At 11:30 on Friday, Sept. 5 the seminar bell rang, releasing students to their fourth block class. At the front entrance, a group of about 50 students gathered to take part in a walkout to protest gun violence in schools.
Students in schools across the country participated in a national walkout on this day in response to the recent shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, MN. Senior Jordan Powell, along with other seniors, helped organize the walkout after seeing posts on social media.
“Me and a couple friends noticed that a bunch of people were reposting a post about a national walkout on their stories,” Powell said. “We tried to see how many people would want to be a part of that at Mill Valley and made a group chat to see if anyone was willing to actually take action. Then that group chat morphed into a 100-person-plus way to communicate and network with everyone else.”
The group also made flyers to pass out to students helping inform them of what they were protesting. The group of students, Powell included, wanted other students to understand exactly what they were protesting.
“We’re attempting to protest the lack of mitigation and lack of legislation for gun restriction in schools, and the lack of action that happens after school shootings occur around the country, and that’s absolutely unacceptable,” Powell said. “The place that children have to legally be every single day is not keeping them safe.”
Recent shootings, as well as the other local incidents, impacted junior Nate Tolla’s decision to participate.
“My motivations are the poor amount of actual legislation that’s been passed in the country and in the state to stop gun violence,” Tolla said. “I mean, there was an incident a few years ago at Olathe East [High School] where someone pulled out a gun.”
Powell also contacted school administration with the hope that their support of the walkout would encourage more students to join.
“We wanted to be as transparent as possible with administration,” Powell said. “We didn’t want to go behind their backs, because we personally feel very safe at Mill Valley. We made sure that was the number one thing they knew. We talked to [Deb Jaeger, Erin Kessler and Dr. Gail Holder] about in what way we can go about this, that they’re going to allow us to do it and also ensure that every student is as safe as possible.”
Even with the good turnout, Tolla still felt the group could have gotten more people to come.
“I think it went pretty well, getting 100 people, especially at the school I think is pretty good,” Tolla said. “I think that we could have promoted it a little bit better.”
Overall, senior Melia Davis felt encouraged by the turnout and the people who did show up.
“I think it’s fairly successful,” Davis said. “I wish there were a little bit more people, but I feel like we came here, we all wore red, we had people show up.”
