Clear backpack students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida hate

THE students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida returned to school on Monday after their spring break, as a slew of new security measures took effect — including a rule requiring clear backpacks.

The backpacks, according to the Sun Sentinel, were donated to the Parkland school’s student body of 3200 free of charge, but the students are not impressed with many taking to Twitter to protest the new “security measure”.

The updated attempt from Broward County school officials to strengthen security and make it more difficult for people to smuggle weapons onto campus came more than a month after the massacre that killed 17 people there, reports Fox News.

Confessed gunman Nikolas Cruz told investigators he “brought additional loaded magazines to the school campus and kept them hidden in a backpack until he got on campus to begin his assault,” the Broward County Sheriff’s Office said. He also was able to hide his AR-15 in a bag, officials added.

The $US1.05 tag on some of the backpacks that feature in photographs posted by students on social media is intended to protest politicians, including Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who accept money from the National Rifle Association, by putting a price on each student.

Junior Kai Koerber said: “We are doing this in order to demonstrate the fact that we stand together on all issues, and that we, as a student body, refuse to be reduced to nothing more than dollars and cents.”

Koerber thinks metal detectors would be more effective as an alternative.

He told CNN: “Just implement a system that works. Similar to what they do at court houses and the airport!” he said. “It’s terrible that girls will have no privacy concealing their feminine products, and these bags won’t last a week with real textbooks in them. Metal detectors are a better solution.”

Teacher Jim Gard said after the February 14 mass shooting that he believed the high school sent out an email warning teachers that Cruz shouldn’t be allowed on campus with a backpack.

In a memo to parents, Stoneman Douglas Principal Ty Thompson said the enhanced security measures would be “very similar to when you enter a sporting event, concert, or even Disney World”.

To enter campus, students now are allowed through four monitored gates before school starts, and only one after the opening bell. The school district plans to issue metal-detecting wands to law enforcement officers stationed at the gates, and sports bags and musical instrument cases are subject to search.

Additional security precautions include stationing eight Florida Highway Patrol troopers at the school, locking classroom doors “at all times”, securing outside doors and gates often, and “conducting emergency preparedness and response training for faculty, staff and students on a regular basis.”

Students also will get identification badges and lanyards to wear by the end of the week, officials said.

“Code red” active shooter trainings will continue to be conducted, although the “protocols and frequency” of the drills will soon be evaluated with law enforcement, and the school district’s security camera system will be upgraded throughout Broward County.

Superintendent Robert Runcie on Wednesday stated in a letter that the new rules come amid recent “inquiries regarding the District’s efforts to fortify school campuses and enhance safety protocols.”

The Miami Herald reported that the school district is also “exploring options for consolidating points of entry for students and staff to include utilising metal-detecting wands and potentially installing permanent metal detectors.”

The letter came a day after Deputy Moises Carotti, of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, was suspended after allegedly being caught sleeping in his car while he was supposed to be patrolling the 1200 building of Stoneman Douglas.

Some students claimed the bolstered security, particularly the use of clear backpacks, wouldn’t bring a better sense of security, but instead would make them feel uncomfortable.

“I think it’s the illusion of security, and it’s not going to accomplish anything, except make students feel like their privacy is being violated,” student Kyrah Simon told the newspaper.

Another student, 16-year-old Kenya Warner, said she thought, “if people want to bring weapons to school, they’ll find a way, and clear backpacks are not going to solve anything.”

Senior Delaney Tarr tagged Rubio in a tweet of a picture of her bag with feminine products and the orange price tag attached to it.

“Starting off the last quarter of senior year right, with a good ol’ violation of privacy!” she said in another tweet.

“My new backpack is almost as transparent as the NRA’s agenda,” Lauren Hogg wrote, a freshman at the school and a survivor of the mass shooting that killed 17 students and faculty members.

“I feel sooo safe now,” she wrote She is the younger sister of David Hogg, a Stoneman Douglas senior who has emerged as one of the leading student voices for gun control.

“As much as I appreciate the effort we as a country need to focus on the real issue instead of turning our schools into prisons.”

Sarah Chadwick, a Stoneman Douglas student and member of the March for Our Lives movement, tweeted that the latest measures were starting to make school “feel like a prison.”

Student Kyra Parrow wrote the backpacks and lanyards were “just an illusion of security,” while Delaney Tarr, also a prominent face of the students’ gun control movement, called them “a good ol’ violation of privacy!”

She later wrote, “You know, I feel super safe now that the whole school can see my collection of tampons and pens.”

Another student simply placed a piece of paper in his backpack that read: “Clear backpacks are STUPID”. Superintendent Robert Runcie told the Sentinel that the new backpacks were “an initial measure, not a permanent one,” and noted that Broward Schools would consider allowing other backpacks after seeing how well the metal detection wand.