25 years after Columbine, school lockdown drills are common. Students say they cause anxiety and fear and want to see change. [Video]

Serenity Seigel was 7 years old when she started worrying about a mass shooting at her school. 

Her fears were sparked by the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, which left 20 children and six adults dead. As she grew up, she continued to see gun violence in the news, and in 2018, the Valentine’s Day mass shooting in Parkland, Florida left her anxious and worried about violence in her own North Indiana community. 

In her freshman year of high school, she and her fellow students were shown a video simulation that showed their classmates playing dead while a police officer in a ski mask prowled the halls. Immediately following the screening, Seigel and her classmates practiced a lockdown procedure, hiding in the dark while a school official rattled doorknobs.

“Seeing a video that felt so real and seeing a gunman in the hallways of a school that I walk around every single day and people that I’ve grown up going to school …