Although the administration has sent out community messages in response to recent incidents of potential danger at Galileo, some teachers and students have raised the question of whether the school is doing enough to protect the school community.
On January 24th, a community message was sent out following a report of a student possessing a gun and flashing it to another student. After searching the student, law enforcement was called to verify the weapon was not real, but was just a replica. A community message was then sent out to explain the police cars, answer lingering questions, and clarify the situation was a false alarm.
The day after, a second community message was sent out concerning a swastika found etched into glass on a hallway door, originally covered up by paper. In response, the administration team replaced the glass and checked in with members of the Jewish Student Union to ensure they were feeling safe. After reviewing hours of security footage in an attempt to locate the culprit, the administrators could not find a culprit.
“As an admin team, as a school, we’ve done a good job of keeping an open mind and dealing with the incidents. With both of them, [the community messages] were after we cleared the details and we were sure we covered our bases. I wanted to say all those things: Like this is the things that we did, if we had found someone then I wanted to say this is the consequence,” said principal, Mr. Panjabi.
Concerns have also been raised by teachers. Union Building Committee representative Mr. Lynch has expressed that teachers have been noticing these types of events for a while, asking the administration team to address non-classroom areas and inquiring about what is being done to minimize intruders. He stressed the importance of timing and communication between students and staff and having schoolwide accountability to have the school at large safe.
In a message to the administration, the UBC(Union Building Committee) has questioned: “What is the restorative process when the community at large is impacted, but there has been no restoring to the community?” In other words, other than assurances, the community is not seeing accountability or restoring, and there are few deterrents when nobody knows the consequences.
Parents and teachers have also been questioning why the school did not go on lockdown during the replica gun incident. In response, Mr. Panjabi asserts the incidents were nowhere near that level of reaction. Rather, a lockdown would be called if there was a confirmed active shooter on site, not if there were only rumors going around. Further, Mr. Panjabi states that there is not a larger trend of such incidents occurring, and false alarms will only end up creating more fear. “During the event, I definitely felt the potential danger. I think the emails could be more timely and the administration could do more,” said senior Cammy Z.
However some students appreciated the transparency from the administration. Senior Jaden L. said, “The emails were informative and I wouldn’t have known about the incidents without them. I am aware the administration is actively doing its best to remove threats and warn students about the dangers. However, the administration can prevent some of these dangers with stricter punishments for students who ignore or break the rules.”
