An active shooter drill took place on March 8 at Samford University. The purpose of the drill was to practice what may happen in an emergency situation in the instance a shooter should be on campus.
Student responses to the drill were both positive and negative. Some students were willing to share their initial reactions and opinions on the drill.
“At first I was not in support of the active shooter drill on campus. I don’t think that students our age, or any age for that matter, should have to be concerned about someone with malicious intent shooting up their school,” said freshman Eulaya Erb.
Erb added that she did see some benefits from the drill.
“However, I realized that the drill did create a campus wide discussion on gun control and the difficult situations and decisions our generation is facing regarding mass shootings and self-protection. I understand that it is better to be prepared for these situations than to be underprepared and I appreciated the campus wide dialogue that the drill generated,” said Erb.
Sophomore Theresa Andrzejewski was in class in Russell at the time of the drill and talked about how the class discussed the drill beforehand so everyone understood what was going to happen.
“I felt like the drill wasn’t really to prepare me as much as it was to prepare the first responders, especially since Samford gave us a lot of information about what would be happening during the drill, which is very much unlike what might actually happen in real time,” Andrzejewski said. “At the end of the day, we can be told to run or hide or fight hundreds or thousands of times, but our individual behaviors can’t be totally predicted or controlled, so I personally felt like the drill was less of practice for me and more of practice for the security team and the responders.” Andrzejewski said.
Various discussions were held after the drill and the following week to get student feedback.
Clare Weigel, Features Writer
