School emergency dramatised online
A SCHOOLYARD emergency was blown out of proportion on a social media website last week, with students falsely reporting a teacher was shot.
Korumburra Secondary College was thrown into lockdown last Monday week (May 16) after a student became upset, smashed two windows and ignored staff instructions.
School leaders contacted police and secured the students safely in the gymnasium.
Police arrived promptly and arrested the 14-year-old who was then taken to the station for questioning. Charges are now pending regarding damage to the windows.
While the police diffused the situation, reports had already been posted on social networking site Facebook, with many reports making false accusations.
Principal Lynne Hardy said that within 10 minutes, concerned parents contacted the school after reading the online reports.
Some students had posted such statements as: “gotta love having a code red at school cause some year nine goes nuts and starts smashing windows!” and “Just casually sitting in the gym cause some kid went spastic”.
Others contained false information with comments like “This dude went crazy, punched a few windows, and a teacher I think?” as well as some students blatantly lying with comments like “Yeah a kid got a gun and shot some teacher”.
Another student had set “K’burra sec lock down 
” as a check in point (identifying users’ locations on Facebook), which received 233 likes (approvals by fellow users) within the day.
Even on Tuesday, parents were picking up on the rumours and accusing the school of covering up the situation.
Ms Hardy said some parents believed a drunken student had punched a teacher in the face, while another heard that there was a drunken student with guns and knives.
The school released a statement to parents during the week outlining what really happened.
The statement read “behaviour was not directed towards staff or students” and “contrary to rumours, at no times did the student produce or use a weapon.”
Ms Hardy is disappointed students used mobile phones because there is a strict ‘no phone at school’ policy which students ignore
regularly.
“We’ve had a few incidents regarding the use of mobile phones in the past and this is just another which highlights the need to stop them coming to school,” she said.
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