School transportation is rarely if ever discussed in a national consumer magazine such as TIME. But, like in Amanda Ripley’s “Viewpoint” in the Jan. 11, 2010 issue on newsstands, there can certainly be found dots to connect current events with issues pertaining to school transportation.
Much of the issue is dedicated to the foiled Christmas day plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines jetliner arriving in Detroit from Amsterdam and dissecting the personality of “alleged” bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. While fellow passengers subdued the 23 year old Nigerian man from fully detonating his homemade bomb, in which he was supposedly trained in crafting by al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen, several articles discuss the latest failing of airport security.
Ripley takes a bit different course that should remind readers, at least those who are involved in school transportation services, of yet another TSA program: First Observer. Her article, “Please Remain Standing” is a call to arms, if you will. She claims that our government can never truly protect all of us from terrorism, so we must take it upon ourselves to be an informed, proactive citizenry that takes our collective safety into our own hands.
After all, it wasn’t the TSA or the CIA or President Obama who were able to thwart the attack but a handful of quick-thinking travelers who must have thought the only excitement they would encounter that day would be the presents they’d be opening or the dinner they’d be eating in a few short hours. And it wasn’t just U.S. citizens who rose to the call of duty. One of the heros is a Dutch filmmaker.
Ripley writes that we can’t simply blame the federal government for failing to protect us, because it always will, especially when it comes to combating those who hate us and are willing to give up their own life to take a few hundred or more with them. Instead we must realize that we’re not helpless. I recall many industry professionals getting pretty hot and bothered with TSA representatives over the last couple of years amid repeated name changes of its school bus and on-highway trucking security program and a general perceived lack of leadership. Perhaps it’s not so much the name of the program we should worry about but the empowerment that TSA is giving us, giving school bus drivers across the country to actively participate in the security of our country by reporting suspicious behavior. And maybe we’re best equipped to do the leading.
Certainly the passengers on Flight 253 did not wake up on Christmas Day thinking they would be a part of something so big, so potentially catastrophic and very much polarizing. But, armed with the knowledge of what’s happened before, they were vigilant (note NOT vigilante) when something happened out of the ordinary, and they immediately sprang into action.
Unfortunately, as this latest case reaffirms, we live in a time when we must all act similarly, whether that be in our own car or on the school bus. It’s time to protect ourselves.
