Few Delco schools to honor Columbine shooting anniversary
Students at Delaware County schools will be absent for the latest round of nationally trending school violence memorials/gun control activism scheduled for Friday.
Upper Darby, Garnet Valley, Springfield, William Penn and Interboro were some of the school districts who had no knowledge Wednesday of any sort of student-led activities slated in honor of the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre. These districts, with almost all others in the county, were involved with the March 14 walkouts in honor of the victims of the Marjory Douglas Stoneman High School shooting that left 17 people dead.
With 2,100 walkouts registered on the website nationalschoolwalkout.net, the Haverford School in Haverford and Eastern University in Radnor are the only schools in the county with planned events. Both private education institutes are scheduled to walk out of class at 10 a.m. according to the site.
Haverford School District Spokeswoman Anna Deacon said Thursday morning that the Young Minds Change Lives club at Haverford Middle School will have an after-school event on Friday in honor of all school shooting victims. Students will walk on the track for 17 minutes and will then hear speeches by students at the bleachers. It is a student-only event.
It was on April 20, 1999, that two teenagers at Columbine High School went on a shooting spree that killed 13 people. In honor of the 19th anniversary of that tragedy students from across the country have again planned walkouts and other similar events to keep the gun control issue front and center.
Friday’s events are the latest in a continued effort since the massacre at Stoneman in Parkland, Fla., on Valentine’s Day to ignite students and gun control advocates across the control to standup to lawmakers for better gun control to keep their schools safe for further violence. In honor of those 17 victims at Parkland students at local high schools walked out of class for 17 minutes on the one-month anniversary of that event to pay their respects.
On March 24, hundreds of local students marched in Washington, D.C., as the focal point of internationally-held rallies called March For our Lives to ask for stricter gun control measures to be passed to prevent further school shooting incidents which has plagued schools on a more frequent basis since Columbine.
While Delco sits out Friday’s event, rallies are scheduled for Philadelphia including one at City Hall starting at 4 p.m.
For more information on local events go to nationalschoolwalkout.net.