Ashley Morris
News Editor

On November 10, at Stissing Mountain Middle/High School in New York, Principal Bob Hess was held hostage.  The perpetrator was Christopher Craft Sr., 42, a former student.

Craft managed to sneak into the school, assemble his shotgun in the school’s bathroom, and place the school’s principal under threat of gunfire. The school was put into a lock down and Craft surrendered without firing any shots. Luckily, no one was harmed in the situation.

Court documents indicated that Craft told police he was upset about the “wrongful treatment of United States Military personnel.”

“This situation frightens me, because I am responsible for all my students,” comments one concerned teacher, Mr. Gearhart. “I have to keep them safe.”

“Things like this could happen anywhere,” adds Gearhart. “There are so many cases where security has failed. People think they are safe, but they can be caught off-guard. There should be deterrents, like police, on campus, or harsher punishments, like having life in prison for something like that instead of a slap on the wrist. But even with all that it can still happen.”

Junior Amy Lowell, on the other hand, was not very upset by the event. “I think it’s unlikely that it would happen here. I’m not going to say it’s impossible– anything can happen. But I don’t know how the security in New York is compared to the security here.”

“I would have to know what security measures we already have to know how I think we should prevent hostage situations here. I know we have hall monitors, and we used to have bike cop, but I’m not sure what we have now,” she adds.

Our principal, Karen Diamond, says that she does not consider the possibility of a hostage situation often.

“I never think about the fact that someone would take a principal hostage,” she says.

In order to keep students and staff safe, the district mandates that each school have a Crisis Response Plan. This plan is updated every year. Each school keeps its own separate plan, and the district mandates what each school’s plan must contain.

“The number one focus is the safety of kids, because if a child is not safe, a child cannot learn. During a crisis, every person has his own designated job, and we do practice drills often to test our response plan,” she comments.

“I’d like to say it can’t happen here, but anything can happen,” she adds. “I don’t know what the procedures were in that school, but here the teachers are told not to talk to anyone without a visitors pass, and hall monitors are trained to spot strangers. They also have radio communication. I’d like to think we’re keeping our children safe.”