High school is a place where you may meet some life long friends who have a big impact on your life; the “new girl” at school this year, ALICE, might just save your life.
ALICE, which stands for Alert, Lockdown, Informed, Counter, Evacuate is the new lockdown procedure that is being implemented this year to replace the traditional lockdown procedure where students and teachers turn off the lights and hide in their classroom out of sight.
ALICE has “been considered the best practice in terms of school safety” said school resource officer Jeff Noel.
ALICE was developed in 2001 by an ex SWAT officer and his wife, who was a school principal in Texas. The new program has been in the works for over a year now, and its “adoption”, as Principal Thomas Mead calls it, is not a direct result of the tragic events in Newtown, Connecticut last year.
Assistant Principal Melvin Laughton asked rhetorically, “If there was a fire in the gym and you’re in H300, would you stay?”
The ALICE program seeks to utilize timely information to aid the decision making of teachers.
Mead explained, “The ALICE program is not looking for heroes; it’s looking for information to get to people, classrooms, and teachers so they can decide what to do.”
Mead, Laughton, and Noel all stressed learning from past events as key to ALICE’s conception.
Mead explained, “ Some kids at Virginia Tech didn’t die because of actions they took [such as evacuation]. To respond in a passive way is not going to be enough.”
The “C” in ALICE, counter, involves students throwing anything with weight at an attacker in hopes of distracting him or her enough to provide the students an opportunity to swarm the attacker.
ALICE is ready and will be explained fully to students in coming months.
Until then students are only left with the reassuring words of Mr. Laughton.
“ Do I think someone will come in? No. But you have to be prepared.”