Stevens Students Respond to Cancelled School

Rapid City Area Schools were shut down on Friday, December 17th due to a potential threat on social media. Many special events were planned for the day including a second visit from Santa & Mrs. Claus and an Ugly Sweater Contest. As it stands as of print time, even weekend sporting events are up in the air. However, with recent events in Michigan, RCAS decided to be safe rather than sorry. An email from the district stated that “Law enforcement are currently investigating. Out of an abundance of caution, Rapid City Area Schools are closed today.”

Students at Stevens were asked about the impact of media/social media on a decision like this and how they felt about the decision made.

“It was a little crazy this morning to wake up, get ready for school and about to go out the door, and then figuring out that school was canceled. Social media plays a big role in school threats because the school has to stay on top of what is posted, however, that job is very difficult as it is near impossible to regulate what thousands of kids post online. However, it’s better to be safe than sorry and cancel school just in case. ” – Tenly Synhorst

“I have always thought that the power social media has is crazy. And in light of the current situation, just proves it further. I think the school made the correct decision. When the well-being of the staff and students is in jeopardy then the best thing to do is to just simply eliminate that. They did that by canceling school for the day. The school board did a good job this time. ” – Payton Phillips

“They should put restrictions on things like that so that it can’t happen because if people see a tiktok about school shootings then it might give more people the idea to do it and then there will be lots of problems to deal with.” – Brooklyn Ladner

“It was crazy when I hear that we did not have school today because of threats online, and then I did a little looking and many schools today were closed because of the new tread of threatening a school, and I do believe that different social media platforms should have thing to prevent things like that from being posted, I just find it crazy the things people say and do.” – Kaysie Hislip

“Those type of things are not a joke, however the school districts need to take them into consideration whether they are true or not for the students and staffs safety. If the posts were true, it is a positive thing as many people were protected today; but if they aren’t true, it affects the school in many ways as kids are missing out on learning over some rumors.” – Maddie Cutler

“I honestly can’t believe that there was a trend going around tiktok encouraging mass violence like school shootings. I can’t believe people are trying to make a “trend” or a day out of something so tragic. People – innocent children – have lost their lives because of things like this…and instead of trying to stop it from happening completely, we’re using social media to encourage it? It’s sick.” – Alina Levine

“Today was going to be a fun, great day but then it all got ruined because someone threatened the schools. We were hopefully going to double the money to donate to Toys for Tots, we were going to have fun in yearbook and singing Christmas carols but it was all ruined – and that is not fair to people who were looking forward to, or counting on, today. Social media is the reason everyone got caught up in this. Someone posted on TikTok saying something about schools nationwide being shot up or something similar and then specific schools got called out – causing all of RCAS to cancel school. Social media should be keeping these posts under close watch and turning whoever posted them over to the authorities, but they cannot be held entirely responsible either. People should not be posting this content anyway – and especially not as a joke because it affects hundreds, even thousands, of people when they do.” – Madi Dame

” I think social media did some good in this case, because it warned everyone about what was going on, people became more aware and on the same page. But it also caused a lot of panic and some confusion. And there was a lot of different stories and things that people were hearing. But in the end, social media did save some lives, because it caught the school’s attention, and they wanted to make sure everyone was safe, and didn’t want to risk anything.” – Autumn Olson