Lockdown Drill Prompts A Mix of Protocol, Disregard

At 11:30 a.m. last Thursday, a siren-like sound, a text and an email notified campus of an Academy-administered lockdown drill. Many disregarded protocol; a Challenge Fitness class continued to jog around campus, students strolled from the Library to the academic quad and classes continued their discussions.

Lower Keyu Cao was in the Robert N. Shapiro Room on the fourth floor of the Academy Library when the drill began. Half of his religion class had already left for the next format, but when the remainder of the people in the room received the warning text, they continued researching for the class’ upcoming paper. Cao said that because they were so far up in the library, his peers could not be bothered to follow protocol and lock and barricade the door.

On the first floor, the same indifference surrounded upper Jonathan Lee as he sat at the Harkness table in the center of the clearing. In his own words, he described how absolutely nothing about the atmosphere changed. “The students around me seemed more concerned with their 331s—due in a week—than with any potential shooters on campus,” Lee said.

According to an all-school email sent out during the lockdown drill, students, faculty and those affiliated with the Academy should have locked and barricaded themselves in a classroom, office or other securable room. They should have also closed blinds or curtains, moved away from windows, turned off all lights and remained quiet until they had received an “All Clear” Exeter Alert notification via either text message or email.

In many cases, that didn’t happen. Academy Librarian Gail Scanlon didn’t disclose information about specific student and library staff reactions, but ceded that students left the library even after the drill was announced.

On the other side of campus, the alarm woke upper Ali Hassani, who was napping in the Sally Sun Room on the second floor of the Health Center. Hassani got up, walked out of the room and confronted a nurse, unsure of what to do. To his dismay, so was she. “The lady just looked puzzled,” Hassani said. “She said, ‘I think there’s some kind of drill,’ and she didn’t know if I could leave or stay.”

Senior Rohan Nawalrai was in math class when the campus was notified of the drill. He said that his teacher closed and locked the door but continued to teach the class, discussing the math problems put up on the board. Nawalrai said that, because he and the other students knew it was a drill, they did not take the situation as seriously as they should have.

Upper Garrett Pitt’s physics class took it a little further—his teacher closed the door but decided to leave the lights on. All the while, the students sat idly with their phones out at the Harkness table. Pitt said that for a minute they discussed moving the Harkness table or propping chairs against the door, but both ideas quickly fell out of play as they started sending Snapchats to each other.

When he heard the announcement on the speaker, prep Aaron Baez was in the restroom and did not have his phone with him. He said that because preps had not been informed of protocol in case of a lockdown, he had no idea what to do. Baez left the bathroom after a minute and walked into his classroom without any issue—the door was unlocked and his peers were just sitting around the table.

In sharp contrast to a large number of classrooms on campus, the classroom of science instructor Townley Chisholm was dark, with its door locked, blinds closed and chairs stockpiled in front of the door.

“I don’t know what happened in other classrooms, but in 206 we piled the chairs in front of the door, got out the swordfish bill to impale any would-be intruder and made ready to hurl bio books at him as well,” Chisholm said. “We would have rolled the Harkness table on edge against the door, but there were too many papers on it. I locked the door, turned off the lights and lowered the shade on the window into the hall.”

Referencing the lack of action taken by many, Chisholm said that if the Academy is going to have lockdown drills at all, both students and faculty should take them seriously; he also added that if faculty think drills are not needed, they should ask to stop having them.

“Ignoring them does not seem like a good option,” he continued. “If I had a windowless, heavy wooden door as some of my colleagues have, I would feel fairly secure behind it once it was locked. Still, bullets trump door locks.”

History instructor Erik Wade bolted the door to his classroom shut and firmly placed a chair against the doorway to make entry even more difficult. Additionally, he pulled down the shades, turned out the lights and watched as his students waited quietly under the Harkness table.

Like Chisholm, Wade thought that students and faculty should have followed protocol during the lockdown drill. “If this was real, then many students, staff and faculty would’ve been in harm’s way—some may have died,” he said. “We need to establish [the best possible] practices so everyone is safe. It made me sad that many students shared that class continued and their teachers didn’t take the drill seriously.”

Wade also said that the Academy community missed out on a great opportunity to teach others to care for one another. “Even more, students were [more] scared [of getting] Dickies rather than [remaining] safe. What does this say about PEA’s culture? This is bigger than Harkness and five minutes of class; this is one of the important, real life lessons of our times,” he said.

After seeing what happened during the drill, some students were skeptical of the school’s ability to manage a lockdown if a legitimate emergency occurred. “We didn’t even realize that it was a lockdown drill until we heard people shouting in the hallways [to] ‘get into the classrooms,’” upper Meghan Chou said.

“The point of the lockdown is to keep the person who’s dangerous outside, but the fact that students would be with that person is a little scary,” lower Katie Goyette said. She had heard of students walking around campus during the drill and was a little unnerved.

Upper Kelsey Detels, who was in the basement of Phillips Hall at an English class, faced a similar situation as Nawalrai; other than a locked door, protocol was not followed. She also knew of a Challenge Fitness class that completely disregarded the announcement and kept on running around campus for its workout.

“A lot of people were either not aware of the lockdown drill or disregarded the instructions,” Detels said. She suggested holding informatory adviser meetings and ensuring teachers knew of proper protocol. “If it had been graded on a pass/fail system, we would have failed.”