On March 14 — one month after 14 students and three teachers were shot and killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida — Albuquerque students participated in a national walkout in an effort to memorialize the victims of the shooting and demand gun law reform.
Bosque School, a sixth- through 12th-grade college preparatory school, was one of the schools in Albuquerque to organize a walkout.
Students walked out of class at 10 a.m. for 17 minutes, in memory of the 17 individuals that died during the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting.
Event Organizer Vera Berger, a Bosque junior who plans on attending UNM, said it is important for students to be aware of what is going on in our nation and to become politically active.
Zoe Perls, a Bosque senior who will be attending UNM in the fall, said students should be involved, even if they are not old enough to vote. This walkout was an opportunity for students to be heard, she said.
The administrators and teachers at Bosque were supportive of the walkout, Berger said.
A voter registration booth was also set up during the event for students to register to vote.
Shane Conley, another Bosque student who also helped organize the event, said, “We had a great turn out. Over 40 students registered to vote.”
Other schools in Albuquerque also participated in the national walkout, including Eldorado High School, Albuquerque High School, East Mountain High School, Cibola High School and La Cueva High School.
Some of the other high schools in Albuquerque did not receive administrative support, according to Berger. Therefore, it was critical that Bosque participated as an act of solidarity, and Bosque students were lucky to have teachers that support student activism, she said.
“We are not anti-Second Amendment,” Berger said. “We do not want to take away guns. We want to make schools and society safer. We want to manage the Second Amendment.”
Perls said the walkout was a demonstration stating the United States is in need of gun reform to make schools safe.
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“I think that people need to know that gun violence creates fear and that this fear is hurting people’s education,” Perls said. “If you believe that education is a constitutional and human right, then what's currently going on — gun violence and school shootings — are direct violations of those rights.”
Conley said one possible solution is preventing third-party transactions.
Additionally, Berger, Conley and Perls all said background checks are key to keeping guns out of the wrong people’s hands. Berger said legislation needs to manage who can buy guns and what kind of guns are accessible.
Conley said students’ opinions need to be heard.
One of the issues students are currently facing is that people do not always believe their arguments are valid or that students should even be involved in the current national discussion, he said.
“Students and kids have more power now than ever before because of social media,” Perls said. “We have these tools that allow us to impact the national dialogue and start a really important conversation."
According to Vera, students throughout Albuquerque and across the nation participated in the walkout, because this is an issue that impacts education and safety. Historically, youth have always been passionate about change and are a major proponent in starting the conversation that results in change, Perls said.
“Students are the ones being killed,” she said. “If a kid is too young to be engaging in a national dialogue, then they are too young to be shot.”
Megan Holmen is a culture and news reporter at the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted at culture@dailylobo.com, news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @megan_holmen.
