On Lockdown
My school, Saint Peter’s College in Jersey City, has been on lockdown since 10.34am after a “suspicious note” was found. The campus website notes that “there has not been an actual incident”; my students and I, and everyone in our building, have been told to stay put until further notice (we haven’t been told much and have been watching a live video with Jersey City police getting out of their vehicles with dogs…..more news here on Fox News). I’m hoping things are all right and wondering if I’m going to be able to get home to meet Charlie’s schoolbus…….
Tags: asd, asperger, autism, autism spectrum disorder, College, jersey city, lockdown, pdd-nos, Psychology, saint peter's college, security
26 opinions for On Lockdown
Niksmom
Feb 20, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Oh dear! I hope that everything turns out fine and it’s just a false alarm. Better safe than sorry, though. Will Jim be able to meet Charlie of you can’t?
Will be thinking safe thoughts for you today!
Patrick
Feb 20, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Or, can you call his school and have them keep him late, pending your current dilemma? Or has he been told to play in the backyard if your not there?
Mrs. C
Feb 20, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Praying for you all!!
feebee
Feb 20, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Yes, can Jim come? This does seem like an extreme circumstance!
Bink
Feb 20, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Thinking of you and Charlie.
Emily
Feb 20, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Oh, this school shooting stuff really freaks me out. Makes me want to home school until everyone’s about 30. Stay safe.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Feb 20, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Am back home now and about to run out to meet the bus; now the report is that the campus is being “evacuated.”
Jim and I figured out a contingency plan: There is an instructor in the district who has an autistic son; I know her and I would have called her to get Charlie (though she also has to rush home to meet the bus for her own son). I got a little too assertive at one moment when we were told that we could go via one exit and it was locked—every door leading to the outside was locked as were all the gates and there was yellow police tape around the whole campus. Finally some of us were able to leave via the recreation center. The very busy thoroughfare that runs through the campus, Kennedy Blvd, was blocked off, so there was gridlock…..
This kind of thing makes me wonder all over about working relatively far away from where we live and in a busy urban area. We have no margin of error as far as Charlie’s care: Because we live relatively far out in the suburbs, Jim has a long walk to the train for a long ride in. We’d live much closer to NYC but this town has the right school program for Charlie.
But what is this world coming too.
Niksmom
Feb 20, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Just glad to know you are ok! Whew.
feebee
Feb 20, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Whew indeed.
Averted crises make me rethink my shoestring routine too. I was recently faced with an unexpected hospital stay and really had no contingency plan to care for Bede, let alone the other five children. I was able to leave (AMA, but it was CYA AMA, to coin a phrase) and everything was fine. But what if I had had to stay? But, but…
Anyway.
Glad all is well for your family!
Kristina Chew, PhD
Feb 20, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Thank you so much—-am feeling a little odd that I need to think of a “lockdown plan” now. Just in case.
Emily
Feb 20, 2008 at 6:23 pm
We have to have them for our classrooms. I have literally stood in each of my classrooms and devised a safey/barricade plan in case there is an “incident” on the campus. Surreal. Until it becomes real, of course. These poor parents and families who lose their children in this way…it’s just awful.
Paula
Feb 20, 2008 at 6:24 pm
I hope everything ends up being OK. Glad you got out to get Charlie.
Justthisguy
Feb 20, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Wow, that just gets my inner autie jumping up and down, so to speak, of the injustice of this kind of thing. “Lockdown” used to be a term only understood by prisoners and prison guards. I thought my schools were prison-like in the ’50s and ’60s, but there were no fences around them, no ID cards, anyone could come and go as he pleased, there were no cops in the schools, etc. usw. It seems much worse now.
I note the sheep-like passive behavior at VPI and NIU. Government schools train people to be passive and obedient, which was Dewey’s objective all along. If I were ever in a Government school (not likely at all) and somebody tried that false-imprisonment “lockdown” nonsense on me, I’d dive out the nearest window and escape and evade from _all_ criminals, be they free-lance or .gov
Justthisguy
Feb 20, 2008 at 7:10 pm
No, seriously, the right thing to do in that kind of situation is not to order everyone to stay in place in the killing zone, but to advise them to scatter and disperse in all directions, individually. I think that would give everyone the best chance of survival. Of course the authorities would have to give up control…
I mean, you can’t have a mass murder if the mass has already dispersed, can you?
FXSmom
Feb 20, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Glad you were able to get Charlie and now have a plan in place. What a scary reality.
Cliff
Feb 20, 2008 at 8:03 pm
I am glad that you’re ok and everything worked out. Hate those kind of circumstances, but who doesn’t?
Cliff
Kristina Chew, PhD
Feb 20, 2008 at 9:02 pm
This is Tom Comey quoted in the New York Times—he’s the chief of police of Jersey City: “‘We know to a certain degree of certainty that we have not identified a gunman on campus.’”
“Certain” + “certainty” = ???
Regan
Feb 20, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Kristina,
Glad that you are safe and sound, although I can see how this would throw a major spanner into things and be frightening to boot.
(I know that I probably don’t have my contingency plans for unforeseen events worked out as well as I should–might have to do some serious thinking about that.)
dkmnow
Feb 20, 2008 at 10:25 pm
“We know to a certain degree of certainty that we have not identified a gunman on campus.”
Chief Tom Comey has since confirmed not denying rumored suspicions that his earlier alleged remarks may not have been misreported by unnamed sources.
I feel safer already.
Daisy
Feb 20, 2008 at 10:34 pm
I’m glad you’re safe and that you made it home to Charlie, although I’m sure your blood pressure was up!
In defense of lockdown plans, I’ve worked with police on the rationale for such plans. Please trust those in charge and drill like your life depends on it — because it does.
Justthisguy
Feb 20, 2008 at 10:51 pm
dkm, it’s called “Security Theater.” “Feeling safe” is not the same as being safe. One can feel safe, and be at horrible risk. One can feel right nervous and scaredy-like, but be objectively quite safe.
But you knew that already, right?
God, I miss the fifties, when there was still some vestige of the partially-free country we thought we had!
Yeah, it wasn’t perfect, but some people still remembered ordered liberty and acted to preserve it.
Oh, see Jerry Pournelle’s last few posts about that; he’s gettin’ right earnest, now that he has found out he has brain cancer.
He’s taking the bad news with his usual Viking Manliness, of course, almost equal to that of Amanda Baggs
pickel
Feb 20, 2008 at 11:07 pm
I live very close to NIU so have heard a lot more of the information than other regions of the country. Apparently, there was a threat several days/a week before the actual event.
K- please be careful. And I think its a good idea to try to come up with a contingency plan for Charlie. I know we have found ourselves in that situation before and it is scary…racing home to beat the clock.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Feb 20, 2008 at 11:18 pm
I really wouldn’t want to do it, but I would have asked Charlie’s teacher or an instructor to watch him and, given the circumstances, I think it would have been all right.
It’s amazing how the protective instinct zeroes in on one.
I was at Charlie’s school for a visit last year when they had a lockdown drill—6 kids, teachers, speech therapist, and me all in a bathroom. My students were calling and texting like crazy, but I got the sense they had been through such drills before.
Justthisguy
Feb 20, 2008 at 11:41 pm
And this being New Jersey, none of y’all had a weapon, not even a pocketknife, right?
KimJ
Feb 21, 2008 at 12:40 am
Back in the 80’s a bomb threat didn’t even make the local news. I was in community college and we were evacuated. The problem was, it was in the middle of nowhere (rural campus) and there were two tiny roads leading out to the small highway. We were in the driveway for hours. If there had been a bomb (with shrapnel) we would have been sitting ducks.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Feb 21, 2008 at 12:45 am
Well, I did have my trusty laptop……. it was unclear whether it was a bomb threat or something involving a weapon—-both were reported.
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