desh | (no subject)

Upper Merion High School Closed by Security Breach

This is the school I went to for a year in the middle of high school, the last half of 10th grade and the first half of 11th grade.

What's crazy about this is that the "security breach" was two 19 year old alums in the building and in a classroom without permission.

I remember going to Akiba (my other high school) just about every break for the first couple of years after I graduated. The day before Thanksgiving was a quasi-traditional day for alums to wander the halls, but it was hardly the only day. I remember walking in the building once with

dredpiraterober, looking up where Mr. Kamen was teaching, walking right into the middle of his class, and sitting down. He didn't ask us to leave; rather, he asked us to put on kippot if we were going to stay. (And we may have elicited one or two of his trademark "Quiet, Please!"'s out of him.) I don't remember when exactly this was, but for all I know it could've been mid-May or early June the year after we graduated, when Drexel was winding down for the year and when Dov was back from Pittsburgh and before our respective summer jobs got going.

Yes, things are different now. But my Akiba visits, while mostly pre-9/11, were all post-Columbine, and some were post-2000 Israel intifada. These Upper Merion kids "were located in a classroom and were arrested without incident", and "[n]o weapons or contraband were found".

It's a different world.

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People used to go back to UM, maybe not so much as Akiba, all the time. I used to go wander in the middle school when I was in high school to see my middle school teachers. After Columbine security got tighter but still...this seems a bit insanely paranoid. *sigh*

I went back to visit Um maybe 2 years after I graduated and I had to stop and get a visitor badge and all sorts of crazy things.

If the "intruders" were 19 that means they were my sister's classmates. Here's hoping it was actually my sister.

Ha. Tell your sister I say hi. And let me know if it was her. I'd go visit her in jail. I've never visited someone in jail before!

I intended to write "wasn't" but let's be honest, if my sister was in jail for breaking into her own high school, that would be hysterically funny.

(although -she- wouldn't think it was so funny)

About a year ago I went to visit my high school (which I graduated in 2004, not long ago), and my friends and I didn't realize we had to get visitor badges, fill out forms, and get our picture taken. So two cops run up to us in the hallway, search us, tell us we could be arrested, and we had to go do the visitor stuff. It wasn't even like that in 2004.

Yeah...it makes me wonder what has happened in the past few years to make things stricter everywhere. I mean, I guess it's a good thing, I suppose. You could have had guns or whatever. But why then?

I was just back at Akiba this morning, as a "guest lecturer" so I filled out a security badge thinger. But if I'd been quick enough, I could have just slipped right by the front desk (which was unattended), said hi to the people on the administrative staff that I know, and been on my way.

See, that's how school security should be!

(Maybe I should be scared that this post is public, and that The Terrorists now know about Akiba's sterling security practices...)

So I called my sister for the low down and she gave the following story:

(mostly word for word)

"Oh yeah, that was Tom Musetti. He's a douche. He IMed some kid saying that the kids of Columbine that Virginia tech were his heroes. And the teachers had some meeting about it cause the kid felt "threatened". Then Tom went to the school like a moron. He's a good kid but a total idiot."

She says the other kid involved was an innocent bystander.

Seems to match up with this story from the town newspaper:
http://tinyurl.com/2cjcfm

So there's the story, for those of you who cared. I'm just glad UM isn't out arresting random visiting alumni.

OK, yeah, that does make a little more sense. Thanks!