In the midst of crisis and tragedy, student safety has become an even greater worry. Building up defensive walls and moving forward with the same unyielding ideas isn’t necessarily enough to keep the real dangers at bay.

Clearly, RHS hasn’t quite gotten the memo, because the school plans on adding a glass wall to seperate the main entrance from the hallway in the administration building, which leads to the rest of the campus.

The addition of this newest – literal – blockade to student education means that all students who get to school late will likely have to familiarize themselves with the office’s narrow hallways and twisting corridors, instead.

And, while it’s somewhat harrowing to navigate on an average day, I imagine it’ll only get worse when there are several crowds worth of students backed up inside the office on a daily basis.
I expect that it’ll also leave the office staff, or any unlucky passerby, with very little breathing room. Unintended consequences aside, a detour in a crowded hallway is a minor concern in comparison to the wall’s ability to perform its intended purpose.

Realistically this wall is being advertised to us, the student population of RHS, as a safety fixture. Thus, this makes it both a worthy and necessary addition to the school, rather than a shiny bauble to distract from the chipped bricks and many alternate intruder entrances.

And, hey, nothing screams safety like a transparent wall. Nothing says symbolic quite so well, either.

The building of this wall denotes an unclear attempt at an increased security strategy. Students, staff, and anybody who enters using the school’s main entrance exchange the convenience of easy campus access for “increased safety.”

Unfortunately, any attempts at danger-proofing the school fall flat in the face of the issues that come with it.

There will be multiple ways to easily bypass that wall, one of which is the gaping hole in security that comes with having an unblocked alley that leads directly into the school. I don’t need to be a professional ex-con with an arsenal of tools at my disposal and a bone to pick with the school to realize something like that. I don’t even need to be a semi-determined high schooler with an agenda that consists of earning a first class invitation to juvy.

It’s a matter of good intentions, but bad implementation. A cop doesn’t run in high heels and a security features shouldn’t cause more problems than solutions. This wall is a distraction at most and a genuine hazard at worst.

While it might be a chic addition to the peeling orange paint on the walls or the wilted flyers on the brick corners of the buildings, its usefulness as a clear defense strategy against intruders is limited. As a student of this school, I reserve the right to throw stones at glass houses – or, as the case is here, a glass wall. It’s my safety on the line, too.