On December 14, 2012, the lives of twenty-six people, twenty of them children between the ages of six and seven, were taken at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut. A decade later on May 24, 2022, nineteen children and two teachers were murdered at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. These are only a few examples of the innumerable cases of gun violence so commonplace in today’s world. As communities around the country are faced with tragedy after tragedy, it is all too easy to quantify the lives lost and become numb to the aftermath of these horrendous events.
Considering vastly divided experiences, opinions, and emotions surrounding guns, how are we, the Loomis Chaffee community, supposed to talk about something that impacts so many different people in so many different ways?
“We call a lockdown drill every year. Every dorm goes through a lockdown drill, and every part of campus can hear when a siren goes off. We discuss it in our class meetings, talking about [what to do] in case things happen. We also have a significant number of security cameras around campus, two campus security guards on all the time, 24/7, and a campus security person overnight. We do our best to make the school as safe as possible,” Dean of Students Elliot Dial said.
In efforts to prepare students for the situations of varying intensities, a hypothetical scenario was included in prefect and resident assistant (RA) training where a student reported another student in the dorm to be in possession of a gun. Groups of randomly assigned prefects and RAs then collectively agreed upon the best response to this situation. There was a general consensus that the intervention of an adult or even the police was needed.
“We try to prepare our prefects/RAs for all types of different scenarios, and we live in a world in which this is a scenario that we’re all terrified of. But [it’s] also a scenario that … we want to make sure our students, especially our student leaders, know that if there’s a lot of unknowns, their job is not to investigate, their job is to inform an adult,” Dean Dial said.
Acknowledging the sensitivity around discussing gun safety, we must place a great emphasis on the median between the dangers of both over and under preparation.
“I think it is an unfortunate reality of what’s happening in the United States, but … the school is on the right track. They’re not fear-mongering and doing lockdown drills 24/7, but we’re also at a place where we’re prepared for the realistic possibility that, unfortunately, this happens,” Calvin Pan ’23 said.

Though rare, the most recent lockdown at Loomis occurred three years ago in 2019 when a report arose of an individual possessing a gun near the outer bounds of campus near the hockey rink. This was eventually cleared as a misunderstanding but left the school community in a state of alert.
“I remember I was hiding in the PHI, all the lights were off, everyone was crowded around each other, and there were even people crying. It was quite stressful. In the end, it was all fine because it was apparently a false report,” Helen Shen ’23 said.
The Loomis community has the privilege of retaining a strong trust in our school’s safety, but the importance of empathy should never be overlooked.
“Sandy Hook was very close, and we have students who had friends involved in that tragedy. The best thing we can do is to make sure that we’re willing to support the communities around us, and that we help our students understand the tragedy … Our school theme this year is empathy, so understanding what individuals have gone through and doing our best to provide support in any way that we can to these different communities is one thing Loomis tries to do a good job on,” Dean Dial said.