It’s common knowledge, Broomfield high school got a new security system this year. It has advanced the school as a whole by locking out kids that are late for class, parents that are trying to get into the office, or even people trying to volunteer for an event. Personally, it’s been an extra little morning challenge for me to pull my ID out, show the lock that I have it, and open the door in time with two backpacks, a french horn and a slightly weaponous water bottle. I mean, it’s Broomfield.  

The high school has become a place for the community to become closer, and this new security system is breaking that bond apart by this sudden and unnecessary restriction of trust. This is all apart from the fact that half of the little door beepers don’t really work. In order to regularly enter Broomfield high school, one must become familiar with which doors the ID will unlock. People have also opened the door by turning their phone on and facing the back to the lock, needless to say the whole thing is probably a pretty cheap system.

I will say this, the system has forced the students to use teamwork skills to help get everybody through the doors. Usually, somebody will hold the door for you, then you hold the door for the next person. Only one has to remember their ID for the group. I don’t think that the new security system was necessary, because most people will just let a peer or parent in the school who wants to come in. If some shady person wearing a mask is trying to break in, humans by nature have an instinct not to let that person in. Most bright eyed teenagers lugging fashionable backpacks into the school at seven in the morning are most likely attending classes today, and that’s why they help each other out. Some middle aged people with kind faces decked out in eagle spirit gear probably want to get in the building to support a kid they have going there. Instead of welcoming them in, they must wait for somebody to be kind enough to hold the door, receiving suspicious glares before cautiously deciding to be rung in to the office. This is all if they can locate the correct door.

Besides, this hypothetical person trying to break in if Broomfield becomes a high crime city won’t have much of a challenge; the system has become nothing but an obstacle for everyone trying to get in. School security is a difficult problem to solve, and I don’t think that Broomfield High School has perfectly figured it out yet.