Speak up on gun violence
On graduation day, remaining silent is not the answer
On June 22, I will be in attendance with family at the MVP Arena to proudly watch my son graduate with the Niskayuna class of 2022.
I truly enjoy graduation speeches and rituals. Even if some of the speeches go on a bit too long and hit upon familiar points or veer into clichés, they will genuinely reflect the time and the place of the departure of our kids into a wider world.
Undoubtedly, the speeches at my son’s ceremony will include mention of the effects of COVID -19 on this particular class, with two years of disruptions in normal routines and school activities. This experience will certainly be a lasting memory, for better or worse, that will define this class, if not its forward arc.
One topic I’m fairly certain will not come up in graduation speeches, however, is the ongoing gun violence assaulting our nation’s children. Tragic events such as the Uvalde, Texas, massacre are rarely discussed at celebratory moments.
Yet I do hope someone on the dais will consider it worth remarking upon. School shootings are one of the defining experiences of the class of ’22, as much as the pandemic. And Niskayuna High School class of ’22 students, like many of their peers across the country — millions of them — are collateral victims of the gun massacre epidemic.
On Nov. 5, 2018, the high school was locked down for five-and-a-half hours following a threat of violence that was discovered on a single note left in a bathroom. The students were trapped in their classrooms, without water or access to the bathrooms. We parents have shared stories of special needs children not able to access their medication who went into crisis, diabetics with no insulin, students soiling themselves, makeshift latrines fouling the classrooms, and many panic-inducing farewell messages texted home by students.
I cannot fault either the Niskayuna Central School District, or the law enforcement agencies responding to this threat. The Majorie Stoneman Douglas High School gun massacre in Parkland, Fla., had taken place just that February. The protocols in place appear to have been followed, and while I take exception to the effectiveness of the “clear the school” approach, at least our local personnel, unlike the ones at Uvalde, followed the letter of their training.
Of course, I’m grateful this turned out to be a hoax. The worst direct damage that day was done to the classrooms, full of vomit and waste and overturned furniture. (I again applaud the heroic custodians who had to clean up the mess overnight).
Some may remark how resilient our children are. True, but such bromides mask the real, continuing damage done by a generation of escalating gun violence. The COVID -19 pandemic has been blamed for the alarming increase in mental health crises among high school students, while little attention has been given to the accumulated trauma of lockdown drills and the sense that schools are no longer safe places.
This class was in second grade when the first-graders of Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., were slaughtered with an assault rifle. The look of terror on our local school employees the next school day, when I walked our kids in the front door, will never leave me. Every parent or visitor has since become a potential suspect as much as they were once a friend and ally.
No amount of “hardening” of schools can address this. Turning our schools into fortresses and our teachers into paramilitaries will do little except further turn the lives of our children into an existence of constant fear. I find it terribly disturbing that we had legions of parents showing up to school board meetings alleging, without evidence, that wearing cloth masks would cause children irreparable psychological harm, yet these same parents seem to be silent on the psychological harm from the omnipresent threat of weapons of war.
So, to my son and his graduating class: I want you to celebrate the positive and move forward, yes. You’ve done some amazing things under trying circumstances. You’ve missed a lot and will have to play catch-up. But we are immensely proud of you.
Yet I hope you are not silent about the victims of unfettered access to guns, either on graduation day, or thereafter. I do not have a solution to offer, but I do know that being silent is not the answer. Starting that process of speaking out, perhaps, might make this a truly meaningful graduation day.