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Tragically, 14 students and 3 faculty members lost their lives in the Parkland shooting Valentine’s Day of 2018. To stand up to gun violence, 185,000 students across America are pulling together to encourage new gun control laws.
These students from Florida and The Women’s March’s Youth EMPOWER group planned the National School Walkout Day. National School Walkout day will send students streaming out of schools at 10 a.m. in every time zone for 17 minutes. Each minute out of class will represent one of the 17 lives that was lost in the shooting.
“Walking out will be showing support to those who died,” freshman Jamie Walker said. “Doing this together as a school I feel will bring us more together in unity.”
Other students won’t participate in the walk out due to the consequences they may receive at home, from family, or friends.
“I think it’s cool they are doing it, but I’m not a rebellious child and my mom would kill me if I walked out of school,” sophomore Anaka Black said.
NS is allowing students to walk out of school at 10 a.m. to simply honor the lives that were lost, nothing more. If students wish to remain in school, they may do so.
“Children need a voice, and we as adults need to assist in giving them that voice,” Principal Nan Ault said. “If our students work with their parents to make a decision on whether they want to participate in the walk out event and communicate with the school, we should support it.”
The Parkland shooting replaced the 1999 Columbine High School Massacre as the deadliest high school shooting in America. A former student, Nikolas Cruz, is responsible for shooting down students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
“What is happening in our country with gun violence, and violence in general is a major concern for me,” Ault said. “The school shooting in Florida is such a monumental tragedy that it warrants all our attention. My North Sanpete kids should know, through our help, what it means to support each other, what it means to affect positive change, and how to be part of the complicated conversations that exists in our society.”
A variety of students plan to participate in the walkout, while others choose not to.
“I’m going to stand with them,” junior Elise Pemberton said, “to show support to the people who were killed, or injured. I wish we had a way to protect students, to make school a safer place. It really worries me that at this point, after all the shootings we have had, we haven’t done anything to fix the problem.”
Sophomore Natalie Day, along with other students, have guns in their homes. The guns are mostly used for protection, hunting and target shooting. Many students disagree with the walkout because they don’t want more gun control.
“It’s a good plan to raise awareness, but it deflects from learning,” Day said. “I am not walking out because it is about gun control even if they tell you it’s not.”
Like Day, freshman Halley Madsen had the same point of view.
“I’m not going on the walk because it is dumb how they’re trying to get rid of guns,” Madsen said. “You can’t just take away guns and hope it makes a difference. You have to change the people. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
Cruz legally bought an AR-15-style rifle a year before he used it to kill 17 people. This type of gun was also used in a variety of other school shootings, which brought to many schools’ attention that they need to step up their security protection with or without gun control laws.
“I am at school and my job is to protect kids. I am part of a daily ‘walkout’ so to speak,” Ault said. “Our district has increased professional counseling support, we work with local service agencies to review our efforts to support our community and I have a skilled resource officer that assists in our trainings and safety procedures. This will continue. We have added Hope Squad, SafeUT tip line and keep the staff involved with discussions focused on individual student concerns.”
