What happened was that we were having police officers screen our school for weapons, drugs, etc. Word started spreading that it was because of a shooter. That the school had received notice of a threat, and they were screening to try and prevent it.
These rumors spread to the entire school within a matter of three to four hours. Parents were rushing to the school to pick their child up from the suspectably unsafe environment. My mom was one of these parents.
I left the school only around fourty minutes before the shooting was said to occur, which was during the last quarter of the third period of the day, during one of our lunch breaks.
When I went to the front office to leave, I saw a long line of parents waiting to sign their child out. It stretched from the desk at the front and all the way to the entrance to the building, which is a good twenty feet. The line was so long and moving so slowly that my mom didn’t even bother to sign me out and simply had us leave the building to take me home.
I was terrified for my friends that had to stay in that seemingly unsafe environment. I messaged them, telling them that, when their lunch time comes around, to stay as far away from the cafeteria as they could. I told them to go to the tennis court outside. My reasoning was that it was far away from the cafeteria, there were tarps boardering the fence, meaning it would be hard for them to be seen by the shooter, and it was still technically on school grounds, meaning they wouldn’t get into trouble if they were caught.
More rumours began spreading that two guns had already been found and four kids had been arrested, all on the nineth grade campus.
About an hour later my mom receieves an email from the school.
There was no threat. There were no students arrested.
Only scared kids spreading their worst fears, kindled by recent events from all across the country. They very real, and very possible, idea of a killer lurking among our classmates.
And if that kind of rumour is able to begin in the first place, let alone spread so quickly and be believed by the entire school, there is something very, very wrong.
And the school is blaming us for sharing “unverified” information. And they’re telling us to first check to make sure that the information is, indeed, real. But how are we supposed to do that.
How are we supposed to check to make sure the threat is legitimate when, by the time that we do, we could already be dead.
It’s like living in an area with feral dogs. You’re stuck in a corner with a dog right there, barking and growling. You’re not going to think, ‘Oh, but do I really know that this dog is feral?’ When over half of the dogs in that area are.
We shouldn’t need to fact check when we feel like we’re in immediate danger.
gayfeline 