This article is in response to an article that has become national news very quickly, published by a local news station in Denver (where I live).
Allow me to paint you a picture.
It's December 13th, 2013. It is your sophomore year in high school, only a week before Christmas break. You have just a few finals and one choir concert left before you're free for a whole two and a half weeks. You're looking forward to your choir concert that evening and then having time to go ice skating, see movies and give gifts to your family members for two weeks of break. You're off campus, in your mom's car, driving to the location of your choir concert when you receive a text from one of your best friends.
"Where are you?? Are you safe?" is all that it reads. You start to panic, and your mind thinks of every possible reason why you wouldn't be safe.
"I'm with my mom. I had an appointment and then I have that concert. Why? Is everything OK?" Just a few short seconds later you get a text back.
"Don't come back to the school. They're taking our phones so I have to go. We're on lockdown. Something happened at Arapahoe."
Arapahoe.
It wasn't my high school, but it was only about 12 minutes away. I knew several people who were students at Arapahoe. The music on the radio stopped in the middle of the song and a news report came on. The only words I heard were "gunshots" "evacuation" and "lockdown." My head was spinning.
My mom dropped me off at the location of the choir concert and I managed to find two or three other students in my class.
"Do you know what's going on?" one girl asked me through tears.
"A shooting? At Arapahoe, I think. I'm not sure. Everyone is on lockdown."
Then a choir director came into the room and addressed the few of us that were there, telling us that most of our teachers and peers were still on lockdown and would be arriving as soon as the lockdown was over. And I remember being hungry. The pizza place that we had ordered from for the day was across the street from Arapahoe and wasn't able to deliver until about 5 hours later.
Later in the day, I received a text from my youth leader: "Hey everyone, please be praying for Arapahoe. [Our youth student at Arapahoe] is safe and doing OK, but of course, she's very shaken. Also, be praying for the shooter's family and the girl that was shot, she's in the hospital."
Our choir concert still happened that evening. "The show must go on, even in light of tragic events," was all that our choir director said on the matter.
In the following weeks, our school made banners for Arapahoe, Arapahoe wrote a message in their chain link fence using cups, a student at another neighboring school created "Colorado Strong" T-shirts and all of the money was donated to Arapahoe. And, most heartbreaking of all, Claire Davis, the student who was hospitalized after the shooting, passed away.
Fast forward two years. You're now a senior in high school and it is the same time of year, December. Only a week away from the freedom of Christmas break. You just got home from swim practice and you're getting ready to sit down at the computer to start on homework. You decide to check your email first, and there is an email from your principal. You open up your email and learn that two sophomores at your school have been arrested for a clandestine plot to kill as many people as possible. At your high school. The email asks that students continue to come to school if they feel comfortable. How could any student feel comfortable and safe in their high school after learning that this could have been their death day.
I wish and prayed more than anything that there was some way to protect ourselves from senseless acts like these. And finally, after the Columbine massacre, after the Sandy Hook massacre, after the Aurora theatre shooting, after the excruciating detail that I will always live with from the Arapahoe shooting and the Mountain Vista conspiracy to commit murder one school district in rural Colorado is finally doing something.
They are allowing teachers and staff to elect to carry guns after undergoing training.
After going through the events that have happened in Colorado since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School I think that the school district could not be making a smarter decision.
This particular school district is in a very rural area and it can take up to 20 minutes for law enforcement to arrive at their schools.
20 minutes could make a huge difference in lives lost in the event of a school shooting. Allowing admin and teachers to be armed on campus could potentially be the difference between life and death for students in this school district.
This school district is making such a wise decision to attempt to arm and train more adults and I personally can't wait to see how many school districts follow suit.
