Students practice emergency protocol

Madeline Welch

On Oct. 25, students in the lower, middle and high schools crowded into Rockefeller Chapel to meet their advisers, obeying the instructions of the new “Relocation and Reunification Drill,” which was an updated version of the inclement weather drill.

Paul Gunty, the primary faculty member behind the development of the new drill, explained that the main function of this replacement drill is to reunify the school in one location, Rockefeller Chapel, rather than the three locations that were included in the previous drill, to make it easier for parents to locate and pick up children if students and faculty could not re-enter the school for safety reasons. With the support of the university police to control traffic, a carline would be made for parents to take home their kids from Rockefeller Chapel.

The chief complaint of the students was the allocation of space in the drill, as many of the older students had little room to sit down while remaining with their advisories.

“They should plan out the space better because the juniors and seniors only get a small little alcove where there’s no room for everyone to sit down,” junior Emily He said.

Mr. Gunty said school officials are adjusting some of the procedures.

“We knew it was going to be snug for the bigger kids,” he said, “and now that we’ve done it, we might take a few pews away from the littler kids and give them to the bigger kids now that we’ve seen how much each grade level takes up.”