It was just a conversation between four students, discussing the next few days of school. One of the students mentioned a few things that alarmed his fellow classmates. They decided to go to the administration. Then, the story got out.

Once the conversation had leaked, the story spread like wildfire and transformed into a situation far from what it began as. Originally, there were no threats of school shootings. There were no threats to human safety. There was no concrete evidence of harm intended.

“[They] were just saying weird things, [they] never made a threat to shoot up the school, [they] never said anything bad would happen, [they] just said we were gonna have school off,” an anonymous student said. Erring on the safe side, students went to the administration and put the situation in the proper hands. 

“I don’t really know much about the threat, and I haven’t seen or heard anything directly from the student believed to have made the threats. Everything that I do know are basically just rumors being spread, ones that I personally think were blown a bit out of proportion,” Senior Ben Gossert said. 

The real issue, facilitated by gossip from fellow students that circulated around the incident, led to a school-wide email to reassure students and families. The ultimate story that arose from the gossip consisted of key points: the said student plans to bring a gun to school,  they threatened to shoot up the school, as well as a few additional statements that weren’t included in the original student’s report.

“I was very skeptical about [talk of school shootings and other rumors] and I tried asking around for actual information before I became too concerned,” an anonymous junior said. The administration responded to the spreading rumors by sending a series of reassuring emails. Obviously, these were necessary, as informing students about a potential safety hazard is a critical job of the administration. Although the reassuring emails said it was safe, it was ultimately up to the families to decide what they were going to do. 

“[My parents] were concerned about letting me go to school and they tried talking me out of it, but eventually I convinced them how much makeup work I would have if I didn’t go,” the junior said. Many chose not to attend school after seeing the email and hearing the rumors of a school threat. 

“I still decided to not come to school because I think that the risk of this threat being real heavily outweighs attending school for a day. I feel like situations like these are the kind that one might think would never happen to them until it really does happen, and I would much rather stay on the safer side,” Gossert said. 

That begs the question, what determines if school should be canceled or not in response to a school threat? As mandated by FCPS, each school has a threat assessment team that determines the severity of the threat, which often includes the school SRO and principal. In this case, on October 1st, Langley students alerted the school to a potential threat and set the system into motion. The ultimate outcome of the school’s process was that the threat was not serious enough to justify canceling school.- More information on the process itself can be found on the FCPS website under School Safety and Threat Assessment.