During the 2023-24 school year, Park’s administration implemented two new policies in response to safety concerns: a closed campus policy to limit Park students from leaving the building and prevent unauthorized guests from entering, as well as an electronic pass system to keep better track of where students are throughout the day.
Senior Amelia Jacoby said she does not usually witness anything that makes her feel unsafe in school due to not leaving class often. However, she said there is always room for improvement.
“I’ve not personally witnessed anything that scares me too much. I also don’t really leave class much, so I wouldn’t be in those situations often,” Jacoby said. “I don’t really know that much about (school safety measures), but I’m sure there’s always something to make stuff safer. Closed campus has definitely at least helped attendance.”
Junior Jillian Dixon said she usually feels safe in school, but knows other students who don’t, so more could be done to create a universal feeling of safety for everyone.
“(The school should) make that feeling of safety universal for everyone because I know people don’t always feel safe, especially when things happen, like fights, people don’t feel safe,” Dixon said. “Also, (we need) more communication (from) admin, to be like, ‘Hey, everything is okay. We are dealing with it; things are being dealt with.’”
Administrative assistant Mary Strouts said the new closed-campus lunch policy is designed to keep unwanted guests out of the school for safety reasons, and it’s not uncommon for schools to have such policies. She said the change may be hard for some students, but it was made with safety in mind.
“The purpose of (the closed campus policy) is to decrease the chance of someone that is not supposed to be in the school coming into the school,” Strouts said. “St. Louis Park is one of the only schools around that wasn’t a closed campus. It’s tough for kids to go from an open campus to a closed campus, but it is for the safety of the students, whether they agree with it or not.”
Dixon said the closed campus policy has not done much to solve any issues, and it only harms seniors who are mature enough to handle open lunch.
“The closed campus specifically didn’t really solve much,” Dixon said. “The people that left for open lunch were only basically seniors, who already had the maturity to know that they had to get back in time and be mature about it, but closing off the campus just kind of felt like, ‘Well, you’re not really solving it.’”
Jacoby said whether or not youth take violence and safety policies seriously depends on the context of the violence, and some types of violence are seen as jokes, while others are taken more seriously.
“Some violence is taken more seriously than in the past, but I also think there are certain types of violence that are becoming more like jokes. If it came down to it, people would take stuff seriously,” Jacoby said.
Dixon said violence is not taken as seriously as it should be by youth, with some of the main reasons being the prominence of violence in media and video games, as well as students’ refusal to compromise with and understand each other.
“It depends on the context of the violence—sometimes, video games can be really violent, but also it’s the person that has to know they shouldn’t take it to real life,” Dixon said. “People (are) refusing to compromise and understand each other.”
Strouts said violence in youth may be a result of excessive social media and phone use due to less in-person interaction.
“Social media and time spent on phones really affects students and everybody who uses (them), because you have less interaction with people face to face,” Strouts said. “In turn, it creates less ability to have conversations and regulate nervous systems.”
Dixon said she usually feels safe in school but knows other students who don’t, and that more could be done to create a universal feeling of safety for everyone.
“(The school should) make that feeling of safety universal for everyone because I know people don’t always feel safe, especially when things happen, like fights, people don’t feel safe,” Dixon said. “Also, (we need) more communication (from) admin, to be like, ‘Hey, everything is okay. We are dealing with it; things are being dealt with.’”
