On Tuesday, October 22, 2024, the blue light system went off at Wylie E. Groves High School. According to security footage, the alarm was triggered by a student around 4:30 pm. Based on the footage of the event, authorities believe that it was most likely unintentional.

Despite this, students at Groves are unsure of whether or not they believe that the alarm was accidentally activated.

“There’s no way that it was an accident. Isn’t there a clear cover over the alarm that you have to lift up to set it off? A fire alarm is different because those don’t have the boxes over them, but I know the Blue Light alarms do,” Ruby Hosko, student at Groves said. Rumors spread by students who saw it happen suggest that the system was activated as a joke. However, Principal Peterson’s explanation of what happened differs.

According to Peterson, there is a button, similar to a panic button, somewhere in the school, and it was accidentally pressed by the student.

“They thought they were doing something else, and then they weren’t… It was certainly not within the realm of what they should have been doing, but it wasn’t necessarily malicious,” Peterson said.

Even though school got out at 2:50, many Groves students were still in the building for various sports, clubs and other activities when the alarm went off. As principal Peterson said, in an ALICE drill, students and staff are told the location of the false intruder. In a real-scenario, that is most likely a luxury the people involved do not get.

“Even though we knew it was not real, others didn’t. Given this level of stress and high anxiety, kids still responded. And you should be proud, and others should be proud. I remember hearing from the stories when they did have a situation at Michigan State last year, and people were like, ‘I remembered my training from high school and it kicked in,’” Peterson said.

Within one minute of the activation, the first police officer arrived on the scene and began to sweep the building. Other officers arrived soon after.

While Peterson was unable to say what the school would be doing in the future to prevent another situation like this, he did remark that he believes Groves coaches need to undergo more training, since they are not staff and have not previously had any. However, he was very proud of the overall student and staff response.