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French classroom bell fails to ring during lockdown
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French teacher Susan Rose’s classroom bell did not ring to alert her students of the start of the lockdown on Feb. 22.
After three men in ski masks were seen at the San Gabriel Hilton Hotel and fled after being questioned by police officers, the Alhambra and San Gabriel Police Departments called the school, telling them to lock down the campus and ring the bells as safety precautions. However, the bell in Rose’s class was broken at the time. It was fixed the Monday after the lockdown, which left Rose with some concerns.
“It was a little worrying because unless the class is really quiet, we don’t hear the bells outside with the doors closed,” Rose said. “We just had to deal with it.”
Only one student, sophomore Fabian Lua, heard the lockdown bell from a different building because he was seated near the door.
“I noticed the bell went on longer than usual, so I automatically knew it was a lockdown,” Lua said. “I told the teacher and the class froze.”
Since the beginning of December, Rose had filed repair requests to the Business and Activities Office with the goal of getting her bell fixed. However, she understands that the delay was inevitable with the complications of employment after the retirement of the former Business and Activities manager.
“That was one of the things that she would have been in charge of, [which was] maintenance requests [and] making sure they got to the right people,” Rose said, “but also according to what [the district repairman] indicated, [the repair] wasn’t specifically in reaction to the fact that we did not hear a lockdown bell, but just that it had been on the list and it was our turn to get something repaired.”
Senior John Villanueva, a student who was in Rose’s French class during the lockdown, views the inability of the bell to work as a safety hazard in the wake of a real emergency. Villanueva said that the new bell mechanism will be useful in the future.
“I think the new bell will be effective because it’s really helpful, especially if someone outside from school came from the U-building instead of the baseball field,” Villanueva said.
Other students, such as senior Cindy Ho, who was in teacher Stella Lin’s mathematics class, also reported their bell not ringing when the lockdown started.
“I felt panicked and anxious because we didn’t know what was going on,” Ho said.
The new bell mechanism currently sits on the wall above Rose’s whiteboard in the front of the classroom. Rose said she hopes “this one lasts longer.”
