Anxious. Worried. Confused. Upset. Nervous. Scared.

These were the feelings of students after the second accidental lockdown this school year. On Monday, the lockdown was triggered at 8:02 a.m. and was cleared around 8:24 a.m., after a teacher unintentionally triggered a campus-wide lockdown instead of calling for administrative assistance. After LPD cleared the lockdown, classes started as normal, with around 15 minutes of 1st period lost.

“When you’re in a classroom alone and a lockdown goes off, you’re on your own,” junior Angel Schmidt-Benitez said. “You have to figure out what to do when there’s nobody to tell you what to do. That’s just another responsibility. We have to live up to that. Sometimes we’re gonna have to be adults when there are no adults around.”

Schmidt-Benitez ran into another room to hide with another student and teacher. For him and junior Chloe Kaiser, they were without adults when the alarm went off.

“I felt like I was responsible for everybody else because I was the older one, so I felt like I had to take charge,” Kaiser said. “I was freaking out, but I knew what to do, which was helpful.”

Students who were just arriving on campus were locked out of the school. They were instructed to go back to their cars and hide.

“If we were to hear anything unfortunate, like police cars or sirens or anything like that, we were just gonna drive away,” junior Violet Dungan said. “I was just anxious. I shouldn’t have to be scared of a lockdown at school.”

Freshman Presli Rodriguez was supposed to walk to her class with her sister, but ended up separated from her when the alarm sounded.

“It was a little bit scary because I didn’t know where she was at the time,” Rodriguez said. “Now I know kind of what it’ll be like if it ever is real. You never know.”

Every lockdown drill typically happens at the same time as to not disturb valuable class time. Having a false alarm in the morning simulated a real life emergency.

“It’s very scary because this is my first year at Rouse, and this is my first impression of it,” freshman Adalynn Torres said. “When I was hiding with my friends, we were whispering, saying what we would do if something was to go down. I remember the librarians telling us if this was real, to run out the doors. You could see on everyone’s faces that they were very scared too.”

Another student in a common space when the lockdown happened was junior Davin Kim, who had met up with his friends in the library before going to class.

“We were really confused,” Kim said. “All of a sudden there was everyone just piling into the room. That’s when I knew there was a lockdown happening. We had gotten word that a teacher accidentally pressed the badge too many times. After that, I felt like most everybody was upset at the fact that this is the second time this happened this year by accident.”

Centegix, a rapid response safety plan, was implemented at the beginning of the year to add an extra safeguard in the event of an emergency, as well as the TEA policy requiring that classroom doors stay closed and locked during school hours.

“So much violence has become of our country that we have to fear someone coming into our school and we have to practice stuff like this,” sophomore Harmony George said. “I was disappointed that it was a false alarm, and it happened twice. Now, if that alarm goes off, people aren’t going to take it as seriously.”

According to Sandy Hook Promise, children of color are more likely to experience gun violence at school, especially Black children, who are four times more likely to be killed by guns than white children.

“My heart goes out to all the victims out there,” Kim said. “It definitely has gotten a bit worrisome, especially what you see online and stories of people that have been in school shootings. I don’t feel scared per se, but more so worried that it could happen to me one day.”

In 2022, the U.S. had the most school shootings in a year since 1999, when the shooting at Columbine High School happened. From then until present day, more than 338,000 students have experienced gun violence at school.

“Overall, on a worldwide scale, gun violence is kind of a thing we can’t avoid,” Schmidt-Benitez said. “It’s gonna take a lot of long years before we can fully find a solution that will prevent gun violence. Until it comes, we’re all in danger.”