by Audrey Carroll

Around 9:30 a.m. on Aug. 20, principal of student affairs Mary Beth Compton announced to all STA students, faculty and staff that they were to go into lockdown immediately. There were unauthorized persons in the sophomore parking lot with intentions of breaking into a car, according to Compton. The unauthorized personnel never entered any of the buildings on campus and police were called to the scene immediately.

“What we’ve learned from having a big campus is that we have to act immediately and sometimes we don’t know exactly the extent of the issue,” Compton said.

This is what STA president Nan Bone calls a precautionary lockdown.

“We called a precautionary lockdown, even though we didn’t know the details yet, because obviously there were some people in our parking lot that shouldn’t have been there,” Bone said.

According to Bone, the suspects came to the attention of the school from two different people– an across-the-street neighbor and a student returning from a doctor’s appointment.

“They both felt uneasy and like these people weren’t apart of our community,” Bone said. “And we agreed.”

Despite the fact there was a scare among students and faculty, Compton and Bone are both thankful that the school had a lockdown drill just the week before the incident, and were pleased with how everyone calmly dealt with the situation.

“When you don’t have a procedure in place that’s where the chaos can happen,” Compton said.

However, there were a few mishaps during the lockdown like broken PA systems in classrooms and poor communication with the non-profits working on campus, but Bone is well aware of this.

“Everyone did what they should’ve done and now there’s just some small things we need to address,” Bone said.