When the Army Public School tragedy unfolded on the December 16 last year, us students were in the middle of our midterm examinations.
As news and pictures of the incident began circulating on the internet and television, schools were shutdown across the country.
Panic blanketed our student body; phones ringing in schools went unanswered and rumor mills churned out all sorts fearful prospects.
At that time, the uncertainty and the abrupt shutdown of educational institutions made one fact glaringly obvious: we were not prepared to handle emergencies of this magnitude.
As students, we were sickened by the tragedy, but more than that, we were furious.
Everyone had the same questions on their minds: “Why weren’t we prepared,” and, “Had it been us, what could we have done?”
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It was in the midst of this frenzied anger that my batch mate, Ayza Ishaq came forward with an idea: the Student Security Initiative (SSI). In the coming weeks, this idea would grow and become more popular, because it was based on one simple, very obvious principle that can no longer be ignored:
In order to win a war, we must first learn how to fight
We weren’t going to arm ourselves with Kalashnikovs, but with preparation.
The idea was simple: we had to make ourselves less vulnerable.
For that, we set ourselves daunting goals: efficient emergency response from student deputies, transfer of authentic information to the student body and more efficient emergency drill preparation.
Within days, the initiative received a phenomenal response. Volunteer positions for security deputies filled up rapidly and we progressed full steam ahead.
We ensured that there was at least one deputy in every class as we went about training them, using whatever resources we could – Youtube videos, information from doctors and our own biology professors – and educating ourselves in lifesaving skills like CPR and bleeding treatments.
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The tech volunteers for SSI collaborated with our school administration and began work on an official portal which would SMS to the student body, reliable information in cases of emergency.
We then decided to turn our attention to drill management, which as SSI President Ms Ishaq aptly described as “less of an evacuation and more of a panicked stampede”. Pouring over floor plans of our school (that we were under oath not to share) under the watchful eye of a caretaker (there to check if we weren't avante garde Taliban ourselves), we identified certain passages within the school which would relieve bottlenecks on different floors and make evacuations faster.
However, we were still not satisfied. Students were hopelessly inept at distinguishing between drill procedures. One of the SSI deputies recounted an incident where a class mistook the the alarm signal for lockdown for the signal of evacuation, and hurtled through empty corridors to move out only to realise they were supposed to be inside.
While these gaffes fueled funny jokes later, we knew it was a serious problem. We therefore planned a school assembly to clarify the matter and strictly instructed deputies to take charge in such situations.
Read on: After Peshawar: Reassessing the terror threat
Today, the Student Security Initiative has over 50 members from different classes, all over the school, making Beaconhouse Defence Campus a little more safer.
We have broadened our definition of student safety and worked towards achieving it consistently.
Over the past few weeks I have learnt the proper way to hold a fire extinguisher, learnt how to carry a heavier person on my back (it’s harder than it looks) and felt safer at school than I have before.
The initiative empowers us every day, makes us feel a little less vulnerable every time because in this student’s war on terror, we’re finally learning how to fight back.