Are You Informed?

By Genevieve Duckworth

How would you feel if you knew what kind of incidents were going on behind your back at school? Would you feel safe? Secure? Well, that’s just what my group and I want to find out. Many students at our school state that they feel uninformed about what incidents go on during school and quite frankly we feel the same way. Only certain sources are willing to discuss what kind of incidents go on in the school grounds, such as fires, break-ins, vandalism, destruction of school property and more.

My group and I conducted a survey regarding these issues within the school and got an amazing 61 responses. When asked if they had recently noticed any damage to school property, only 34% said that they hadn’t noticed anything. 59% of people said that they had noticed graffiti, 31% said that they had seen broken glass/bottles and 3% said that they had noticed other things, such as broken tables, chairs and damage to other school facilities. When asked if they knew of anyone that has vandalized on school grounds or broken into the school in the past, a surprising 21% answered with a ‘yes’. I imagine that this is quite shocking to hear for most people. It was not believed that the student body knew much information regarding these incidents, seeing that when we asked how informed the people taking our survey felt about school incidents, only 10 out of 61 people felt informed / completely informed. When asked if they had been spoken to by teachers about previous school break-ins, 93% of the surveyed responded with a ‘no’, and when asked if students had spoken to them about previous school break-ins, a smaller amount (80%) of the surveyed responded ‘no’. This really goes to show that the students in our school need to be informed about what people shouldn’t do to our school and the school property.

Other incidents that people have reported hearing about in the school include fires, people breaking in and stealing from other people’s lockers, stealing keys from teachers to get into rooms, physical fights between students, other items being stolen and students setting off the fire alarms. My group and I interviewed one of the assistant principals at the University High School, Mr. Jones (who specified that we were allowed to use his name in our articles), to find out more information regarding school break ins/vandalism and other school incidents. On the topic of fires, Mr. Jones told us that if a fire alarm is triggered and the fire brigade comes but there is no fire, the school can be charged up to $3000 and the person responsible might have to pay some of the fee. However, if there is a fire, then the fire brigade will usually put out the fire, free of charge. He also told us that the school spends thousands of dollars each year from money that should be put towards the curriculum, to repair damage to the school, clean off and repaint walls that have been vandalized and fix all of the other incidents caused by people acting foolishly on the school grounds. This means that in the long run, a lot of the damage that these people do to the school is also doing a lot of damage to the students and staff members. We also found out from Mr. Jones about what the staff do after a break-in or someone has vandalized the school. He told us that after any of these incidents have occurred they go straight to the police. If the person who defaced the school property is a student at the school, then their parents are contacted and they are suspended. However if they are not, then the police are notified. In the past, the police have confronted and arrested someone that doesn’t attend U.H.S. who snuck into the school grounds when they were locked and defaced school property.

Though not many of these incidents have occurred throughout the past year it is still a huge issue for schools all around Melbourne. After an incident, like the ones mentioned previously, the school takes some precautions in order to prevent similar things from happening and just incidents in general. They lock up the school in the early afternoon, turn on security cameras and motion sensors throughout the school, and after something particularly bad happens, security can be hired to watch over the property.

So can you really feel safe in our school now knowing about some of the things that go on behind the backs of the students? We can’t say for sure, however - there is still so much more information to find out. By knowing more about these situations within the school, so much will be able to be done regarding the prevention of school vandalism and the ‘unmasking’ of who is behind it.