In the wake of two terrible incidents at the beginning of August, Mr. Dalton ,principal of Penns Valley Area High School, announced that the school would be adopting a new system of dealing with active shooting threats considering that the last one was deemed to be incredibly ineffective at doing the one thing that these drills should do, save lives. The purpose of this article is to inform students and parents alike of new doctrine to be taught in preparation for the unlikelihood that a shooting happens at Penns Valley.

Mission of ALICE

On ALICE’s official website at www.alicetraining.com, they state that their mission is “To Improve Chances of Survival.” They state that “individuals must be trained in proactive active shooter response options, rather than a passive, mandated, one-size-fits-all response. We want all Americans to have the knowledge and skills to survive when shots are fired.”

ALICE intends to make the training for shootings, more proactive, personalized, and standardized at the same time. Instead of just locking the door and sitting in a corner ALICE suggests evading a defense situation entirely if at all possible and if not, then to actively defend your room. Different people do different things based on their respective talents. Already without getting to far into it, it already sounds tremendously more efficient than the past system, using the skill sets and knowledge of the attacker and then making proactive decisions based on that.

ALICE is not just for schools however and does training for other groups and individuals alike.

What Does it Mean?

What it means for our school is that it is being adopted and soon students will begin practicing the new defense doctrine for intruder situations. What ALICE also allows is participation by people involved to be more proactive against the intruder. Those who don’t won’t,  and those who do will act as a last line of defense if all else fails. In the upcoming weeks Mr. Dalton will reveal more information about the new program.