Students at Laie Elementary School
are resuming normal activities after reports of harassing phone calls put the
school in lockdown on March 8.
According to the Laie Elementary
School official website, a front office staff received harassing phone calls requesting for information on
March 7. While the purpose of the request and the caller’s identity were
unknown, the staff member made a report to Honolulu Police Department (HPD).
The
lockdown was put into effect shortly after a threat of bodily harm to the staff
member from more harassing phone calls on March 8. During the lockdown,
students were kept safe inside the locked classrooms and were released at the
end of the school day.
HPD was on campus around noon
and checked on the phone number of the harassing phone calls, and concluded
that this was a "scam”. No injuries have been reported. A security
attendant from Keamalu Consulting Investigation Consulting Agency was sent by
District Office to guard campus on March 11.
Has a 6-year-old daughter
currently attending Laie Elementary School, Skyler Chambers, a business junior
from Utah, said “I got aggravated when I found out about the lockdown. It was
2:15pm when I went to pick up my daughter as a normal off school time. I saw
cops running around like a mad house. It makes me nervous.”
“Parents need to know what is
going on. It will make me feel better if I know how the school is going to
protect the children,” Chambers continued. “I wish the school can contact
parents through either email or phone call but not give us a letter after…My
daughter said the teacher made them to sit under the desk for 2 hours and go to
toilet in a bucket.”
As a prospective teacher,
Lauren Clifford, a TESOL junior from Arizona,
shared her opinion if she was put in the situation of a lockdown. She said, “As
a teacher, we’ve to be brace, take authority, take action, and be confident.
The most important thing is to keep the students calm. A teacher shouldn’t act
scared, the students would get worry. A true hero is to be strong for others.”
Roy
H. Yamamoto, the Director
of Campus Safety & Security, said BYU-Hawaii has an emergency notification
system to alert students for an emergency. He recalled, “We have used the
emergency notification system for tsunami warnings such as for the earthquake
off British Columbia in October 2012 and Japan in March
2011.”
According to the campus alert system
poster themed “Don’t be the last to know” says, “BYU
Hawaii’s new alert system enables emergency response team members to
communicate with students, staff, and faculty in minutes by sending a message
via a number of contact methods—including email, text messaging, and cell
phones.”
For students who
would like to receive emergency alerts from BYU-H’s Everbridge Aware campus
alert system, here are the
instructions:
1.
Login to my.byuh.edu
2.
Click on myTools > Update
Personal Information
Enter or update your Campus
Emergency Alert Phone
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