On March 14, students throughout the nation participated in a 17 minute walk-out to recognize and honor those 17 students who lost their lives in the Parkland shooting in February. At PHS, students, wearing black, left their classrooms at 9:55 a.m. and proceeded to fill the open spaces of campus and lie down on the ground. Students remained lying silent, as a student said a few words about each victim, one per minute.
“The point of the 17 minutes and wearing black itself is to honor and recognize the victims,” lie-in coordinator senior Genevieve Raushenbush said. “As a whole, we are trying show that we as students can unite and be involved, and actually make a stand.”
Raushenbush said that it is important to continue to take action after taking the time
to honor those whose lives were taken. For that reason, Raushenbush and co-coordinator senior Maya Guzdar organized events for the following lunches throughout the week to keep the conversation going about school safety and gun violence.
“We wanted to create platforms for students to speak, reflect, share, in any way that they wanted to, about the issue,” Raushenbush said.
At lunch on March 14, students were encouraged to share their thoughts about the recent shootings. The following lunches, there were stations where students could write letters to Congress or create media posters to send their messages on the issue and continue to advocate for change.
“I think it gives students a way to share their voice in a way that will make an impact and hopefully be heard by people who have the power to make the change we need,” senior Ellie Roberts said.
Assistant principal Eric Mapes said that the administration is in complete support of students voicing out about issues they find important. Administrators communicated with Guzdar and Raushenbush so that the administration could inform teachers on what to expect the morning of March 14.
“We always support our students in whatever they decide to do if it’s civic in nature: freedom of press, freedom of religion, freedom of expression,” Mapes said.
Though the administration offered moral support, funding for ASB to give students stamps for letter-writing and ensurance of student safety in whatever they planned to do, Mapes said that school policy technically requires them to mark students with an unexcused absence if they leave the classroom for longer than 15 minutes.
“It is a difficult situation because I understand students wanting to do more than the 17 minutes of silence, but we still have school policies that we need to follow,” Mapes said.
This however did not stop students from participating in the lie-in, or even lingering after 10:17 a.m. to share a few words and embraces with one another before returning to class.
“We may [have] suffer[ed] the consequences of missing class, but I think that’s really important because to fight and stand up for what you believe in, you need to be willing to confront consequences,” Raushenbush said.
And students continued to fight for their cause as PHS students participated in the marches that happened in Oakland, San Francisco and throughout the nation on March 25.
“What comes next is not to stop,” Roberts said. “Seniors who are turning 18 need to vote and bring their friends with them. We have a right to vote on what our government does, and we cannot take that right for granted.”
Raushenbush agreed, and said remembering those who had their lives stripped from them and fighting for student safety are too important to simply let the conversation fizzle out.
“It’s, in a way, fighting to preserve the actual right to be alive, and get an education, and feel safe in your environment,” Raushenbush said. “We want to show that this issue isn’t going to die.”
