The ‘generation of mass shootings’ — Puyallup students skip class to protest gun violence

More than 200 Puyallup High School students walked out of class Wednesday to recognize the 17 lives lost in a Florida high school shooting last month.

Students also wanted to raise awareness and gather support for gun-safe legislation.

“We came together to organize this walkout because we wanted to be a part of the greater movement that’s going on around the nation,” PHS senior Rimpal Bajwa said. “We just want to be a part of the conversation that the students in Parkland started to support them and show solidarity with them.”

Students from across the country participated in the national walkout Wednesday. At 10 a.m., Puyallup students walked to Pioneer Park, holding signs with the names of the 17 victims from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. They gathered at the Rotary stage and read each name with facts about each victim.

“These amazing 17 people had bright futures waiting for them,” PHS senior Sarah Kurpius said to the crowd. “To honor them, please join us in a moment of silence.”

The PHS choir sang “Sing Me to Heaven” and sophomore Sara Sprague gave a speech to her classmates about school shootings and gun reform. A member of the debate team, Sprague is part of a speech event, Programmed Oral Interpretation and will be traveling to Florida in June for a national competition. She’ll be giving her speech on the same topic.

“This issue is important to me because it affects everyone around us. It affects every school in America. We’re seeing that students are being affected by guns every single day and people blame it on mental illness, but mental illness is a worldwide issue. School shootings are an American issue,” Sprague said.

“As Americans it’s our job to fix what’s wrong with our country and to push for change and push for reform. Our generation refuses to stand idly by as shootings and dangerous things like this happen every single day,” Sprague added.

Members of Indivisible Puyallup, “a nonpartisan community of citizen lobbyists dedicated to protecting our nation’s values and principles through grassroots political action to resist Trump,” set up a voter registration booth at Pioneer Park for students passing by. The Puyallup chapter has about 600 members online.

“We are here because we saw the energy of the students and are very proud that they’re willing to stand up. We need reform around gun safety and we need to find a way to reduce gun violence, so the best way to do that is to vote,” said Indivisible Puyallup member Joe Colombo. “This is their moment, we don’t want to take away from that, but we also want them to know that there are adults in the community that fully support what they’re doing today.”

By the end of the walkout, group members estimated they’d registered about 30 students.

School shootings are on the minds of many students, Bajwa said.

“We’re directly affected by it because we go to school too, and we’re seeing that this is being normalized in our society,” she said. “We are the generation of mass shootings, and we see that these school shootings, every time they happen, we grieve, we mourn, but then we move on.”

To make a difference, Kurpius advocated for introducing more gun-safe legislation.

“We also want to stress that this shouldn’t be a partisan issue… We’re not anti-gun or anything like that, we just want to make sure that the regulation we have allows the people that want to have guns and use them safely have guns, but the people that shouldn’t have guns don’t have access to them,” she said. “Ideally, both sides would come together and try to draft legislation that appeals to both constituents.”

“I really hope that Washington and Olympia and all across the world listen to the students that rose up and marched today because we are a voice saying that we want change,” Sprague said.

This story was originally published March 14, 2018 at 4:47 PM with the headline "The ‘generation of mass shootings’ — Puyallup students skip class to protest gun violence."