On Wednesday, February 21, Etched In Stone convened for an Editorial Board meeting.

The board meets infrequently, and only out of necessity; we meet to discuss current events and topics which are sufficiently relevant to warrant commentary and coverage from a student-run newspaper.

On that day, the subject was gun violence and school safety. After the Parkland shooting, there was a vast range of topics to cover. Rachel’s Challenge, gun control, and mental health all came up, as well as planned school walkouts in protest.

I found myself caught in careful deliberation and debate – is it really worth it to miss Trigonometry? In the meantime, I overheard my fellow students murmuring plans and expressing interest in the walkout. I started to realize the scale of the event – and the impact – and I realized that my decision had already been made.

The day before, the tension and anticipation of it grew heavy, like the humidity of Florida in July. At every turn, students were eagerly discussing their plans. Fliers filled the bathroom stalls. Teachers acknowledged the impending exodus, and articles appeared in the Coloradoan. The roots of the walkout, and its influence, reached throughout the student body and across the school, the community, the city. Everybody knew something major was on the verge of occurring.

While many students I knew organized carpools with each other, taking full advantage of their driver’s licenses, I ended up receiving a ride from my mom, another avid supporter of the cause. Joining me were three equally enthusiastic underage cohorts, and, with some convincing, I managed to talk a friend of mine into attending the protest from Colorado Early Colleges (a school which, ultimately, did not have quite as strong of representation as some local high schools).

On the day of the walkout, I spent the first three periods of the day impatiently checking the clock. Every few minutes, I would glance up, countdown the time until 12:30, and envision the event in my mind. What would the turnout be? Would there be any hiccups? What even happens at protests? The anticipation was consuming me.

The car ride to the event featured pepperoni pizza and breadsticks (courtesy of the aforementioned avid supporter that is my mother) and Green Day turned up to unnecessarily high volumes on the car stereo. My mom fished around in the back seat and handed me a cardboard sign drawn neatly with Sharpie, boldly displaying a literary reference of her own invention, A Farewell to Arms written in strong and slightly hasty calligraphy. Every member of that last minute carpool was filled with a sort of nervous energy, but we were ready- we had come for a reason.

The Coloradoan had envisaged that the expected turnout for the event was 1,000 people. 1,000 people. I knew that there was a large mass of Fossil students planning on attending, but the true scale of the event escaped me. Old Town square was packed. Old Town Square, where, on a sunny day in July, one may find a few children playing on the splash pad or a pedestrian plunking out a pleasant tune on the piano by the fountain, was filled to every square foot with passionate protesters. Not only high school students, but also parents, young children, elderly people, and teachers, occupying all available space. The air was filled with a variety of impassioned chants, and a sea of homemade signs, each with a unique and impactful slogan, filled the area. “Never again,” “Guns don’t kill people…um, yes, they do,” “Keep my school safe,” and “Harry Potter and Katniss prepared you for this, SAVE US,” they said, and those wielding them believed. In the the years I have lived in Fort Collins, visiting Old Town frequently, I had never imagined so many people in the square. The fact that some 1,500 people had come, by carpool, public transport, and by foot, was astonishing.

The next hour and a half was occupied with group chants, with silence, with inveterate sign waving. And with peace, even in the face of fervent counter-protesting. From the location where my party had positioned ourselves in the back, I could not hear the speeches shouted from the stage with a megaphone, but I found that some things did not have to be heard to be understood.

I am standing on the stage in Old Town Square, looking out at over two thousand students and hundreds more of community members. I’ve been here countless times. Old Town is the most interesting place in Fort Collins for a high schooler who has lived here all her life and is only a year away from moving away for the first time. I’ve had Ben and Jerry’s on the little blue chairs with my best friend, sat at CooperSmith’s with my family and watched little kids squeal as they ran through the water.

Now, the only vision I will ever be able to picture of the space is standing in front of two thousand students, holding a sign that read “Alex Schachter”, and watching as every single person raised their hands to make a heart. I will remember the tears I fought back and the fact that every one of those two thousand students left school that Tuesday afternoon because they were scared of the world they were growing up in. I will remember walking 2.6 miles from Poudre High School, down the middle of the intersection of College and Mountain, chanting “show me what democracy looks like” and hearing hundreds echo back “this is what democracy looks like.”

I will remember that, for all the memories, for all the hugs we gave each other that day, for every single poster we laughed together over creating, there was a student who was lost to senseless gun violence in a public school. I will remember that the fact that we made CBS and Fox news means nothing if legislators don’t hear our voices. I will remember the panic I felt when I got sent a pass from the deans the day before the walkout, and how that panic is not even a sliver of what runs through a student’s mind when the loudspeaker echoes with “Code 99 Lockdown”.

I spent hours the weekend before the walkout making posters, running a social media campaign, and meeting with my fellow organizers to establish how we would pull off such a massive event. I was surrounded by the most passionate, driven, intelligent, and honest teenagers I had ever met. Every single one of them gave up sleep, time with friends and family, and risked getting hateful messages from people who didn’t agree with or work to understand the cause. They inspire me beyond belief, and none of us are slowing down.

The walkout was an incredible step in mobilizing students. It reminded high schoolers that they have more of a say than they think, allowed them to channel their anger and their sadness and their fear into a very real event. But what comes next is just as important. What comes next is the town halls. The school district board meetings. The March for Our Lives. The conversations that are calm and reasoned, but recognize a very immediate need for reform.

I did not cry when I heard of the shooting in Parkland, Florida. I did not cry as my fellow organizers and I ran over lists of school shootings around the nation, and I did not cry as we planned how to write the phrase, “am I next?” on a poster big enough to see across the square. Becoming numb to the world around you becomes easier as more awful things occur. It doesn’t mean you don’t care, or that you are somehow flawed. It simply means that you are scared, and the hardest part is that we as students have reason to be.

The moment in which I cried was when I was asked to make the poster for the final victim of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. When I went to print a picture of Peter Wang, I came across tens of news stories on the fact that he was a member of MSD’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC). I learned that Wang, at fifteen years old, held the door open at his school so others could escape with their lives. I learned that he had dreamed of attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point since he was young. And in this boy, younger than I am now, I saw the high schooler in each one of us who has dreams. The one who wants to protect those around them, the one who does the best that they can in the face of stress and heartbreak and everything life throws their way. Peter Wang lost his life protecting other human beings, and that resonated with me. It made me decide that I will fight as long as it takes to make schools safe for students. It made me recognize the desperate need for change in this country, where school shootings are an almost everyday occurrence.

Without that change, the shootings don’t stop. The way mental health is regarded in the United States certainly requires reform. Students and adults alike deserve access to care that will make things easier on them. But that’s not the solution. Nor is arming teachers, not when simulation after simulation has demonstrated that doing so harms innocent students. We are not calling for complete gun restrictions, but we are calling for laws that regulate gun ownership to only those who can prove their responsibility and their need for them. We are calling for nationwide recognition that student lives are worth more than guns are. We are calling because after the walkout, I held the hand of a little girl who was shaking because of the counter protesters wielding drawings of guns that appeared in the square. We are calling because guns do not belong in schools, and because questions of safety should not have to be asked in schools, and because fear does not belong in schools. We are calling so that we are heard, and the walkout was just the beginning.

I was one of the students participating in the student walk out on Tuesday, February 27 to protest the lack of safety in schools. I had never been a part of a protest, and as a result, I had no idea what to expect. One of the aspects of the walkout that I was both excited and scared about was the threat of counter protesters. I was worried that the counter protesters would be violent and be there simply to irritate the protesters. This got to a point where students were warned not to engage counter protesters.

My first exposure to the counter protesters was while we were still at Fossil Ridge High School. As the students received our debriefing for the protest, I watched as trucks drove one after another around the parking lot, hoisting American flags on the back. This caused me to believe that they could potentially be a problem at the walk out. When I arrived at Old Town Square, I didn’t see any counter protesters initially, but halfway through the chanting and remembrance of the students lost in Florida, I began to see people holding pro-gun signs trickling by the protestors. They didn’t seem to do anything, but began to form as a group towards the back of the protesters. As the walk out dispersed at the end of the hour, these counter-protesters began to chant pro-gun slogans, such as “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” while walk out students began chanting back at the counter protesters. When the protest was over, they also took the stage and began cheering as well.

During the protest, I had initially found them to be an irritant, as I had originally believed they had no right to be there fighting for gun rights. After the protest, I reflected on these counter protesters, and having time to think about their actions, I found that the counter protesters were not being violent or a nuisance; they were simply stating their point of view.

The main purpose of the event was to protest the lack of school safety across the nation and to promote more laws protecting students in schools. One of the main points brought up by protesters was the lack of gun control resulting in the lack of school safety. Some would contend that the counter protesters were against school safety; however, that was not why they were there. At the protest, they were holding pro-gun posters. According to Collen Brown, one of the counter protestors at the event, “we were not against school safety, but we wanted to express our opinion that guns aren’t the main problem in the school shootings.”

On my way to the student protest for school safety, I was flipped off, called a “f***ing liberal,” and run off the road by a car full of counter protesters. I was scared beyond words for what would happen once we reached the square. But then I got there. Nothing could’ve prepared me for the moment I got up on that stage and saw, first-hand, the enormous amount of support we received from all throughout the community. It was spectacular.

There are repercussions of being an activist, both socially and safety-wise. It is difficult at times to stand for something when it feels as though everyone is against you. It can feel as though you are in danger when among those who don’t agree, and even despise your belief. But there, in that square, I was not afraid. There, surrounded by 3,000 members of my community, standing hand in hand with my best friend in the world, I felt like a part of something so much bigger.

I was raised in a family were I was taught to be kind, soft-spoken, and to go with the flow. However, for my eleventh birthday, my dad got me a book. It was called The Butterfly Effect and, in summary, was about how small acts of kindness could change the world. I was inspired to put others before myself, and help those around me, knowing they would pay my kindness forward until it reached the world changers. Then, with my fiery best friend as my muse, I decided I wanted to be one of those world changers myself. Flash forward to high school journalism class. We were expected to keep up with the news, to know what was going on all over the world. For the first time in my life I was connected to the 300 million people in this country alone and all that they were experiencing. It was terrifying. While I had previously known the basics of what they told us in school, (hide under the desks or in a corner, stay away from windows) I had widely remained unaffected by the prevalence of school shootings. The code-99 lockdown drills had always just been going the motions in case someone dangerous was seen on campus. I had never taken a moment to think about what that really meant.

When I was in first grade, my teacher told the class we could change the world. Even though we were young, we were told we could do anything we put our minds to. As much as I tried to believe it, it was hard to understand. When you can’t vote, can’t work, and can’t drive, it’s difficult to see how you can make a difference in the world.

Before this year, I have never been interested in anything concerning current events or the government. As a teenager, I had never felt the need to get involved in anything that was going on outside of town because I thought it didn’t apply to me. I didn’t see how it applied to my life and why it was important.

After joining the journalism program, I began to see people who were passionate about change. We talk about current events in class all the time, and have had interesting conversations about personal views. Seeing so many people who were passionate about human rights inspired me to learn more. My own little world had expanded, and I now am constantly trying to understand my country and where it is going for the future.

For me, participating in this walk out was the first step in taking things into my own hands. I was a part of something greater than myself and my problems, speaking up for those who fear for their lives at school. In three years, I will be able to vote, and I should know about what’s going on before I can do so. Seeing not only high school students, but students from middle and elementary schools who believed in this cause was so powerful. I have realized that it is never too early to be an advocate for change, and youth really can change the world.

I know several people who don’t feel safe at home. For some, school is the only safe place they have, and I believe that all students deserve to not be afraid of walking through the front doors. Schools should be places to turn to, not run from. I have been injured since December, and that has limited me. In the past few months, school has been the only place that has given me a purpose, and it has become my safe space. The fact that students across the country can’t feel the same way because they fear for their life makes me sad.

Although I’m still not exactly sure what the next steps to ensuring schools are safe will be, showing that the current situation is not acceptable is a good place to start. School shootings have become our new normal. I hear about them all the time, and they continue to happen. Nothing is changing, and so the shootings continue. I walked out of school in the hope that this problem can never happen again.

This walk out gave me the chance to have a voice. I have never felt like my opinion mattered before, and I will carry that feeling with me. I will continue to be a part of this movement until students don’t have to feel afraid of getting an education.

The first time I heard of Columbine was in seventh grade two years after I moved to Colorado. My small town in Minnesota didn’t talk about gun violence or school shootings; I grew up in a bubble of peace where everybody knew each other and the only thing we worried about was how cold it was or if we were having pizza at lunch. This illusion was shattered when I sat in the Fossil Ridge High School main gym with the students of Preston Middle School and Kinard Middle School watching a video about Rachel’s Challenge and the Columbine shooting.

Then Sandy Hook, Pulse, Aurora, Walmart, Las Vegas, Marjory Stoneman Douglas and countless others began to flood headlines. It was not as if this was a one time thing, it wasn’t even as if gun violence and mass shootings were a rare thing. In the past two years I have heard more about mass shootings in the United States than I have about terrorist attacks or mass shootings in other countries.

Usually I remain quiet, choosing not to get into the conflict or argument, trying not to get targeted for having a voice and opinion that didn’t please everyone. Something changed when I saw the texts between victims and parents, the faces of victims crying as they were reunited with their family, and the faces of the victims who weren’t reunited with their families. This school shooting wasn’t history, it was a current event happening to another school whose students went to school that day to learn, not to be killed. Not to be killed by a man who had been repeatedly ignored by the police and school. To say I was fed up is an understatement, I was furious that this would just be another shooting to be forgotten in two weeks and nothing would change. So I walked out with my peers to show that our generation will not wait for another shooting before we make a change.

When I arrived at the walkout with my camera and sign reading “WE STAND for the VICTIMS who CANNOT.” I was astounded to see all the people there, overflowing the square and flooding the surrounding streets. It wasn’t the high schoolers that shocked me, it was the kids from middle and elementary schools who were there to have their voice heard. Listening to my peers speak on the steps of the stage I lowered my camera and saw two boys in elementary school with their cameras taking pictures. My heart burst and I looked at the people in the front and saw kids with signs and backpacks all so young, but standing there with us demanding change. Tears only came when two young girls began to hold hands and yelled “We want safe schools! We want change!” These kids were so young and yet here they were, yelling and holding their signs with us.

I want the people who protested against us to hear that their aggression prevented them from really being heard. I tried to get pictures of them, but when they screamed profane things at me and decided to intimidate me, I left. To the people who tried to run my friend’s car off the road, yelled profanity at us out their window, the man who had to be escorted out by the police for screaming at my friend, and the group of kids who decided to be angry with me rather than let me get their side too, I want you to listen. I don’t want to take away your second amendment rights and I don’t want to get into screaming matches with you. I want safety for the millions of kids in this country who go to school, I want safety for the billions of people who live in this country, and I want to hear your side too.

I walked out for change. I’m not sure what that change should be, all I know is I want safer schools, a safer country, better background checks and mental health tests before people are able to purchase a gun. Hear my voice, hear the voices of my peers, hear the voices of my generation, and hear the voices that are demanding change. We aren’t going away, we won’t be silenced, and we will be the generation that makes a change.

On Tuesday, February 27 at 12:15, I gathered my belongings and proudly walked out of my 5th period class. I was joined by two friends at the flagpole, and we drove to Old Town to protest the recent violence in schools.

When we arrived, we were greeted by hundreds of like-minded people who were demanding change. My friends and I proudly held up our signs and chanted along with the crowd. It was really powerful to see all of the students in Poudre School District who believe that no one should fear their lives while at school. The fact this topic is up for debate is ridiculous, no one should worry about their lives while trying to learn. Something needs to change.

As we all know, this problem has been localized within our community. Fossil Ridge High School has received several threats this year alone. Even though the threats were discredited, even the possibility of  a school shooting brings tears to my eyes. I cannot picture hearing the sounds of guns firing, people screaming, and hoping that all of my friends are okay, especially in school.

The main reason I walked out was for my younger brother. I should not spend my day worrying about his safety while I am trying to learn. There would be absolutely nothing I could do if something were to happen at his school. There is no way for me to protect him. This thought has haunted me for weeks now.

I cannot imagine the emotional distress of the people who have experienced such tragedies. My heart hurts for those who have been affected by any school shooting. I hope that the family members and friends of the students, teachers and staff of those who lost their lives in a shooting find peace in their lives again. If you want to help those affected by the recent shooting in Florida, please click here.