'Lockdown' may sound oppressive, but so is terrorism and most efforts to combat it. Allowing parents to pick up students sounds noble, but how is this to be arranged during an emergency? By allowing even more people into a hazardous building? By allowing potentially dangerous materials to evade detection by simply permitting certain students to leave, while corralling the rest? Do departing students get to empty their lockers, while others are searched? It's not easy to balance fairness with security, as those in societies where terrorism threatens can attest. At my high school 5 years ago, repeated bomb threats were handled with prolonged lockdowns -- perhaps exactly what the culprit wanted. But who wants to gamble on the lives of a thousand or more people? Two of the lockdowns located actual bombs in the building; one of them directly above my classroom. School officials must take threats of violence seriously these days.