School shooting drills have drastically changed since I was in the public K-12 school system. I remember two things: moving from a small town in New Hampshire to a larger town in Massachusetts, and the school systems’ different ways with dealing with an emergency.

I was in the New Hampshire school system for first and second grade. For those short years, we didn’t have many school shooting drills. Of course, there were bus fire drills where we had to do the leap of faith from the four-foot-tall platform, and that one time when we had the one fire drill of the year on the first day of school. Once I moved to Pepperell, Massachusetts, that all changed.

In third grade, without warning, I remember hearing over the intercom, “Mr. Fox is in the building, this is a drill, Mr. Fox is in the building.” Next, my teacher had us in the corner of the class that was least visible through the windows and least accessible to intruders. We sat in complete silence for 20 minutes. I remember being so scared. I had no idea what was going on. Why did we have to hide from a possible intruder? My fear of the exercise didn’t help with preparing for potential fear.

I was a sophomore in high school when the school district changed their ways. We went from using the “Mr. Fox” drill to using ALICE, or Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate. It was introduced in a school-wide assembly after shootings in the U.S. became more and more common. The administration basically told us to forget what we had been doing for the past eight years and go along with this new training program.

The idea was to do what you choose to do and no one will be held responsible for you, except for yourself. So, with little to no guidance, when running through a drill, students had choices: run, hide, or attack. Most students stuck with the same old Mr. Fox method: hide in the best spot possible.

I look back at the ways that schools have changed even more now that I am two years out of the system. For instance, that high school now has random dog searches and has even set up metal detectors if they feel that there may be a threat. The unsettling part is that this town is not a bad area and to assume that a student would do something like that is hard for many families to deal with.

Schools have become more and more “creative” with their ways of implementing defense in all corners of the school—literally. One Alabama middle school asked students to bring in a canned item to protect against intruders, reported USA Today. As quoted from the article, administrators understand the outlandish request for canned goods:

“’We realize at first this may seem odd,’ administrators said, ‘however, it is a practice that would catch an intruder off-guard. The canned food item could stun the intruder or even knock him out until the police arrive. The canned food item will give the students a sense of empowerment to protect themselves and will make them feel secure in case an intruder enters their classroom.’ The letter concluded, ‘We hope the canned food items will never be used or needed, but it is best to be prepared.’ Unused items, it said, would be donated to a food pantry at the end of the school year.”

What is the University of Massachusetts Boston doing to protect and train our students in the event of an emergency? For one, they have students sign up for emergency text alerts where text messages are sent in the event of an emergency at the university—even if it’s just a snow day, the message is quickly delivered across our large campus. UMass Boston also has an “emergency operations plan” as stated on their website. This plan has five different levels of emergency procedures. For smaller-scale incidents, the university takes the necessary steps to recover but does not go into the full-fledged notification process. For larger incidents, the university’s leadership is responsible for all resolutions. On top of these plans, the university also offers personal attacker training classes.

In the case of an emergency, let’s hope UMass Boston doesn’t follow after the Alabama high school and suggest to students to bring canned goods.