LYNDON- On August 28th, the first day of classes for Lyndon Institute, a lockdown was initiated after a suspicious person was spotted on campus carrying what looked like a concealed rifle. The report was sent in by a non-local resident who called the Lyndon Police Department with the warning.
When Police responded to the distress call, Chief Harris was on the scene. "As I arrived to L.I., I noticed that students were already being rounded up and secured into buildings by staff and faculty. When I reached the front doors and entered the building, all students had been placed in classrooms or safe places away from the hallways, and faculty were ready to assist."
The call had come in when the Institute was in passing time, meaning that students were moving to their next classes which could have been in any building across the entire school's campus. "It was very difficult situation for the faculty," Chief Harris added, "It certainly would have been a lot easier for them had they received my call to go into lockdown just a few minutes earlier; that being said they did exceptionally well taking care and securing their students."
In an article released by the Caledonian Record regarding the lockdown, it was reported that there was a mishap in safety protocol. This statement is false, there was no break or fault in the Safety Protocols at the school; there was, however, a lapse in communication protocol. The new Communication Manager to L.I., Javin Leonard, was quoted stating, "When everything was occuring I was sending word out to parents about what was going on; we have a tool called Robo-Call that we use to send information to parents regarding game schedules and things of that nature. We are able to use it in cases like this to send updates to parents on the situation, however due to the previous administrator locking the in-case-of-emergency function to parents, I was unable to use Robo-Call to update parents. Luckily, I quickly moved to social media, primarily Facebook, and we were able to keep everyone posted and updated as we went through the Lockdown."
Was their a break in protocol, yes; a break in safety protocol, no; Is L.I. safe for students, Chief Harris was quoted saying "Absolutely!"