Sarah Marion broke down in tears as she spoke about her future.
The Lawrence High School senior is going to college next year to fulfill her dream of becoming an elementary school teacher, and she became visibly upset as she listed the different scenarios that she will have to prepare for as an educator — explaining what an active shooter is to young children, protecting children from a gunman inside her classroom, and having her family know she may not come home one day because a shooter chose to attack her school.
After participating in numerous active shooter drills as a students, Marion and her classmates are well aware of the grim realities that school districts and students face across the nation. That’s also why they’re fighting for change.
Students at Lawrence High School organized a walkout on March 14 in solidarity with the National School Walkout, held exactly one month after a 19-year-old gunman killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida.
Lawrence High students walked out of their classrooms at 10 a.m. and gathered at the track, where they observed 17 minutes of silence to honor the 17 victims of the Parkland shooting. Afterward, roughly a dozen students — made up of class officers, student council members and other students who helped organize the rally — met with county freeholders, school administrators and Lawrence police officers to voice their concerns about school safety.
While the high school shooting in Parkland happened over 1,000 miles from New Jersey, it hit close to home for many local students.
“I think all of us have realized it could be our school, and that’s why were standing up with everyone,” senior Sami Posluszny said in an interview with Community News. “Now [school shootings are] almost a part of our culture, and we don’t want to that to be who we are. We don’t want it to be normalized at all.”
After hearing about walkouts at other schools, Lawrence students met with principal David Adam to plan their own walkout. Adam and his administration were incredibly supportive of their plans, students said.
“We have some of the best administrators at our school,” Posluszny said. “They put a lot of trust in us.”
Aside from working out ways to keep students safe during the walkout — the building was locked down and plow trucks blocked entrances to the school to prevent people from entering the grounds — the administration let students plan every detail of the walkout.
“The biggest thing is that they want to keep us safe, which I think they have to do as administrators, but they’re giving us a lot of room to put our ideas into action because they know how many people are passionate about it at our school,” senior Priya Patel said.
While many students were passionate about the walkout, some students had different opinions about how to address gun control, mental health and other issues that have been part of the national consciousness since the Parkland shooting.
Student organizers wanted the walkout to be as inclusive as possible, so they kept their focus on something they could all rally behind — school safety.
“There’s been some hesitations from students who don’t necessarily agree with the entire message of gun control overall,” Patel said. “But I think we’re really promoting an idea of school safety, which is something everyone can agree on.”
In an interview with Community News, an emotional Adam said the walkout was an amazing, heartfelt moment, as he witnessed all of the students’ hard work come together.
“The kids, it meant a lot to them to organize their friends, their colleagues, their peers, so that their voices would be heard about school safety,” he said, adding that the students’ goal was to spread awareness about how to make schools as safe as possible in Lawrence as well as across the nation. “They did a beautiful job.”
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For 17 minutes, students gathered outside on the track in silence to honor the 17 victims of the Parkland massacre. After a speech by Posluszny, who is the senior class president, a victim’s name was read aloud every minute, marking the beginning of a new moment of silence.
For many students, it was during those 17 minutes of reflection where they began to understand the weight of the situation. One student said hearing the names of students rather than just a number made it more personal, while another student said the statistic of 17 deaths didn’t hit her until she counted 17 of her friends.
Patel said when she read the names and ages of the victims, she realized that every single one of them could have been her friend.
The realization that the Parkland shooting could have happened at any high school across the nation has struck a nerve among students, and it’s the driving force behind the calls for change.
“I know when Sandy Hook happened, I was almost too young to understand it,” Posluszny said. “When this [Parkland] happened, it’s my age group, and it made me realize this can happen anywhere.”
Seeing students from Parkland — students who are the same age, who share similar interests, come from similar backgrounds — speak out and demand safer schools and stricter guns laws inspired Lawrence High students to use their voices to try to enact change.
“I can’t even put into words what it’s like to watch them speak after what they’ve gone through these past couple weeks,” Posluszny said. “I know I watched a few of their speeches and I was just so inspired, and I thought that it was really important that we make it known that we’re standing with them.”
As more students speak out, more adults are taking notice. According to the Monmouth University Polling Institute, 62 percent of Americans feel that the Parkland students are effective advocates for gun control, and a majority of the public believes these students are having more impact on the gun debate than previous victims of mass shootings.
In the weeks following the deadly shooting, Parkland students have called on state and federal legislators to enact stricter gun laws, such as creating comprehensive background checks and banning assault rifles.
While not all Lawrence students who participated in the walkout did so for political reasons, just about every student did so for personal ones.
“I feel like it’s just so personal because it could happen to any one of us,” Patel said.
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About a dozen students met with town, school and local government officials in the school library immediately after the walkout to voice their concerns about gun control, mental health, bullying and other issues surrounding school safety in a more intimate setting.
The meeting gave students — many of which were wearing shirts that that read “Wake up. Walk out. March for our lives.” — a chance to discuss various concerns about school safety and gun control that have been taking place at the national level. The students dismissed the idea that more guns are needed in schools, with one student comparing the idea to Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, a satirical essay students read in their English class.
The students also were given the opportunity to ask school administrators and police officers about specific measures put in place to keep them safe at Lawrence. Students asked questions regarding how the administration and township police plan and execute active shooter drills, how substitutes are prepped for an active shooter scenario, and what laws New Jersey legislators want to pass to ensure they are safe at school.
‘It’s important to do something now so our children in the future don’t have to worry about something like this.’
The high school itself holds various drills every month — a fire drill and an emergency drill — and the police department holds an annual active shooter drill to prepare for the worst case scenario. Lawrence Police Chief Mark Ubry discussed ways to improve these drills with students, and expressed interest in holding a drill during off hours when more people are freely walking around different areas of the building.
“Our goal is to make you feel safe in school,” Ubry said.
On the day of the walkout, the House of Representatives passed a school safety bill that authorizes $50 million per year for grants to improve training to help identify signs of potential violence and coordination between schools and local law enforcement agencies.
At the post-walkout meeting at Lawrence, however, a few students expressed concerns about the complete effectiveness of active shooter drills. The Parkland gunman, a former student at the high school, pulled the fire alarm before the shooting in order to get staff and students out of their classrooms. Ubry said as a former student, he was likely familiar with the school’s active shooter or lockdown protocol. While drills and security measures are vital tools for prevention, officials said students can also play a role by reporting any suspicious behavior to the police or discuss their concerns with a teacher, guidance counselor or other school official.
After a debate about the role mental illness plays in school shootings, the group of students stressed that issues surrounding school safety always come back to gun control.
Adam said all of these concerns were “very valuable pieces of a complex puzzle,” and that officials needed to hear students’ voices so they can put a plan into action to properly address the issues. By sharing their fears, concerns and hopes for the future, students’ took the first step toward enacting change.
“I think it’s really important that we actually do something this time, that we actually say something,” junior Alissondra Gutierrez said. “Because it’s important to do something now so our children in the future don’t have to worry about something like this.”
Many Lawrence High School students wore “Wake up. Walk out. March for our lives.” t-shirts for the walkout on March 14. (Photo by Lana Mueller.),
Lawrence High School students participated in the National School Walkout on March 14 by gathering at the track and observing a 17-minute silence to honor the victims of the Parkland, Florida school shooting. (Photo by Lana Mueller.),
