Article #2: A walk in the park!

When I decided what to write for article #2, I knew I wanted to write about security at schools. It was an easy choice given the fact that it's something I care about. For more than a decade we have all been there, big eyed, mouth open wide while looking at a t.v. or computer screen while the reports of these attacks started to come through. Many of us have been blessed enough not to have been in the middle of something like that. Most of us will never forget.

From one of the first mass shootings many of us remember at Columbine High School in 1999, to the most recent one at Sandy hook Elementary, school shootings are becoming more of a horrible trend than we would like it to be. So i asked myself, what has changed in schools? After so many of these attacks, what security measures, if any, have that schools started to put to use? How is the security at my school, Seminole State?

There was a main person I wanted to talk to, the Director of security. As I conversed with her, there were things we both agreed on that have become useful at the college. But as our conversation came to an end, I thought "not much has changed." Unfortunately, its not entirely up to the Security Director of a school to increase or better the security. If there are no funds, there's no security.

As I wrote, rewrote and finished my article, so many thoughts ran through my mind. I started to think what would I do in the even of an attack at my school? Where would we run to? To hide, or not to hide? It's a scary thought to know that you're not protected at school anymore, mostly colleges, which are an open campus.

Just yesterday, February 12, the school sent an email saying that a male student reported being accosted by three men while he was walking away from the campus on College Drive. The men got away with his iPhone 4s and are still at large.

But at the end of the day, we can not only sit around thinking of ways of how to survive, we have to think of ways to be heard, because our safety, our lives depend on it. I hope my article shows that there are things out ther that can be done, that schools CAN be safe again, but unfortunately we need the funding to do it.

To conclude, this article was a walk in the park! I had great quotes from the Director of security at school and another staff member. Sometimes you might not be sure about an article idea, but I found that as long as it's something you're passionate about, you don't have to think twice!

Sorangel Santiago
Staff Writer
Seminole Scribe