Security Alarms on Doors

Earlier this month, students may have noticed new, bright red security alarms appearing on doors. Almost every door leading out of Central, besides the student entrance or circle drive entrance, now has an alarm on it. However, these alarms appeared with little warning, and the reason behind them, and their effectiveness, are relatively unknown.

Derek Ely, the dean of students, was able to provide some clarification on these door alarms and their purpose. “The main purpose of the new buzzers/alarms is to alert staff members if students are exiting the building without permission and/or letting other students into an unauthorized door,” Ely explained. “Really, it’s about maintaining the safety & security of our building.” 

Regarding whether or not these alarms will actually prevent students from leaving school and letting others in, Ely expressed faith in the alarms. However, if you are a student at Central, you might have noticed that not all of the alarms go off when people open those doors. Ely explained that “after initial installation, there were some logistics that needed to be worked out prior to full implementation,” and that setting the alarms’ volume and duration was something that needed to be worked out as well. This suggests that all of the alarms on the doors should be up and working very soon.

Another oddity students may have taken note of about these alarms is their placement. Some doors have alarms and others don’t. For example, in the gym, one set of doors with alarms is next to another without any. If students theoretically wanted to leave the gym when they weren’t supposed to, couldn’t they easily go through the door without alarms? On the contrary, Ely said that this was more of a resource issue. “The quantity of alarms that have been installed thus far is purely due to the availability of the Unit 4 personnel who installed them. We identified the most pertinent doors at the time of the initial install, with the understanding that as personnel availability increases, we will work together to install them on the remaining exterior doors.” Eventually, students should be able to expect an alarm on all exterior doors around Central.

However, students’ opinions on these alarms varied greatly. Student council vice president Jacob Clark agreed that these alarms will likely be an effective way to keep students in Central, “When I first saw these alarms I was curious as to what their purpose was, but when I found out they were to keep people from leaving I thought that it was a smart idea.” However, he also expressed his concern that if students really want to leave, they “might still find other ways to leave” and that “those who don’t care about the consequences will still most likely find ways to leave school.” Clark’s thoughts support how students have reacted to newly implemented rules in the past, such as IDs or hoods. While many follow the rules, those who don’t are still going to find ways to get through school without their ID, put their hood back on after asking for it to be removed, or, in this case, exit the school without setting off an alarm. Senior Allison Hobson shared similar opinions, explaining how these alarms “now alert teachers and administrators when anyone tries to leave the building.”

Meanwhile, other students had a different point of view. Junior Julia Wishall shared a different perspective of how the alarms seem to be inappropriate given our age: “ I think this is ridiculous for a public school, especially a high school where we are young adults and are surrounded by adults. We should know better, and be responsible enough to keep our district safe, and follow the rules.” However, Wishall agreed with Clark that these alarms would prevent most, but not all, students from leaving school. Meanwhile, Senior Amberlyn Aimone shared her opinion of how these alarms wouldn’t prevent students from leaving, “…if [students] already open the door they’re already intending to leave. I guess they are capable of instilling fear into students as consequences afterward, but definitely not leaving because students still do it during passing periods.” Junior Lillian Engelman also agreed that students had already discovered ways to cheat these alarms, explaining that they “…if they run fast enough they can exit the building unnoticed and unseen.”

Additionally, Aimone was able to offer a unique point of view, as she’s seen these alarms go off before, and described the alarm as “…just really disruptive and annoying because it interrupts time for attendance. People just crack the door open just to set the alarm off and then run away and cause a scene.” Hobson also had seen these occasions, explaining how PE teachers drop whatever they do to address the situation when an alarm goes off in the gym.

While these alarms have both negative and positive factors, some students, such as Hobson came up with potential ways to improve this system. Hobson suggested locking doors. “I feel like locking it would be more effective. If they really wanted us not to use the doors, why are they there then? What’s the point?” Hobson does provide a solid solution for how to ensure students leave school when they’re not supposed to, going on to explain how teachers could just unlock and lock these outside doors when appropriate.

In general, these alarms seem to have a mostly effective goal of keeping students in school, and keeping others out. However, at the moment, it is difficult to monitor how effective these alarms truly will be without all doors containing them. It will be interesting to see how students are impacted moving forward as more door alarms are installed.