WASHINGTON School group touring D.C. receives a lesson in security

During Code Orange, there is no walking along the sidewalks on either side of the White House.
By SYLVIA MORENO
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON -- For 30 years, each graduating class of Southminster Day School in Alabama has traveled to Washington to look in on Congress at work, tour the People's House at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and see textbook civics lessons come to life.
Last spring, a contingent from the small private school on Birmingham's southern edge braved the post-Sept. 11 aftershock, flying here in the wake of the terrorist attacks as federal officials scrambled to institute new, tough security measures. Earlier this month, the fifth-graders, parents, teachers and principal returned again. And they found out how things have really changed.
No last-minute, let's-visit-this-or-that whim allowed. Appointments required; no tours left to chance. No motor coaches allowed on Route 110, along the east side of the Pentagon. No tours of FBI headquarters.
Also not allowed
No parents in the White House. No large backpacks. No spray bottles or aerosols. No liquids or bag lunches in the Capitol. No water bottles in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum unless the visitor takes a sip first to show guards that the liquid is benign. No metal objects -- not even a mint tin -- because they set magnetometers abuzz. No knives of any size, of course.
At least they missed Code Orange, when there was no walking along the sidewalks on either side of the White House, no walk-up tours of the Capitol and no scheduled White House tours.
Today's school tour of the nation's capital is a logistical feat, and even the best-laid plans can go awry. Southminster was made all too aware of that on its recent trip.
The lesson came though the group has the wherewithal of a presidential advance team. Principal Regina Covin and her teachers have years of experience in organizing educational trips. They have the 28-year wisdom of Group Tour Co. of Washington and Sandra Sheskin's 14 years as a licensed member of Washington's Guild of Professional Tour Guides. And the school has a close relationship with its congressman, Rep. Spencer Bachus, a Republican, whose two daughters are Southminster graduates.
Bumped
Still, last Wednesday, the 19 students and 20 adults from the school lost their 11:35 a.m. slot for a congressional staff-led tour because they were three minutes late to check in at the Capitol Guide Service Kiosk. Never mind that they'd been on the Capitol grounds since 9 a.m. and had their picture snapped with Bachus on the east steps under the watchful eye of a Capitol Police officer armed with a G36 assault rifle.
"Washington is your capital, and this is your Capitol," Bachus told the children and adults, dressed in their lime green Southminster T-shirts, as they listened attentively after the photo shoot. "You will have a right to participate all your life in what goes on here."
But first, they had to go through security.
They all walked through a metal detector and had a thorough purse and pack check by Capitol Police, after which Bachus took them on a private mini-tour of the House Dining Room and one wing of the original Capitol. Then they gave up their cameras, cell phones, beepers, purses and bags before entering the House and Senate galleries with passes courtesy of Bachus. And still, they had to go back outside to check in for their official tour, and with all the walking and the remote location (for security reasons) of the check-in kiosk, they arrived at 11:38 a.m. and lost their tour slot. Their tour was rescued only through the intercession of a harried Bachus staffer.
There was always security at the Capitol and White House, said Sheskin, the tour guide, "but never to the degree that we have now."
"We might not like it, but we certainly understand the reasons for it," she said.