'What if that happens to me?' After 17 are killed in a high school in Parkland, Florida, North Jersey teens answer the call to agitate for action.
"What if that happens to me?" After 17 are killed in a high school in Parkland, Florida, teens agitate for action.
The generation that has come of age in the 19 years since a dozen students and a teacher were gunned down at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 — the massacre that set the tragic template for the dozens of school shootings that have followed — are taking a stand and saying "never again."
Terrified that their school could be next, and alarmed that active-shooter drills have become a routine part of their academic lives, students in New Jersey are adding their voices to the national movement against gun violence that has been gathering momentum since since 17 students and faculty members were fatally shot at a high school in Parkland, Florida, last week. They are organizing rallies and walkouts and forming clubs and committees in their schools to demand change.
“When I heard there was another school shooting, it made me realize: What if that happens in my school? What if that happens to me?" said Crystal Perez, 16, a student at Passaic County Technical Institute in Wayne. "It’s a really big school. What if my sister gets shot in school? What if my brother gets shot in school? It is hard to think about."
In interviews with The Record, students shared their fears and concerns about gun violence in the wake of the Florida shooting. Some were tearful and afraid while others were angry, but none wanted to stay silent. They called for their government to do more to curb gun violence and to keep them safe.
Crystal Perez: "Sometimes you want to be positive, but other times I think about these things myself. Maybe not my classmates, but I do think about it. Am I safe in school? Are we supposed to be learning about this more? Are we supposed to be doing drills like this every day?"
Greta Dobson: "You’re sitting here and you've received thousands, even millions of dollars from the NRA, and you're saying 'thoughts and prayers' and you're watching children getting killed. I can’t handle people like that. It makes me so unbelievably angry.
"It’s a parallel you can draw to yourself, and nobody wants to think about that. It’s a terrible thing, and to think about these 15-year-olds standing up and talking about how they watched their friends lose their lives and now they have to go on with theirs. I don’t even want to consider it."
Conor Dobson: "The first thing that goes through my head is, 'Oh, man, this again.' I know what’s going to happen next. The politicians are going to say something about thoughts and prayers. There’s going to be a hashtag on Twitter. And it’s going to be the same sort of cycle over and over again until the next mass shooting happens.
"These kids [in Florida] are really making a stand on social media to do something. These kids are staying, 'Stop, this is what we can do to help, here’s how you can help. We’re not going to stand for this anymore.' I think that's what is setting this school shooting apart from all the others, because something is really being done. Now, how much of that is going to actually help and be put in place, that remains to be seen."
“I could never imagine a world where, you know, my best friend wouldn’t be there the next day and I could never talk to them again. It would be absolutely heartbreaking.
“Lockdowns make everyone really nervous, because at first we don’t know if it’s real or not. My sister goes to the middle school, and I definitely get nervous when I hear that they’re in lockdown.