Students & Staff Respond to Gun Found in School

Guns In School

By, Malaysia Cotton & Emanni Jenkins

A sophomore attending University High School has recently put his fellow peers’ lives at risk when he decided it was okay to bring a gun inside the school on Friday, September 15, 2017. This left many to question why did this young man bring the gun and how did this young man manage to get past security?

We took the time out to ask our fellow school mates their reaction and feeling towards this incident, and here is what we received:

According to senior Dominique Joseph,

“It was a really retarded and dumb thing for him to do. He put his life on the line. I feel parents have a lot to do with, community allows students to get away with whatever. What i can do about the situation or to help at least is be more influential to our younger generation, this will only stop when parents actually start being parents.”

Dominique was not the only one who felt this way. Senior Khizeeq Murphy, had a similar reaction. Khizeeq states,

“He wasn’t using his right state of mind but i feel this kind of behavior is expected if students are around that lifestyle outside of school. The only thing I can really do about this is be a better a better role model to younger boys who look up to me. This will stop when guardians become better guardians for their children.”

From the looks of it , students are not thrilled one bit. And some of the upperclassmen feel they need to take on the role of a mentor as the student with gun was an underclassmen.

Furthermore, not only does this make some students feel like parents have a lot to do with it, but it also makes students feel unsafe.

According to our schoolmate Tysaiah Moss “This makes me feel sad because i realized how bad people are in the world and now it is being brought into the school. There is nothing I feel that I can do about it. This will never change because all people think the same and nobody listens.”  

It is evident, practically none of my fellow classmates are too happy about the incident. Our hope is that, this type of situation will never happen again, we will soon have a safe environment, and most importantly make our students and staff feel safe again.

University High School Staff and Students’

Fear of Safety After School Lockdown

By: Nefertiti Cooper and Shamonique Atwater

Students and staff  of University High School were forced into lockdown on

September 15, 2017, after student enters building with contraband, and posted the image with it, on a Facebook post at approximately 1:20 pm that day.

As the school day was coming to an end, the administration announced a school lockdown, responding to a weapon held by a student inside the school. Momentarily, the students began to murmur about what was going on and felt in danger because they were not aware of anything.

The following week students had a convocation regarding to this manner, leaving them with a lot of mixed feelings about the situation. During the convocation, students shared how they felt unsafe and expressed their concerns about the safety expectations being set higher. “I thought they were playing at first, ‘cause we always have these drills, but I remember seeing that picture on Facebook, so I knew this lockdown had something to do with that.” announced a student during the convocation.

At the school’s Community Meeting, held on the 22nd of September, topics were mainly to further discuss and inform parents about the specific details of this incident and mention new safety features that will be enforced, to ensure the children's safety within the school building. “Sooner than later, we will have a repaired metal detector and additions to the security staff.” said Principal Mendez during this meeting. Parents feel more relieved seeing that authorities of the school are actually working to prevent another event like this to occur again.

TEENAGE BOY CAUGHT ON SCHOOL GROUNDS WITH ILLEGAL WEAPON

By:Shardea Armstrong  

On Friday, September 15th two teenage boys at University High School were arrested for allegedly having an illegal weapon on school grounds. RLS Media a popular news reporting website for local cities posted an article about the event. Allegedly the student was engaged in an argument over social media website Facebook then proceeded to post a picture into the comments of him holding the weapon on school grounds forcing action to be taking by authorities. Resulting in the arrest of these two boys.

A worried parent showed the picture to a school security guard. Immediately, our principal, Mr.  Edwin Mendez was made aware then he started to handle the situation. He notified the police, and put the school into an immediate lockdown he knew was where the student was at all times at had everything completely under control.

When asked about the lockdown students Ikea Greene & Jada Johnson responded saying that it was overwhelming irritating that they were locked in a room so long without being aware of what's going on. A feeling of depression came over them as they had to wait for almost 2 hours for officials to check all classrooms for the illegal weapon.

When asked “how did you feeling during the lockdown” teacher Mr. Rahimi said he was worried because at the time no one knew what was going on and after everyone was finally released there was an intense feeling of relief knowing everyone was safe again.