When will the school shootings end?
Editor’s note: Two years ago, following a school shooting in Santa Clarita that left two teenagers dead, Mandy SawyerFeder wrote a column that appeared in the Lake County Record-Bee. This week, following yet another school shooting that left four students dead in Michigan, her words remain as powerful as ever. Thus, we’re reprinting her column from Nov. 20, 2019 on our page today.
All I could think of was braces.
That teenage girl had braces. Her parents were planning for her future.
She went to school to learn, but instead she died. So did her classmates.
I stared at the photos of the victims’ once smiling faces, so full of light, hope, joy and purpose. Surely their parents’ worlds immediately turned dark.
“It was the worst day of my life,” my college freshman student said, as her eyes welled with tears. She went to that high school. Her younger sister and her friends were attending school that day when a young gunman forever changed the lives of the Santa Clarita community.
“I waited to hear from my sister and my friends, one-byone, and it was excruciating,” she told me.
A couple days later, she sent me this email: “Dear Professor Feder-Sawyer, As you know, the shooting that happened in Santa Clarita was my high school and I am struggling being away from my community and my family at this time. There are events and vigils happening back home that I would like to be a part of to help deal with the fear that I am experiencing. I am asking to miss class this week in order to be home for these events. If it is not possible, I understand because school is my first priority.”
Three of my students were directly impacted by this and my heart aches for them.
One student told me that the girl who was killed was his sister’s friend. “I’m OK,” he said. “I just need to be there for my sister.”
I wish their world wasn’t always overshadowed by the ever-present and justified fear of this violence.
Will this ever end?
There have been 1,300 school shooting incidents since 1970 and 2018 had the greatest number of incidents since 1970, with 82 recorded incidents. In 2018, it was the highest year for the number of victims killed, including the shooter, with 51 killed. California, Texas and Florida are the top three states in the U.S. for school shootings. There were 669 incidents that occurred outside on school property and 588 occurred inside the school buildings.
Since the beginning of 2019, there has been an average of one school shooting per week, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
Parents and grandparents are gripped with fear each time they drop children off at school. I honestly can’t imagine how students can even focus on academics in this current culture of violence, which just seems to be escalating. Teachers suffering with post-traumatic stress are now tasked with being grief counselors, as well.
Children are supposed to be learning, laughing and socializing.
What are we as adults learning and what will we do to stop this now?