School is supposed to be a safe environment. Students should feel protected and safe going to school everyday. However, in light of school shootings and threats that have occurred in the United States recently, RHS students have started considering the topic of school safety more.

“We need to know what to do in terms of situations. All I know is if you’re off campus when it happens, don’t come back. We don’t know what to do for other situations on campus,” senior Rachel Sausedo claimed.

Students feel that they should be better prepared for unsafe situations to ensure that everyone would know how to act and what to do.

“For the most part, the school and town convey a calm environment. I’m never on the edge of my seat, but if something were to happen, we would not be ready,” senior Laysha Macedo explained.

Although, Ripon High also has campus protection through the police, which helps make the students feel protected, but still not as prepared.

“I think we’re somewhat protected because the police are on top of things because of the low crime rate, but we are not prepared because we do maybe one drill a year and don’t talk about gun safety issues,” senior Maci Herrin stated.

Students still believe that more can be done, in terms of protection and preparation, especially since Ripon High is an open campus.

“Being an open campus with 1,000+ kids, two guards don’t do us well. We have a police officer, which is good, but since we’ve received threats, we should have more guards or more training for guards,” junior Maria Soto claimed.

Some students even believe that some of the time and resources that the school dedicates to other activities should be allocated to a concerning subject like school safety.

“Character Strong would work even better if it was done differently. The way they approach students is in a way one would approach kindergarteners, but we should instead have discussions about topics like these to get to know students and where their heads are at,” Macedo believes.

Although students may feel somewhat safe, awareness on dangerous situations is necessary. Ripon students want to be ready in any unsafe situation and know that they are protected.

“I don’t think we’d be protected or ready. We don’t really practice for this, and if we do, people don’t take it seriously. I even haven’t thought about this much until now, but we should,” Sausedo stated.