Metal Detecting: The High School’s Effect On Us
By Alan Wang
On the fateful day of January 3rd, students were guided away from their usual entrance areas on Pacific Street. Students from MS 447 and the Brooklyn High School of the Arts lined up against the gate of the main entrance, with lines stretching down blocks with long waits of up to 30 minutes. What were the long inconvenient lines anyway? One would say it’s scary, one would say it's similar to the dreaded airport security routine, TSA, with metal detectors and baggage scanners to scan backpacks. Let's recap from the start.
On January 2nd, there was a fight with the high schoolers in the high school, which people claim to be the reason for this metal detector trouble. However, teachers say that the metal detectors are completely random that the police do every three or so years. Now, is this a coincidence that these two days fall right next to each other or is one of them the main reason? Many people have very different opinions on this decision on whether or not it was a coincidence.
Luca Hamilton from 802 says “I'm unsure about whether it’s a coincidence or not because there’s been a lot of fights with the high school, but nothing’s happened. I believe more information is needed to make a decision.”
Another thought comes from Kylie Sieberg, who is in class 803 stated “I think it was sort of both because the school was going to do it from the start, but then the fight caused the date to happen more sooner.”
Now back to the day. Excruciatingly long lines were stretched very long which caused many people to be late to their first period classes. As Kylie said, “During it [the event] I felt cold and confused because I didn’t know what was going on.”
When people entered through the main entrance, there were many police officers standing there with two big metal detectors. One was for the high schoolers while one of them was for the middle schoolers. The police officers ordered the students to put keys, wallets, coins, and more into their bags, and put the bags on a baggage scanner, another TSA favorite. Many people had different views on how this felt, ranging from stressed to confused.
For example, Antonio Crispin from 801 said “I was scared because I didn't know what was happening and neither did my friends. After 15 minutes of waiting, they let me through, but I was also put on another line where I was metal detected by a handheld metal detector.”
In general these lines were long and cold, and caught many off guard. Does the high school below us have any effect on us? Many people within our school community do believe so.
As Kylie stated “I think they do because the schools share a building together so the drills and other things happen for both of the schools, not just one.”
Since our two schools share a building, our school communities both affect one another. For instance, when high schools have testing, middle schoolers are affected by being unable to go to the courtyard. Also, evacuations and other emergencies affect both schools.
To give hope that students won’t have another situation like this again. Everyone was okay in the event and students should know that the school’s community's biggest goal is to keep students safe, no matter what happens in any of the schools.