“Parkland students start school year with heavy police presence, classroom locks, video surveillance, IDs around their necks”
Kelli Kennedy is a journalist who covers articles such as current events. She is well-known as she has been seen on The New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC News, Time Magazine and Fox News. Looking at her other articles, Kennedy is not known for bias and she rather speaks the truths about what is currently going on in the world.
The main point of this article is to show the aftermath of the tragedy that occured on February 14, 2018 at Stoneman Douglas High School is Parkland, Florida. Kennedy’s article talks about the kids going back to school and the High school updating its security and safety on the campus.
The article didn’t really have much of opinion coming from Kennedy herself, but many of the opinions came from the students who attended Stoneman Douglas High School and their opinion on the new updated security. Some of them agreed that they feel a bit more safe and others expressed their opinion disagreeing and giving reasons why they don’t agree. The proof that Kennedy pointed out in her article is that Stoneman Douglas spent 6.5 million dollars on their security enhancements. (pbs.org)
The writer is educating me with facts on this type of issue that was going on during the time of the shooting. She gives us the day the shooting occured, how much money the school district is spending on the aftermath of the shooting and the new enhancements and procedures that the school is making the kids follow.
The picture that was enlisted in the article clearly shows cops on the scene of the school the day after it occured. It fairly represents the news they are supposed to be illustrating rather than adding a picture that has absolutely nothing to do with the situation.
“Students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Wednesday returned to a more secure campus as they began their first new school year since a gunman killed 17 people in the freshman building.” (Kelli Kennedy, Chicago Tribune). As almost everyone that lives in the United States knows that this year on February 14th, 2018, one of the biggest mass shootings occured. Although it happened almost one year ago, it isn’t forgotten. The main idea of this article is to give people an update on Stoneman Douglas High School. After 17 people were murdered on the day of the shooting, many changes have taken place since. Enhancements such as ID to be worn at all times on students, security cameras updated, more security on the scene and students having to wear clear backpacks to class so staff knows what they are bringing to school. The other main idea aside from informing everyone on the update of this but also getting a one on one viewpoint on the students on Stoneman Douglas’ opinions on these new changes. Some are happy and some aren’t.
The facts that support the main idea of this article are: “But some say they still won't feel protected despite $6.5 million spent on security enhancements, including 18 safety monitors, new classroom locks and upgraded video surveillance” (Kelli Kennedy, Chicago Tribune August 15, 2018). In attempt to ensure that another school shooting didn’t occur at Stoneman Douglas, many new laws were enforced. Although these new rules came in majority of the kids that attended the school said that it would not change what already happened earlier that year. There were many arguments between these new changes because it seemed to others that no matter how many securities or how much money was spent, it would not change the fact that many kids were in fear of returning back to school. But others of course, agreed that they did like the new rules and were expecting this tragedy to be forgotten about and in hopes of having a better year. ID’s were also enforced at Stoneman, where all kids had to wear them at all times to ensure the safety of the school.
The author did provide enough factual information. She mentioned what happened on the first day back at Stoneman Douglas. 3All the students wore lanyards with ID’s around their necks as they walked past a heavy police presence. Volunteers greeted them with German shepherds, and a helicopter hovered overhead as a throng of media watched from across the street. (Kennedy,Chicago Tribune, 2018). As well as a good number of campus monitors were on patrol watching over the school. The new rule of visitors only having one way in and one day out of the campus and adding new fences to the campus. New hardware were put on the doors where the door locks as soon as the door is shut and metal detectors was also an idea but was future cancelled out. This information that was stated in the article gives us plenty of information on the changes that Douglas put in. Many of the information that was provided was mainly factual rather than eyewitnesses. The information in this article also provides new information on the experts that will not be working on the school grounds such as new security such as the campus monitors that will be monitoring the hallways and the volunteers working on the school.
This reporting in my opinion is true. I agreed with most of what was stated by Kennedy because I recall watching the news at home over the summer and hearing all the new things that were brought into the school to ensure safety and to prevent this tragedy from occuring again. I liked that the author didn’t just attempt to give her own opinion on the entire situation but instead added the opinion of the students that attend Stoneman Douglas. She mentioned only actual facts and then in the middle to the end of the article mentioned some freshman and quoted what they had to say about the new changes to the schools and their opinions on it. Usually most authors state their opinion in their article, sometimes it sounds bias, sometimes it doesn’t but Kennedy did not which I like because instead of reading an authors opinion, I can actually read and be informed and educated about the actual information rather than having to also hear their opinion on it which is most of the time not necessary. Upon choosing this article of current events, I did learn more about the new changes such as the new fences that were installed. I was not aware about that and I did not get to hear the kids of Stoneman Douglas voice on the outcome of this, in that case I did get educated from this article and I learned more than I had actually heard on the news.
As stated before, the article was more informative than opinionated. The article did not have the authors own ideas or what he/she believed. The article went straight in on the information and the title of the article was exactly what it was going to be about. The author also mentioned the shooter and the update of his trial in court which was a nice add on to inform the readers and update them on Nikolas Cruz as well. The article is also convincing. Usually when reading an article you can tell when the author is trying to be bias, or just trying to make you agree to what information they are providing us, but Kennedy just goes in-depth and givesd us details on the school and the changes it has made. No opinions nor were none of her thoughts included in this article. Sometimes it can be hard to believe an article because the author sometimes add things that aren’t true but this article is very clear that it is 100% factual information and not opinionated.
The point of view in this article would be third person. I think this article is better than most of the other current event articles on this topic I chose to write on. I like articles that give wide and clear information and everything I was looking for in this article was there. I didn’t have to read a long article that included the author's own opinion or had to read something that was not relevant to the topic. This article just went straight into detail and even added the students of Stoneman Douglas’ voice which is very important. The article was nicely written and ended nicely as well with extra information detail rather than details that is going to lengthen the article or make it less interesting to continue reading.