On Thursday September 19th Roseville Area High School entered a lockdown because of reports of a suspected weapon. The lockdown started roughly at 1:12pm and lasted until 1:48pm. The Ramsey County Police Department was notified of the situation right away and responded to the school to help the situation. Although no weapon was recovered, many students were scared to come to school the next day because of the incident. RAHS was only three weeks into school when this incident occurred.

The principal Jen Wilson responded with her personal experience and how she was feeling during the incident. She said, “We need to make it secure so that everyone in the building is safe.” She added, “my daughter goes to school here so I think about her, everyone else sends their baby here trusting us so it feels like a lot of pressure.”

She reported on how she thinks the school responded, “As soon as we knew about the threat we partnered with the Roseville Police Department and it’s always our job to follow their direction. We always work in good partnership with them.”

There was a lot of confusion on whether or not students should have their phones during the lockdown. Wilson said, “We have spent a lot of time thinking about phones and how to best support students. I think families and students will be happy with our plan moving forward.”

She added, “it is complicated because when everyone is on the wifi it can hinder those of us who are trying to review camera footage, but we have a plan for that moving forward so I’m feeling optimistic.”

When asked what she is doing to make the school safer, Wilson responded, “We will continue to partner with the police. We have additional staff on hand. We had every single district leader here on Thursday helping support.” Most importantly she said, “I am doing everything that I can but it also takes all the students and staff and families to be in partnership with us.”