It’s been 20 years since the massacre at Columbine High School shocked us all, and not even seven since the lives lost at Sandy Hook Elementary School left the American president in tears. It’s been a year and a half since Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School became a household name. School shootings are a dark norm in the United States, to the point that an entire generation of students have been doing active shooter drills for as long as they can remember. The cycle after a school shooting, or any mass shooting, is all too familiar: Thoughts and prayers pour out of Republican mouths, but it’s always too soon to politicize things. It’s never the guns that are to blame, the NRA whispers in these politicians’ ears as they hand them their next bag of gold. Never come for the guns.
Despite the fact that most mass shooters use legally purchased guns, calls for common sense gun safety laws meet insistence that existing laws just need enforcing, but then the nation fails to do even that. In recent years, mental illness has frequently been presented as the sole reason these murderers are able to murder so many, so quickly. Yet the mental health crisis being blamed for American gun violence is also ignored.
And so the nation has never managed to keep weapons of mass carnage out of the wrong hands, and the massacres continue. “Never again!” is said again and again, because the gun lobby has deep pockets, and has convinced the legislators that reelection is the most important thing of all.
And so, 20 years after Columbine, almost seven since Sandy Hook, and just 18 months after Parkland, the 2018-19 school year is rife with headlines about parents, teachers, and schools taking matters into their own hands. The bulletproof backpacks that aren’t even bulletproof. The kitty litter-and-buckets to build instant latrines for hours-long lockdowns—with popup tent for privacy optional.
And in one Michigan city, architects created a school building with mass shootings in mind.
The design of the new sections includes subtle safe spaces that can be used to protect students in the event of a shooting, and long curved hallways that would offer protection too.
"To cut down on the sight lines if we have an active shooter in the building," (Fruitport Superintendent Bob) Szymoniak said.
By reducing the sight lines, anyone with malicious intent would be unable to see the entire length of the hallway.
Cement block bump outs are also placed in the curved hallways.
"To cut down on sight lines further, it also gives an opportunity for students to hide back behind and hopefully get help from within the classroom," Szymoniak said.
As commenters nehill and jplanner point out, the bump outs, pictured above, also give a shooter an opportunity to ambush students, staff, and even law enforcement.
Additionally, all of the classrooms have one hiding corner that’s not visible to a murderer prowling the hallway and peering in windows—windows covered with a new film designed to resist the impact of gunfire. The school district also has “access controlled locks” on all doors, so that Szymoniak and other members of the Fruitport educational leadership can lock down the entire school district with one push of a button.
Szymoniak says that these little architectural touches will save lives and give students and staff a better chance of survival while they wait for law enforcement. What’s more, he expects Fruitport to be a trendsetter in school construction.
"These are going to be design elements that are just naturally part of buildings going into the future," he said.
What he didn’t say is that it’s easier to change the way we build schools than it is to pass common sense gun safety laws.