The 2015–2016 school year proved to be a tough one for the Grady community. While our students have coped remarkably well with a stressful year, our school and community need to come together to improve safety.

A soft lockdown on Jan. 29 proved that communication is not where it should be. As students were kept in the dark about the actual cause of the lockdown, explanations ranging from a teacher’s kidnapping to special effects explosions spread around the school. In the end, the explanation was that a potentially armed young man had been spotted on campus. Steps as simple as the administration announcing what was happening could have kept students from climbing out of windows and encouraged them to take this legitimate threat seriously.

There will always be some danger at Grady, or any high school for that matter. The single largest factor in creating a safe school environment is information. When people know what is going on, there are far fewer extreme reactions. The flow of information goes both ways; students and staff both have to keep each other informed.

Administrators and students have been on better terms in recent years, largely due to the development of a less strict relationship. The administration has been less firm in enforcing rules against phone use and has loosened up dress code enforcement following a campaign led by the Grady Feminist Club.

Despite all of this, some may argue that informing students of a potentially armed threat on campus would cause many to panic and try to run, endangering themselves in the process. However, the historical record shows that Grady students are more mature than this. When then senior Morgan Tukes accidently shot herself in the leg with a handgun in 2013, the school was placed on hard lockdown without incident. In this case, order was maintained even though many people heard the shot.

Incidents don’t only happen during school. On Sept. 28, for example, an argument led to a shooting at the corner of 8th Street and Monroe Drive during the community night football game and caused understandable panic. A lack of clarity, however, about how to deal with the crisis led to a number of unnecessary risks in an already stressful situation. Many people jumped off the stadium stands onto the field in an attempt to get away. Although no one in the stands was seriously injured, the crowd would have been extremely vulnerable to gunfire if the shooter had been trying to kill indiscriminately.

The most tragic event this year was also the most recent. Freshman Alex Hyneman was hit by a driver as she rode her bike home after a Coffeehouse skit. She was taken off life support the next day, prompting calls for better bike safety and inspiring students to paint her signature cat whiskers on their faces the next school day.

Though the administration cannot defend against these outside threats directly, it can respond afterwards. The school provided grief counseling after both the shooting at the game and Hyneman’s death. While this policy is genuinely helpful, the less legitimate response has been toward improving school safety. After Tukes shot herself, the school responded by working slightly more diligently in the routine morning bag checks for a few weeks, then resumed business as usual. In response to a threat on Sept. 11, 2014, full scale searches caused lines to stretch into the parking lot and delayed the day by nearly an hour. Policies requiring lockout and parking passes never really materialized. The biggest change following the recent soft lockdown was the closing of the dirt lot gate.

All of these steps seem to be superficial changes made more for appearance than actual safety improvements. We will never be 100 percent safe, and that’s understandable. However, we need to put our heads together to find solutions that are actually helpful.

We don’t want to be “that school” that always has to deal with threats and violence. We don’t want to hear gunshots as we enjoy a football game with elementary school children and families present. We don’t want to be victims, and we don’t want to be martyrs. Individually we are different, but together we are Grady. So let’s try our hardest to stick together and avoid tragedy in the future.