Delaney Tarr is a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida. In this op-ed, she explains why she and her classmates are mobilizing in response to the mass shooting by a former classmate.
On February 14, 17 people were killed in a mass shooting at the high school I attend. In the following days, the media has shown a very specific, and very vocal, side of the Stoneman Douglas student body. America is seeing the activists, the leaders, and the changemakers from my community. Every news outlet has our faces plastered on it, as we demand change. They call us American heroes.
Yet, amongst all of the frenzy, there seems to be one thing forgotten: We have just been robbed of our youth. The regular, ordinary concerns of high school students are now gone for myself and my fellow classmates.
Our appearances in the media, of course, are important, and they provide us a platform to make a difference. But we are still teenagers. Educated and vocal teenagers, yes, but teenagers nonetheless. We are still high school students. Just days ago, I was most worried about which projects we had due. Just days ago, my friends and I were planning our graduation trips; we were planning prom buses. Just days ago, underclassmen were stressing over standardized tests and studying for the next AP exam.
There are so many things, so many simple teenage things, that now feel insignificant: Who will we go to prom with? What college are we going to? Now, the only thing that dominates our mind is: How do we keep more children from being murdered? We have been forced to push aside the integral, simple realities of being young adults, and be outspoken about an unspeakable tragedy, one we shouldn’t have had to witness.
We have been forced to grow up in the span of days. We have been forced to live what feels like an entire lifetime before the week even ended. We are high schoolers, but high school now feels like a distant memory.
But, I refuse to feel hopeless. Our childhoods may have been stolen from us but there are so many lives that can still be protected, and saved. Just because this has happened to many before us does not mean it must continue to happen to those after. The innocent young people that deserve their youth — my 12-year-old sister or the four-year-old I babysit — shouldn’t have to live in a world of code reds and shooter protocol and closet hideouts. They shouldn’t live in fear. Every kid, every person, deserves to feel safe wherever they go, especially at school.
That is why we are marching and making ourselves heard. Knowing that we can keep this from happening to even one more person is the only thing that makes me feel even a little bit better about living through this senseless tragedy. The hope that not one more parent has to explain to their child that they may die just going by to school.
We are in a place where we have the ability to speak out. We have social media, we have the news, and we have the benefit of coming from a school that has given us so many opportunities to learn about our country. We know the damage that organizations like the NRA do. We know the money that is flowing directly into politicians’s hands in exchange for more semi-automatic rifles in circulation. We also now know that the shooter was able to legally access an AR-15. He used it to mow down 17 of our peers.
With all of the power and platform being given to us, my peers and I will never be quiet. We will not be silenced by an oppressive government. We will not be silenced by the corrupt individuals that have signed the death certificates of our very own Eagles. We will be heard.
We are no longer just high school students, that much is true. We are now the future, we are a movement, we are the change.
