As everyone who was at Greenwood on March 8th knows, it was a very dramatic and long day.  

The day started off as normal, but during the last 15 minutes of first period teachers were alerted to check their emails. Students later learned that we were put into an alert status.

Students, even though put into alert, were then released as normal and headed to their second period.  When second period started, Assistant Principal Logic came on the intercom and announced that all students would have to give up their phones to their teachers at the beginning of each class period and would get them back at the end of each class because of a new cell phone policy the administrators wanted to try out.  

This shocked the student body and made many of them very upset. Students in Ms. Lee’s second-period Algebra II class were especially upset about having to give up their phones. Some even claimed they didn’t have to since they consider their phones their “property.” The arguments in this class got so overheated that Officer Rich was asked to come into the classroom to help calm the students down.  

Assistant Principal Wix  later explain that we were in a lockdown because of a student or students  who were sending inappropriate pictures around the school during class time. The administrative office has been unable to catch the culprit, so they wanted to try to catch them by making it impossible to do so during class and making it easier to monitor people during the breaks.  Mr. Wix said “That there would be no permanent change in the cell phone policy.”

Later, parents were also sent an email from Principal Dunn explaining the events of the day where it was further explained that a student had also made a comment on social media about bringing a weapon to school. The account was untraceable so there was heightened concern about finding the identity of the student. The email assured the parents that this was being investigated and that the students would be protected at all costs and that all precautions were being taken.

This day got even more dramatic when the fire alarm went off. The students were outside for about thirty minutes while they waited for the school to be checked. Several fire trucks showed up to make sure the school was safe and, as the email read, they figured out that no alarms were pulled as a prank and there was no fire or smoke that set off the alarm. Despite several rumors flying around the halls, the email assured there was no connection between the fire alarm and the cell-phone situation.

Tuesday was a very eventful day filled with many surprises, but Wednesday consisted of a normal day, with no alarms going off or phones being taken up in classes.