Student tells of school lockdown experience

(Editor’s Note: At Monte Vista High School in suburban Spring Valley, a gun was found along with narcotics in the locker of a 14-year-old student, who was arrested on Friday, March 6, according to Sheriff’s Deputies. Meanwhile in San Diego, four schools were placed on lockdown after an anonymous email threatened violence.  In the following story, Shor Masori, an eighth-grade student at one of those schools,  Lewis Middle School, related to his grandfather, San Diego Jewish World editor Donald H. Harrison, what the lockdown experience was like.)

By Shor Masori

SAN DIEGO– During my 4th period “advisory” class, I participate in the Junior Model United Nations program, in which I have the opportunity to role play as a delegate from Somalia serving on the U.N. Security Council.  I was drafting a resolution on Friday, March 6, concerning the security of journalists around the world, when suddenly I learned my own-real life security and that of everyone else at Lewis Middle School had been threatened.

There was a long, continuous loud ringing of the bell, and our teacher instructed us to take cover under our desks.  He locked the doors of our classroom, turned off the lights, and instructed us to keep very quiet.  We were a bit alarmed, but not overly, as we had gone through just such a drill within the past month.  At first, the teacher and we thought this was another drill.

But whether by his cellphone or via his laptop computer, our teacher soon found out that this was not a drill, but rather that there was some kind of off-campus occurrence of concern to law enforcement.  We were uncomfortable, but as long as we could whisper to each other, no one who I could see or hear panicked.  Some friends and I exchanged views about the advisability of dashing out the classroom’s back door if we should hear gunshots.

Eventually, we were permitted to get up from the floor and sit quietly at our desks while we awaited further instructions.  After a while, we were led out to the playing fields while, I imagine, police swept the classrooms.  There were many representatives of the news media there, with their cameras, and in honor of the recently deceased Leonard Nimoy, I flashed my very best imitation of his character Spock’s Vulcan salute from Star Trek.  “Live long and prosper,” I said, perhaps more fervently than usual.  (The Vulcan salute is an adaptation of the way rabbis hold their hands when they give a blessing.)

We returned from the field to our 4^th period class, although it was already 6^th period, which normally comes after the lunch break.  Briefly, we then went to our 5^th period classes—mine being Spanish, amigos, but I didn’t actually stay long.  My father was among the hundreds of parents who had lined up in their cars outside the school to take us home to safety.

We were never told exactly what had prompted my school to be locked down, and I’m not sure whether that made us less nervous than we might have been.  To tell the truth, I was somewhat scared, but never got to the point where I was terrified.  The incident made me think about the journalists who our Junior United Nations resolution is intended to protect.  In our case, trouble had a way of finding us; in their case, they put themselves in the way of trouble in their quest to keep the public informed.

You can’t help but admire the journalists who are war correspondents.

*
Masori, 13, and grandfather Donald H. Harrison made a roadtrip together last summer to Canada and back, finding Jewish stories, as is told in the book Schlepping Through The American West: There Is A Jewish Story Everywhere.

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