On Oct. 4, 2024, Rockledge High School students cowered in classroom corners during a school lockdown. This was not a drill. A situation which had often been practiced in regular lockdown drills became a reality as a contingent of law enforcement officers conducted a full sweep of the school’s campus. The lockdown procedure would eventually end later that day with fearful students running to anxious parents to share emotional embraces, but not after police discovered something unthinkable. A firearm, capable of ending countless student and faculty lives and impacting many more, had been found on school grounds.
At Rockledge, the best possible outcome in an unsafe situation was secured: a dangerous weapon was found before it had the opportunity to inflict untold damage upon the Rockledge community. However, at many schools across the nation, the same cannot be said. For the communities of Uvalde, Sandy Hook, and Marjorie Stoneman-Douglas, the scars of tragedies will never fully heal.
The metal detectors being installed at schools across Brevard County, and now at West Shore, are a line of defense against tragedies. They provide a further assurance that weapons will not be tolerated, that an attempt to inflict harm against the student body would be a fruitless effort. They serve to more tightly weave the strong net of security which the school exhibits against an attacker or intruder. At first glance, the new metal detection systems may seem like a nuisance, but upon closer inspection, their protection against a school tragedy outweighs any slight annoyance they could bring.
The principal aim of these new machines is to protect and guard students and faculty alike. They ensure that a student cannot not simply walk into school with a weapon, whether it be a knife, gun or other object intended to spread harm. Both nefarious and accidental occurrences of students bringing a weapon onto campus are mitigated, guaranteeing a safe learning environment for students and staff to comfortably focus on education. Potential school day interruptions like shelter-in-place and lockdown situations are also limited without the possibility of a weapon being brought onto campus. The metal detectors simply add another layer to the security system which allows students to feel safe in the educational environment.
The most common concern about the introduction of metal detectors onto campus is that students will become stuck in never-ending lines which eat up time at the start of each school day before awkwardly digging through their backpack to remove metal items to pass around the weapon detection system, eventually leading to hours upon hours being consumed solely due to the installation of the systems. These ideas are a gross embellishment of what will really happen. At first, students will have to adjust to removing a few materials from their bag as they approach the metal detector, but they will quickly recognize that they remove the same things each day, eventually resulting in students simply having their flagged materials ready to pass around as they quickly walk through the system and head to class. At larger schools, long lines at the beginning of the school day can often raise an issue as hundreds of students queue for their turn to pass. However, the student body of West Shore will not be so challenged, as the diverse interests exhibited by students mean that arrival times are widely spaced-out as many students come in to start their day early, filling their time with clubs, tutoring, homework and much more. This leads to a steady stream of students consistently flowing through detection systems without lines, and when the morning bell rings, only a manageable handful of students will remain to pass through the detectors.
For some students, the initial introduction of metal detectors into daily life will be a sudden shock, and they may seem like nothing but a nuisance. However, over time, their presence will simply become another unnoticed part of the daily routine as they silently protect campus security. At school, safety is paramount to success, so students must surmount this change in stride.
