Students interviewed this month in Washington, D.C. said they are frustrated and anxious about the almost daily occurrence of active shooter drills, which have been on the rise at public schools over the last two decades.
Meanwhile, researchers are divided over whether the drills actually add to teenagers’ anxiety or are needed to help students understand how to cope with the threat of a shooter at school.
Eric Perless, 20, a student at American University, recalled his experience with lockdown drills as a teenager.
“We would have active shooter drill lockdowns once every two months,” Perless said. “It was scary especially since sometimes they didn’t tell us it was a drill so it was definitely traumatizing.”
Colton Browder, 18, a student at the University of North Carolina, also recalled active shooter drills at his high school.
“Our lockdown drills at our school were horrible procedures,” Browder said. “I remember thinking that the lockdown drills weren’t even helpful to prepare you for an actual active shooter.”
In Washington, D.C., school leaders have a School Emergency Response Plan and Management Guide, signed in 2009. It says that drills are “essential to practice” to familiarize school personnel, staff and students with what they would do in case of a natural disaster or “manmade” threat.
School shootings in America have become almost a common occurrence and so have active shooter drills.
In a 2018 master’s thesis from California State University, researchers wrote: “The research found that participants, on average, are moderately anxious about the possibility of an active shooter situation at school and their internships.”
Other research from the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry written by Dewey Cornell, a professor at the University of Virginia, stated that: “Massive public attention to school shootings has created the misperception that schools are dangerous places, even though crime statistics show that schools are one of the safest places in the United States.”
Ana Ferrer, 19, a student at the University of Puerto Rico, had a school shooting threat at her school and was scared to attend school because of this.
“It made me feel uncomfortable to know I couldn’t go to my own university,” Ferrer said.
Brittani Riddle, a staff member at American University, said she’s never been in an active shooter drill, but she understands the fear and the potential impact of drills on mental health.
“I think it may unfortunately cause a sense of fear, but it also teaches people to be mindful that things can happen because unfortunately this is the world that we live in,” Riddle said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 7.4 percent of high school students in 2011 reported being threatened or harmed with a weapon on school grounds. Those day-to-day events are what Cornell writes that school safety should prioritize.
“School safety should focus on the everyday problems of bullying and fighting,” Cornell wrote in the 2015 study.
