On Wednesday, Aug. 23, a Code Yellow was triggered by a bomb threat from an anonymous caller. During this time, no one was able to enter or leave campus — everyone in the school was confined to their classrooms for the entirety of the eighth hour until the threat passed. 

A Code Yellow is when an incident is occurring outside near the school that requires a response from the police. This one happened because of a swat call: a fake bomb threat intended to send a Special Weapons and Tactics team to the school. 

“You’re always apprehensive when you see something like a bomb threat,” School Resource Officer Matt Paubel said. “My initial thought was ‘where is [the bomb], where is it at, what do I do?” 

The West County Police Department took many precautions despite the threat being fake, including having the bomb squad and their canines check the campus. This is not Paubel’s first time dealing with threats like this, as he’s been working as an officer in the school for three years.

“[The precautions were] more of a safety thing,” Paubel said. “We want to keep [the students] here [to] make sure [they’re] safe.”

Paubel’s job is to make sure everyone is secure and to alert school principals of any potential threats. 

“[The administrators] do their thing, I go do my thing. [My job] is [to] make sure the building is secure and [the principals] take charge of communicating to everybody else. Communication always seems to fall backward and stuff [doesn’t get] communicated as quickly as it should,” Paubel said.

Teachers received a school-wide announcement of the threat and status of the school, leaving them with limited information to tell students. They were instructed to keep teaching as usual.

“My thoughts were mostly [about] wanting more information,” English teacher Marcy Rademeyer said. “I think about what’s happening, then I’m checking my email and trying to get an update. I was just worried about the situation.”

Situations like this are not completely unheard of, even to new staff. Many teachers quickly acted to ensure students’ safety, including Rademeyer, one of West’s new teachers, who had a couple of kids outside the classroom. 

“I think teachers go into protective mode. We go into that [zone] of trying to take care of business,” Rademeyer said. “Get that door locked and make sure everybody is accounted for.”

After the events of the day, Principal John McCabe sent a school-wide email clarifying the situation and how everyone responded. 

“Students continued working with their teachers and responding calmly in the face of some uncertainty and unknown,” McCabe said in an email. “I was truly proud of how our students and staff responded, and they should be too.”

Although students did not know what was happening, most had prior first-hand experience with these events. 

“The middle and elementary [schools] used to have Code Yellows,” freshman Bella Lamb said. “Nobody was freaking out in my class. I went along with it, because no one [knew] what [was] going on. ” 

Across the country, statistically, these situations have increased in recent years. Previously, West’s most recent experience was in March. Studies show that Code Yellows can add new stress to the learning environments of schools.

“As a society, we need to understand that these episodes are increasing and taking a toll on students and teachers, and we need to take some action to remedy that,” Rademeyer said.