The ALICE policy was created to replace the traditional teachings on school shootings in the hopes of reducing the casualties of both staff and students. Students are told to follow these steps Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate.
There are many different types of scenarios that the ALICE team asks you to prepare for. During the scenarios, you’re asked to think about what ALICE protocol would be the best to use. However, if these scenarios were to happen in real life the chance that students would remember the protocols is low.
According to Navigate360, the number of people shot in school shootings with ALICE dropped from 58% to 50% in comparison to the traditional way. The program aims to make that high percentage lower.
The scenario videos are staged, meaning the kids know what is going to happen, implying that they don’t have the same stress you would have during the real thing. When a shooter comes to your school, most people lose their common sense because they’re freaking out. Unless you are a cool-headed person the ALICE protocol might not even come to mind.
ALICE tells students to tackle the shooter if they are near you, implying that one should fight violence with violence. Instead of creating a ban on weapons such as guns, schools are teaching their students to be violent.
Some think the solution should be to get rid of guns but the majority of Americans would vote against this because it overrides the Second Amendment. Since it would be hard to get rid of guns, the security of schools needs to change.
Many public schools don’t have the money to improve security, so the task is put on parents and students to report any odd behavior or signs of danger. Even if they wouldn’t go to this level of extremity it’s better to be safe than sorry. ALICE does a good job of saying you should report when you see someone with a gun in the school but they don’t go over how to approach someone about the possibility of someone bringing in a weapon.
The scenario videos show a clip of students tackling the shooter, however in all of those clips it was the jock football boys who did this task. Not only does this discriminate on who should be tackling the shooter, but also if you did have to tackle the shooter not every class has a football player. So if they did need someone to tackle the shooter a class might not have anyone that can do it. They don’t go over in the videos what you can do if this is the case. They don’t show the consequences that could come from this. Many students would not tackle someone with a gun due to the fear of being shot, so the chances that students would actually do this are low.
ALICE does not prepare students for the trauma of someone getting shot because even with ALICE, someone can get shot and die. They don’t go over the fact that you might see someone get shot and be forced to leave them and evacuate the building if the shooter is still near you or in the building. If the person who got shot is your friend this could be a traumatic experience where you might not want to leave them but you have to.
One thing many schools do that Truckee High doesn’t is have a drill where they get a staff member or a fellow student to act as a shooter and go through the classrooms with a toy gun and pretend to be the intruder. The other students and staff are then supposed to use ALICE and get out of the school safely.
Depending on what grade level you are in, the ALICE program is taught differently, for instance, if you are in elementary school, they don’t go into the scenario of someone coming in with a gun, they focus more on just the drill and use scenarios such as a bear. This could be confusing for students because they learn one way and then when they get to high school it’s taught differently. This could also lead to elementary students not taking it as seriously if they are told it is only a bear.
While ALICE is more effective than the traditional active shooter policy there are still many faults to the program and there could be better solutions to solving gun violence in American schools. There is no perfect solution so by following ALICE, All one can hope is that students get out of the school safely, but it all depends on the situation you are in and the location of the intruder.
