By Emily Bresette

Alarms blaring, 500 STA students walked down the Donnelly staircase, across the quad and squeeze past M&A, with a fence on the left side. Even though the fire alarm is ringing loudly, no one is paying attention. Students are leisurely walking and talking about the Blue and White mixer. No one is concerned with their safety and girls continue on with their conversation.

It’s obvious at times like these that STA needs a better fire and tornado drill system in place for them to be effective.

For starters, the entrance to Donnelly through the parking lot is blocked off due to construction of the chapel. This means the entire school has to walk on the tiny sidewalk by the M&A entrance. Sure this is fine for coming and leaving school, but this is a terrible idea in a fire drill.

During this drill, the entire drill walked about as fast as someone at a Barry Manilow concert, not nearly fast enough to escape a burning fire. There is no way the entire student body would ever make it across safely by just this one route, especially if M&A was on fire. No one can reasonably think this would be safe. So if M&A is on fire, where are we supposed to go? Do we all run down the hill behind Donnelly to the soccer field and risk students slipping on the hill? Or do we all go behind Goppert?

There are also the girls who will do what they want and completely disregard any plan set in place by the administration. There are so many possibilities that are safer and make more sense than what we currently have in place.

Furthermore, what if the chapel somehow catches on fire? All the students in M&A could easily get out and go to the parking lot, but what about Donnelly students? STA cannot expect those students to risk their lives and try and cross the burning quad. This is unreasonable and so unsafe that there is no way it can ever happen. The Donnelly students either need to go behind Donnelly or behind Goppert, not cross the quad.

The tornado drills are an even worse situation. There wasn’t an alarm in this drill, so maybe that’s what led to no one taking it seriously.

I’ve never seen more students talk during a drill in my life. First of all, we were all just sitting on the basement floor. I’m pretty sure that if there were an actual tornado, none of us would be casually sitting on the floor, giggling to our friends. We would all be wondering what we are supposed to do because none of us listened during the drill. Students need to start paying more attention during these drills, because you never know when one will hit you when you are unprepared.

As much as I think the administration needs to change the fire and tornado drill policies, they are not entirely to blame. Students need to start putting more effort into these drills as well. These are so important, I’m not really sure why we don’t take them more seriously. I don’t know about the rest of STA, but I would rather go through a fire and tornado drill rather than be unprepared when one actually happens. You never really know when one will strike and it certainly can’t hurt to be prepared, especially for something with the potential to cause so much damage.