Lawrence students take part in national walkout protest
LAWRENCE » Hundreds of public school students in Lawrence Township created their own curriculum Wednesday morning when they exited the classroom to demand security and safety improvements one month after a lone gunman shot and killed 17 people in Parkland, Florida.
“I think it’s going to be really important that even our local government takes a stand,” Lawrence High junior Maura Freeland told The Trentonian after the studentled walkout. “I think we need to expand background checks and ban assault weapons altogether.”
As deadly as last month’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting was, a much deadlier incident occurred in December 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School, when nearly 30 people got fatally gunned down in that Connecticut community.
The Sandy Hook massacre did not lead to improved federal background checks on gun buyers, but “I think this time is definitely different,” Freeland said. “The time for condolences is over. It’s time to take action and make change.”
Lawrence High has about 1,200 students, and nearly all of them walked out of the school and onto the adjacent track and field at 10 a.m. Wednesday. They walked around the track for 17 minutes as a Parkland victim’s name got recited during each minute — an exercise done in memory of the 17 individuals murdered in the Feb. 14 shooting.
The Lawrence High School walkout coincided with similar events that occurred throughout Mercer County and America at large as part of a national campaign.
Lily Carpinelli, a freshman student at Lawrence High, also said this time feels different than previous mass shootings. “It is important we encourage students to use social media for good to make a change,” she told The Trentonian. “It is relevant.”
After braving high winds and chilly weather in the walkout, a group of students reflected on the experience during a gathering inside the school’s library media center. “You don’t realize how much 17 is until you do something like this,” another student said. “This can never happen again. Ever.”
Lawrence High School students wore black T-shirts Wednesday emblazoned with the clear message: “Wake up. Walk out. March for our lives.”
“You kids are going to make a difference,” Mercer County Freeholder Pasquale “Pat” Colavita of Lawrence Township told the small group of students during the library sit-down discussion. “I can feel it.”
Lawrence school officials invited Colavita and fellow Mercer County Freeholder Ann Cannon of East Windsor to engage with the students in a post-walkout dialogue. The gathering allowed politicians and school officials to hear the concerns of students who demand classroom safety improvements in today’s era of mass shootings.
“I don’t own any guns,” Cannon said before naming certain gun control measures the New Jersey Legislature is considering.
During his final hours in office, former Gov. Chris Christie in January signed a bill into law that made possessing or selling a bump stock or trigger crank a criminal offense in New Jersey and allowing individuals to voluntarily surrender any bump stock or trigger cranks in their possession to a law enforcement agency within 90 days of the bill’s effective date.
A bump stock is a firearm device that increases the rate of fire achievable with the weapon and a trigger crank is an instrument that repeatedly activates the trigger of the firearm when attached. Such devices make semi-automatic weapons more lethal, as proven by the October 2017 massacre in Las Vegas that killed nearly 60 concertgoers. David J. Adam, principal of Lawrence High School, said the students brought up “complex issues that we don’t have answers to” during the post-walkout discussion. He said the gathering was about “having the voices heard” so the district can “put a plan in place” on “what we can do going forward.”
“This concept of school safety,” Adam said, “is what we need to figure out.”
Lawrence Police Chief Mark Ubry said the police department holds annual active-shooter drills in every public school in Lawrence Township. “Our goal is to make you feel safe in school,” he told the group of students, “and make this a nice learning environment.”
“I am very proud of my students who participated in the walkout in a peaceful, respectful and dignified way,” Lawrence Public Schools Superintendent Crystal M. Edwards told The Trentonian. “I think they are right: Their voices matter.”
The district secured the perimeter around Lawrence High School during the walkout to prevent outsiders, including parents, from joining the student-led demonstration.
“We facilitated their safety,” Edwards said of the students, “but their message was their message.”
In other local-area events, Hamilton Township public school students had structured activities Wednesday designed to promote “positive and proactive ways for our secondary level students to remember the students and staff lost at Stoneman Douglas High School while also showing their support for school safety and security.”
At the Pennington School, a private institution for students in grades six through 12, hundreds of students wore orange T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan hashtag “Enough” while school administrators and teachers also took part in Pennington School’s walkout demonstration Wednesday.