Security around the country within schools has drastically changed over the years. Due to the recent school shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck High School, security awareness has heightened.  From elementary school to high school, proper precautions need to be taken in order to protect everyone on the campus.

Dallas Haun, student at Faith Lutheran, said he feels safer this year.

Employees like Mrs. Chalfant, the receptionist, try their best to keep us safe. Chalfant uses a buzzer system that allows only selected people to enter. When Mrs. Chalfant sees someone walking up to the door, she then buzzes him or her in allowing them to come inside. On the other hand, if she does not know the person then she will not buzz them in.

While some feel safer because we have a buzzer system, in actuality it might be a false sense of security.   When coming to the protection of an intruder Chalfant said, “The only thing that is going to protect us is that I don’t open the door because it looks like that person does not need to be here.”

Chalfant described the reflective glass as another deterrent. This reflective glass allows her to see who is outside while they cannot see inside, enabling her to better decide whom to let inside, better protecting our school.

Along with this reflective glass, “Something new that will better our protection in the near future is that we are putting a new license scanner in,” Chalfant said. “This is a system in which the visitor will have to let their drivers license be scanned so that if that person committed any past crime, it would show.”

This allows Mrs. Chalfant to better make the decision if she wants to allow this person to stay in the building or if she should have to alert security.

Students like Zach Friel, Faith Lutheran Junior, feel to be in a safer environment. “The campus feels safer than last year,” Friel said, “with all of the school shootings that have been going on around the country, I think that Faith has taken proper precautions to ensure that we are all safe.”

Mr. Richard Powers, a veteran security guard, highlighted everything that security does as a whole to ensure that the campus and students are protected at all times. “They close all the gates except one during school hours and at night, and check everyone that is coming in,” Powers said, “There’s two guards in the day and two during the night… Although we are doing a good job with it so far, we must always be prepared because anything can happen.”