Students plan walkout today
Some Arizona youths to join national effort to honor victims, protest arming teachers
Students in Arizona and across the nation are expected to participate in a national walkout today to protest against arming teachers in the classroom and remember students killed in a mass shooting last month in Florida.
It is unclear how many Arizona schools will be affected by student walkouts. Some schools have tried to address the issue in advance.
Today’s national walkout is the latest in a wave of student demonstrations after last month’s massacre that left 17 people dead.
Students at several Arizona high schools staged walkouts or silent demonstrations immediately after the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Some received suspensions.
Later this month, at least four marches are planned across Arizona in solidarity with the Washington, D.C., March For Our Lives on March 24 that
will advocate for gun control and school safety.
In Tucson, students from University and Rincon high schools plan to stage a walkout at 10 a.m. today in which 17 students will read the names of the 17 people who were killed in the Parkland shooting.
“In the wake of the Parkland shooting nearly one month ago, my peers and I feel there is no time more critical than this to make clear that we have had enough of gun violence,” said Deja Foxx, a senior at University High School.
“For far too long, it has made us feel unsafe in our communities and in our classrooms.”
Foxx said the demonstration would last precisely 17 minutes and students would then be expected to return to class. She added that students will “take a collective action” and “flood Rep. Martha McSally’s office with calls” to address gun violence.
One Phoenix elementary school is making today a “day of caring” in response to some of its older students expressing interest in participating in the national walkout.
In a letter to parents Monday, Mike Duff, principal of the K-8 Madison Traditional Academy in Phoenix, said, “many of our seventh- and eighth-graders expressed a desire to show support for this event.”
“As MTA is a K-8 school, we are extremely sensitive to the fact that we have younger children who do not need to be made aware of such horrible tragedies, but would also like to respect and support the right of our students to advocate for causes that are important to them,” Duff wrote in the letter.
The school’s students will place pink ribbons on a school fence as part of its
“My peers and I feel there is no time more critical than this to make clear that we have had enough of gun violence.” Deja Foxx University High School.
day of caring, in which older students will help younger ones.
Seventh- and eighth-grade students at Madison Traditional will participate in a 17-second moment of silence in their classrooms, Duff said, and “no other grade level will be making reference to the number 17 or the Florida incident.”
Judith Browne Dianis, executive director of the social justice group Advancement Project said the purpose of today’s national walkout is to allow young people to be heard.
Dianis called the latest proposal from the White House to arm some school personnel “preposterous.”
We need to make sure that we understand that this discussion about arming teachers and putting more cops in schools is really a distraction from the issue around the assault weapons ban,” Dianis told reporters Monday.
“... That instead of talking about the things that the young people in Parkland have set out to talk about, which is putting a ban on assault weapons, we’re talking about arming teachers.”