Architecture reshapes the educational experience

When the shooting at Columbine High School occurred on April 20, 1999, America changed. 

The integration of active shooter drills into the daily lives of students is one of the most obvious consequences of schools attempting to prevent such tragedies from repeating. But among those efforts, an important one tends to be overlooked: the way we design and build schools.

Architects call it “hardening.” It is the process of changing existing buildings into safer, more secure ones, according to TM International LLC, a producer for construction materials. This includes creating hard corners, hiding places, curved hallways, emergency door barricades, safe rooms, and so on. 

While these preparations are made in an attempt to deter a shooter or other threat, they can have a negative effect on the student body in disrupting a welcoming learning environment, as K-12 Dive, a publication reporting influential stories relevant to education, analyzed.

Many changes aren’t conspicuous. This is due to newer schools being designed to accommodate safety against threats in their blueprints. But according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average age of public schools in the U.S. is 42 years. Older schools were designed in a time when the accommodation was not a consideration. Thus, new design changes to hinder shooters can be viewed as obtrusive—possibly casting even more negative impressions on students within the buildings.

Our own 65-year-old SJHS building began heavy renovation a decade ago, with improving student safety as a focus, Mr. James Berry, SJHS Assistant Principal, recalled. As shown in images, the 1960s Stadium Drive looked much different than its 21st century appearance. 

“It was all glass,” Ryan MacDonald, a 2014 SJHS graduate, recalled of the original building. His freshman year in 2012 was the last year he, or any Bears, walked the original halls of the building. After construction broke ground, the rest of his high school years were accompanied with building renovations; the project finished in 2014.

“In the halls there were these benches that you could sit on up against the glass, and everyone would huddle on them and hang out. The lunchroom also had glass walls,” Ryan said.

As for how obtrusive hardening SJHS was to students of the time, Ryan expressed that many students did not understand or realize the relation of the new architecture to their safety. Mostly, they only saw the faux walls blocking off construction sites.

But there were many immediate benefits to SJHS’s renovations,. The lack of ground-level glass walls, double-door entrances, and curved halls like those across the guidance office, would help to decrease casualties, if an instance of gun violence were to occur at our school. 

Though, the long-term effects of protective architecture are still unknown for the students of SJHS.