Can Any School Be Massacre-Proof?
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 12 August 2019
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the absence of new federal laws to address mass shootings, school safety has become a design problem. Guest host Henry Grabar asks: How are architects responding to an era of active shooter drills and bulletproof backpacks?
Guest: Jenine Kotob, architectural designer at Hord Coplan Macht.
Podcast production by Mary Wilson and Jayson De Leon.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I've been thinking about what we could change to make the United States a safer place. |
| 0:12.3 | Changing gun laws so that we're more safe. Changing how we think about radicalization. After El Paso, |
| 0:18.4 | after Dayton, you might be feeling like nothing ever changes. |
| 0:21.6 | But I write about cities in design for Slate, and there's one thing that is definitely changing. |
| 0:26.6 | The way we design buildings. |
| 0:29.6 | I'm Henry Grabar filling in today. |
| 0:32.6 | Hi, Henry. |
| 0:33.6 | Hi, Janine. |
| 0:34.6 | And that's Janine Katab. |
| 0:36.6 | She's one of architecture's most vocal practitioners on this subject. You're an architect, right? |
| 0:41.7 | Yeah, I'm an architect, and I focus on educational spaces. So schools, K-12, higher ed, the whole slew of learning environments. |
| 0:53.1 | I want to ask about how you got into this work, which might be kind of a heavy question, |
| 0:58.0 | because I read that you were a student at Virginia Tech in 2007. |
| 1:05.0 | Yeah. |
| 1:07.0 | I was a ready an architecture student. |
| 1:10.0 | I was a third year at Virginia Tech, and the shootings happened in 2007. |
| 1:18.1 | It was a hard time. |
| 1:19.9 | I knew four people who were killed during the shootings. |
| 1:24.3 | One was a really good friend of mine. |
| 1:26.0 | We were co-chrogographers together for a dance |
| 1:28.4 | troupe. The day before the shooting was our huge performance that we had been practicing for |
| 1:36.9 | the entire year. And the next morning, we found out that my friend Rima Samaha, she was one of the |
... |
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