Ater closing due to a shooting threat on the Sept. 20, Skyline High School responds to the threat with leaps and bounds. The threat, which warned of a Columbine-like shooting, rattled the school’s student body and community, and caused them to look at their actions towards others: a concept that should be taken into account by everyone.

The effect the threat had on the students and community of Skyline High School is important to look at because it affects the way people treat those who surround them, and is an aspect that is very important for not just Skyline, but for Liberty to consider. The common message that comes across from Skyline students after the threat is that most people do not normally pay attention to how they treat others.

On Oct. 2 Issaquah police apprehended the suspect linked to the shooting threat. The suspect was a sixteen year-old former student at Skyline, and had been linked to another threat that suggested similar actions in Lynnwood. Despite the arrest of the suspect involved, the message was clear to students: the way a person treats others is important, and such treatment of others has the ability to directly affect that person’s life.

Since the threat absences have increased at Skyline by seventy percent. This increase in absences goes unwarranted: avoiding the social situation at hand does not solve the problem.

The threat underlined that “the people at [Skyline] use their wealth and social status to act superior to others.” With social status in mind the event at hand has revitalized awareness of how people treat others. By directly assessing how others are regarded, and what “social category” students fall under, students are given the ability to change the way they treat others.

Rather than regarding social ranking as supreme, and using wealth and social standing as a code to which others are treated, students should instead treat others as their equals and as their peers.

A tightly knit community formed on the basis of equality, friendship, and commonality functions more effectively than one that views everyone within the student body as unequal. A lesson important for everyone, including students at Liberty, embodied itself within the Skyline threat—be kind; it does make a difference.