus and killed 17 people. This tragedy scared the entire nation, and made students scared to go to school fearing this would happen to them. Many schools decided it would be best to go over procedure in case this happens again.

Seymour High School held a drill for “lockdown” procedures in case an outside threat were to occur during passing period, lunch, or power hour, when the student body isn’t organized in classes. Students were ordered to go to their usual spot during power hour. Once all students got to their location, Mr. Prange came on the announcements stating that we needed to go into lockdown mode in the school. Students were then told where to go by teachers. Once all students were locked in a safe area, another announcement came on with Mr. Reasoner explaining why it is important to listen to adults around us when something like this occurs. After the announcement students were then released to go to their sixth block class.

Many students feared going to school after hearing the news about the Florida shooting. Sophomore Hannah Mcgill says, “My parents made me stay home after they heard the news in fear that it would happen here.” Many threats were posted online about doing another shooting. Some of these threats talked about “SHS”. Many students, parents, and faculty called the Seymour Police Department fearing it was our very own Seymour High School. When the posts were checked out, it was not the Seymour High School in Indiana. An official statement was sent out by Seymour Police Department confirming this. 

School shootings are something that haven’t been around for very long, but they happen more than people realize. There have been around 294 school shootings since 2013.

Many of the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have had a lot of harassment and allegations made as a result of speaking up. A  YouTube video was made saying that this shooting was fake, and that there were crisis actors. It became number one on trending before it was removed.  There have also been posts about the students being crisis actors. These students spoke right back to these allegations and denied them.

There are many different opinions on whether or not schools are doing everything they can do protect their students and faculty. Junior, Andrew Hunter says, “Allowing teachers to carry firearms can help protect the well-being of students after having been properly trained in how to properly use them safely and correctly.” Some students strongly disagree with this method, and want to have more gun control. There are many students (including those from the Florida shooting), that are speaking about gun control. Many are trying to make firearms become harder to get, or to even ban them completely in some cases.