Picturing Parkland
It has been over a month since the tragic Parkland shooting, and it is already struggling to remain in this rapid news cycle. This spring marked the 6-year anniversary of the shooting at my high school, in Jacksonville, Florida. Every shooting I hear of since that day haunts me. I wished it would never happen again, yet it continued to. Factors such as easy access to firearms, toxic masculinity, and mental health issues have exacerbated a school shooting epidemic in the United States, that does not exist on this level in any other country.
The Parkland students are taking a strong stance and acting as leaders. They are saying, speaking, asserting, promising NEVER AGAIN. One of my best friends, Addison Mathis, collaborated with me on this article, to share her experience regarding the shooting at our school and her advocacy since, as a student at Florida State University. 03.06.12 will always be a significant date for us, as Valentine's day will now forever be significant for the Parkland students.
Addison and I were in different classes on that day, yet our experience was very similar. The whole school felt it, and to deny such a fact is fallacy. Here is the shooting, from her eyes.
March 6th, 2012 is a date that will resonate in my ears for the rest of my days. Never before has a number on a calendar triggered such anxiety in my heart.
That morning began as mornings do for an eighth grade student at Episcopal School of Jacksonville. Conversation consisted of the usual trivialities: the new Hunger Games movies, cool iPhone features, and the latest gossip on who-liked-who. It wasn’t until lunchtime that things turned wrong.
“Did you hear?!,” my Spanish classmate Brook asked me in the bookstore during lunch.
“Hear what?” I asked.
“Mr. Schumerth was fired! That’s why we had a sub today.”
There was a banality about the news. We joked about Shane--he was never our favorite teacher--and then said goodbye. I returned to lunch, wondering what had led to Mr. Schumerth’s dismissal. I guessed that it was probably because he spent the elementary Spanish class talking about philosophy; halfway through the second semester I still hadn’t learned to conjugate.
The day went on as usual until 7th period when an all-call lockdown announcement resounded through the school. We were instructed to close our blinds, lock our door, and sit on the floor with the lights off. Mrs. Shea continued the lesson--in the dark. She briefly called the front office to ask about the situation, as she had no prior knowledge of a drill, then calmly resumed teaching. It wasn’t until later that I realised the lesson had been a facade, an attempt to keep us calm and unaware of the shooting.
The afternoon still remains a technicolour memory: the trying to piece together the events while walking out to the road, returning home in the backseat of my car and watching the news. The emotion was so intense that it left me numb. I could only stare in shock: Mr. Schumerth had hid an AK-47 and 100 rounds of ammunition in a guitar case and brought it to our campus, killing our beloved head of school, Dale Regan, before killing himself.
I was thirteen.
The aftershocks remain: I have anxiety attacks over lock down drills, post-traumatic stress disorder flare ups during firework-ridden holidays, the anniversary hits you with intense despair that doesn’t abate with time. Every school shooting survivor’s experience is different; several are less severe and many are much worse. I am lucky in that I couldn’t identify the fatal sound of gunshots that shattered ESJ that afternoon. Unlike the shootings at Sandy Hook, Pulse, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and countless others, I did not watch bullets rip away lives. I did not hear screams of terror, I did not send frantic goodbye messages to my family, I did not watch blood stain the walls of a familiar place. I did not witness the atrocities of a shooting.
These terrors have no place in the reality and thoughts of students. The crack of a bullet shatters one’s innocence--forever changing one’s life. Club meetings and prom are replaced with the funerals of classmates. Friends mourn with bereft parents. They are all coming to terms with lives so different from ones they imagined.
The sixth year anniversary of my high school’s shooting was weeks ago. But the despair I expected was tempered by a new emotion; that of empowerment. I found solace in the collective fighting tirelessly to change the violent climate that forced tragedy upon them.
Marching alongside these Parkland students has been chilling experiences. Tears traced my face as I marveled at their courage; I imagined the atrocities they survived the week prior and was moved by the fervor with which they spoke-- these students are not easily shaken. College students, high school students, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, families, congregations, coalitions and more took off work, skipped class, left obligations to gather around Florida’s capitol building to fight for a future with less school shootings. “Never again.” The message is clear.
I will be their voice at the polls and I will vote out the representatives who fight against gun control. I will stand with these remarkable individuals who planted their feet in the face of adversity and incomprehensible grief to revolutionize the future of this country.
If you stand with us, add your voice to the movement for change. Join the movement, and whisper these words until they become the beat of this country’s heart: Never Again.
By Sophie Laettner
Duke Student, activist and campaigner to change the national discourse on gun control.