March 15th of 2018 became National Walkout Day for many schools in the U.S. and some outside of the country. Over a million students, including some of our very own here at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, walked out.

The walkout wasn’t an excuse for kids to just get out of class; the purpose of the walk out was to take seventeen minutes for the seventeen lives that were lost in the Parkland Florida shooting about a month ago. The walkout was to be a a wake up call for not only that, but also for the almost 700 lives that have been lost due to school shootings in the past nineteen years. During the past nineteen years there have been 31 school shootings, all ending up with fatalities. Teens are starting to try and take matters into their own hands by reaching out to people and spread awareness on social media and some young adults have even been on the news and have been interviewed.

I interviewed Adriana Martinez on her thoughts on school shootings and she responded saying, “Its sad that schools that are supposed to be a safe space for learning and growing have become places of fear, Our generation has been taking action to try and help this situation and this is only the beginning.”

Teens and young adults need to take a stand for what they believe in. Our lives are important; we are not just another statistic. We are human, not targets. Let’s work hard to try to prevent and maybe even end gun violence, especially in our schools.

Be the change you want to see in the world.