Parkland survivors take safety message overseas

Students in Dubai for global education forum

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Student survivors of the worst high school shooting in U.S. history took their message abroad for the first time on Saturday, calling for greater gun safety measures and sharing with educational professionals from around the world their frightening experience.

The Feb. 14 attack in Florida killed 17 people, 14 of them students, becoming one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. The attack was carried out by a former student wielding an assault-style rifle who strode into one of the school buildings and opened fire.

“It’s so important to be educated, and to be educated in a productive sense is to feel safe at school,” Suzanna Barna, 17, said. “No child should ever have to go through what we did.”

Barna and her classmates Kevin Trejos and Lewis Mizen, all seniors at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., each wore a red ribbon representing the color of their school in honor of the victims as they talked about their experience and their push for stricter gun safety measures. They spoke in Dubai at the Global Education and Skills Forum that coincides with the $1 million Global Teacher Prize, awarded to one outstanding teacher from around the world each year.

Trejos, 18, described the ordeal as “scary” and said students were crying and trying to comfort one another as they hid inside a closet in a classroom for nearly two hours.

“We didn’t know where the shooter was. We didn’t know if he was coming to our classroom next,” Trejos said.

“We need to improve school safety,” he added, saying that the students are not trying to ban guns “because we understand it’s practically impossible to do,” but are working to limit the accessibility of guns to criminals or potential criminals.

Mizen, 17, said protocols shouldn’t be preparing schools for when shootings happen, but should be stopping them before they happen.