Students in Hamilton and Stevensville staged walk-outs last Wednesday in solidarity with a national movement in response to deadly school shootings.
Following the mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida high school in which 17 people lost their lives, one of the students who survived the shooting, Emma Gonzalez, gave a speech at a gun law rally in Ft. Lauderdale in which she took on President Trump and the National Rifle Association. A video of that speech went viral and has spawned a movement – “We call BS.”
In the speech, Gonzalez notes that Trump has taken $30 million in contributions from the NRA and states, “To every politician who is taking money from the NRA, shame on you.”
“The people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us,” said Gonzalez, “and us kids seem to be the only ones who notice and we are prepared to call BS. Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA and tell us that nothing could have been done to prevent it, we call BS.” After calling out several other items of BS, Gonzalez ends with, “They say that us kids are too young to understand how the government works. We call BS.”
The speech struck a chord with Hamilton High School student Grace Kemp and when she heard about the national student walk-out planned to honor the victims of the Parkland shootings and demand action, she thought, “Why not here in little old Hamilton?”
Interviewed before the event, Kemp said that she found Gonzalez’s speech “very empowering.” She said it was like realizing that this shooting was the last straw and something just has to be done.
Kemp said she went first to Hamilton High School Principal Dan Kimzey and expressed her desire to organize a walk-out in concert with the national protest. She said he was very helpful, “He didn’t just leave it to me to do it,” she said. “He got involved because he wanted to help ensure the students’ safety as much as possible.”
Asked how her classmates were responding, she said, “So far I have heard only positive responses. Nobody has been disrespectful to me at all.” She said she had no idea, though, how many kids might participate. “We’ll see,” she said.
Asked about the consequences that she might face if she did this, Kemp said, “The point of all this is to make a statement. So, you kind of have to be brave and push on or the statement won’t be made. I’m not afraid. No one has been mean.” She said that there may be some protests against them, “but it is freedom of speech so they are welcome too.”
Asked about allegations that the students involved are being manipulated by the school or their teachers, Kemp said, “No. It was completely my own decision to promote this walk-out.”
Asked if the students were looking for a ban on guns or some sort of legislative action, she said that personally, she was not looking to get rid of all weapons.
“But maybe ban some semi-automatic weapons or make some stronger regulations,” said Kemp. “These guns are made for war. You don’t go hunting with these guns. I don’t understand why people need them in their homes. I think the military should have them but not just some person at a gun show.”
Fellow student and “spokesperson” for the walk-out, Alex Raymond, said, “It’s almost a protest. We want safer schools. We want to feel secure when we go to school here.”
He said as a group they weren’t proposing any specific legislation, “but this is meant to spark a conversation that could lead to legislation or some other actions by society to make our schools safer.” He said he saw it as kind of a generational issue.
“The younger generation is not being respected in the legislature, so we are going to get involved,” he said.
What they are really doing at the walkout, he said, is “We are honoring the victims in the Parkland high school shooting.”
Asked what he was doing to prepare for the event, Hamilton High School Principal Dan Kimzey said, “We are preparing for the worst and expecting the best.”
Kimzey said that preparing for the worst simply meant alerting and consulting with the administration, the staff, the teachers, the Sheriff’s Office, and the City Police about the best strategy for handling the event.
“It made for some awesome conversations,” he said. He said they wanted to come up with a plan that was somewhere between being viewed as a “crackdown” or as “a sponsor,” although he said they were bound to be viewed as in the middle of it no matter what.
He said it was an issue where there were strong feelings on each side about some things but that “the kids have been really good, respectful of each other, to the teachers and the staff, better than some of the adults.”
Asked about potential repercussions to the students that chose to walk out, Kimzey said, “They will be treated the same as any other student who would get up and walk out of a classroom.”
He said the school’s policy for skipping out on a class was lunch detention for the first infraction.
“But for a habitual skipper it could be more problematic,” he said. “If a student has previous infractions the consequences get more serious.” He said according to the policy, if this type of demonstration happened again and the same kids were involved, they would face more serious consequences. “I think the kids understand this,” he said.
The walk-out, which was scheduled to start at 10 a.m. and last for 17 minutes in honor of the 17 victims at the Parkland shootings, went pretty much as expected. The students exited the building in an orderly fashion and crossed at the crosswalk to gather across the street on the grounds of the First Christian Church which agreed to sponsor the event. In all over 170 people gathered on the church lawn, many of them holding signs. Close to 80 students participated in the event.
There was a simple ceremony facilitated by Dave Schultz from the Center for Spiritual Living. As the names of the students who died in Parkland were read aloud, a pair of Hamilton High School students carried purple and white ribbons with dangling bells and hung them on the branches of a tree on the church grounds as a memorial.
There were no counter protesters at the event. The atmosphere was quiet and solemn.
In contrast, not a single Stevensville High School student walked out of the building on National Walkout Day. A small group of 15 people gathered across the street from the school grounds. Three of them were adults and the rest were 6th, 7th and 8th graders.
One of the parents who attended, Gretchen Langton, said, “It was strange. I think the cops and school officials outnumbered us. It was as though they were prepped for a big riot or something. I don’t know what they expected.” She said that the police video-taped the children as they marched a bit with their signs. She said that even though she had made arrangements with the principal and came and checked a couple kids out for the event, they were notified later that the absence was being considered “unexcused.” Another mother who had made arrangements for her child to be properly checked out and participate also received notice that her daughter had been given an unexcused absence.
Eighth grader Lily Wages said, “I was kind of disappointed with the turnout, but it went pretty good, I thought.” She said when she received notice of an unexcused absence, “I thought it was kind of stupid since my mom came and checked me out. I don’t think the principal dealt with it the right way.”
Asked about her motivations, Lily said, “We just felt we should honor the people who were killed. It felt like the right thing to do.”
School District Superintendent Bob Moore said that there was some confusion at first and some kids who were properly checked out did receive notice of an unexcused absence.
“That mistake has been corrected and the record has been set straight,” said Moore. He said the kids who were not properly checked out would still be marked as unexcused and may face detention.
Asked about the fact that no high school students participated in the walkout, Moore said, “What we did as a school district was to try to make it more about school safety and in every K-12 class we set aside 30 minutes to review our safety protocols and procedures and went over every protocol for emergencies.” He said everything from fire drills, to active shooter to earthquake protocols, was reviewed.
According to Moore, the students who inquired about a walkout with the administration felt that this would be a safer, better way to go.
“I give the students credit for that,” he said.