Current Events & Trends: Surprise school shooting drill terrifies students
In November 2014, police in a Florida town performed an active shooter drill in a local middle school.
"And by 'active shooter drill,'" The Washington Post reports, "we mean that a Winter Haven middle school went into lockdown as two armed police officers burst into classrooms, guns drawn, leaving the unsuspecting children terrified—and their parents furious" (Abby Ohlheiser, "'I Thought He Was Going to Shoot Me.' Unsuspecting Middle School Students Terrified by Active Shooter Drill").
It's scary for students today. School shootings have plagued America for a number of years now. And the intentions of the policemen in Florida were practical. They wanted to give students the tools they would need in a highly intense, highly stressful situation. Running into a middle school with a loaded gun really opens students to the reality of the world we live in—though the value of that against students everywhere being panicked and perhaps traumatized in such exercises is debatable (not to mention the problems with keeping parents uninformed). In any case, it's not just fire and tornado drills that students have to endure. School shooting drills are now a reality.
The shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 changed the perspective for many about the world we live in. It was seen in the media instantly across the nation and the world. Soon more and more schools started installing metal detectors and cameras across the nation to protect students from future attacks.
Just at the time of this writing, news came that another gunman injured three people at Florida State University before he was killed by police. Violence is all around us no matter where in the world we live. In 2 Timothy 3, Paul says that in the last days men will be "brutal." We see that brutality not only glorified on television, video games and the movies, but also in the news. Brutality is now just a part of the world we live in—including for children innocently seeking an education. (Source: The Washington Post.)
An Article from:
Good News Magazine: January - February 2015
Course Content
Rudolph Rangel III
Rudy Rangel attends the Cincinnati East, Ohio congregation along with his wife Judy and two children.
Tom Robinson
Tom is an elder in the United Church of God who works from his home near St. Louis, Missouri as managing editor and senior writer for Beyond Today magazine, church study guides and the UCG Bible Commentary. He is a visiting instructor at Ambassador Bible College. And he serves as chairman of the church's Prophecy Advisory Committee and a member of the Fundamental Beliefs Amendment Committee.
Tom began attending God's Church at the age of 16 in 1985 and was baptized a year later. He attended Ambassador College in both Texas and California and served for a year as a history teacher at the college's overseas project in Sri Lanka. He graduated from the Texas campus in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts in theology along with minors in English and mass communications. Since 1994, he has been employed as an editor and writer for church publications and has served in local congregations through regular preaching of sermons.
Tom was ordained to the ministry in 2012 and attends the Columbia-Fulton, Missouri congregation with his wife Donna and their two teen children.
