The National School Walkout was a national student-led protest on April 20, 2018, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre. [1] The walkout was one of many protests against gun violence in the United States that erupted in response to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas mass shooting on February 14, 2018.
After the shooting in Parkland, Ridgefield High School student Lane Murdock uploaded a petition to change.org, asking people to protest the lack of responses that follow school shootings in America by participating in a walkout. The petition accumulated over 270,000 signatures. [2] [3] [4] Murdock partnered with Indivisible to successfully rollout the effort. [5] [1]
The National School Walkout's Twitter account accumulated more than 100,000 followers in five days. [6] National School Walkout scheduled the nationwide walkout to take place on April 20, as it marked the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High school shooting. [2] [5] The official color for The National School Walkout was orange, as a nod to the color hunters wear to distinguish fellow hunters from animals. [6]
Students from over 2,500 schools participated in the walkout, taking place at 10 o’clock in the morning in each local time zone. [7] When students headed outside, they participated in 13 seconds of silence to honor the 13 people killed at Columbine High School. [2] Many walkouts consisted of the incorporation of open mics, to guest speakers and even voter registration sections; where senior students that were eligible, registered to vote. [2] Some students also wrote letters to students from other school communities that have been impacted by school shootings, [8] whereas others decided to set booths where students could call their representatives to pressure lawmakers over gun control.
The April 20 walkout organized by Murdock was set to last until the end of the school day, because the issue is one that needed to be ‘'addressed [for] longer than 17 minutes". [8] This was said in reference to the March 14 walkout, which lasted for 17 minutes to mark the 17 lives lost at the Marjory Stone High School shooting, after which students returned to their classrooms. [4]
Murdock’s plan to hold a school walkout met much criticism from different groups of people, ranging from students and staff from Columbine High school to educators of various schools and even government branches of education from different states across the country. The backlash was largely due to uncertainty about the purpose of the walkout, as well as its overlap with many standardized student exams. [9]
National School Walkout occurred on the anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting, but faced criticism from students, alumni and staff from the high school. It was custom for classes to be cancelled on April 24 for Columbine High School students in honor of those who passed during the shooting to allow students to engage in community service. Many members from the school community expressed their dislike of the walkout being held on that day and made it clear that they did not support it. [10] The principal from Columbine High School, Scott Christy, wrote a letter addressed to students from different high schools near the area; prompting them to partake in community service in lieu of participating in a walkout. The letter read, "Please consider planning service projects, an activity that will somehow build up your school . . . as opposed to a walkout.” [10]
The New York City Department of Education announced that students who were absent from school due to the walkout would be marked with an unexcused absence. [1] Other schools across the country also placed restrictions on students' ability to participate. [1] This led to some students holding alternative events after school. However, other schools compromised with students holding demonstrations before, or after school or permitting them to attend walkouts, if they had a parental note. [10]
Parkland students organized their own walkout in their community. The morning of the nationwide walkout, news broke that one person was injured in a shooting at Forest High School in Ocala This led to some students cancelling their planned walkouts, but also energized others, such as David Hogg, who expressed in a video posted on his social media that the event reiterated the necessity of the walkout. [11]
American students at the tertiary level also took part in demonstrations to show their support for the National School Walkout. Harvard students also partook in the walkout, placing particular emphasis on emphasizing the rights of minority groups. [12] American students at Oxford and Cambridge universities in England also participated in walkouts to show support to students back in the United States and call for gun control. [12]
The Columbine High School massacre, often simply referred to as Columbine, was a school shooting and attempted bombing that occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States. The perpetrators, twelfth-grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered twelve students and one teacher. Ten of the twelve students killed were in the school library, where Harris and Klebold subsequently died by suicide. Twenty-one additional people were injured by gunshots, and gunfire was also exchanged with the police. Another three people were injured trying to escape. The Columbine massacre was the deadliest mass shooting at a K-12 school in U.S. history, until December 2012. Columbine is still considered one of the most infamous massacres in the U.S. for inspiring many other school shootings and bombings; the word "Columbine" has since become a byword for modern school shootings. As of 2024, Columbine is still the deadliest school shooting in Colorado and one of the deadliest mass shootings in the United States.
A school shooting is an armed attack at an educational institution, such as a primary school, secondary school, high school or university, involving the use of a firearm. Many school shootings are also categorized as mass shootings due to multiple casualties. The phenomenon is most widespread in the United States, which has the highest number of school-related shootings, although school shootings take place elsewhere in the world. Especially in the United States, school shootings have sparked a political debate over gun violence, zero tolerance policies, gun rights and gun control.
Rachel Joy Scott was an American student who was the first fatality of the Columbine High School massacre, during which 11 other students and a teacher were also murdered by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who then committed suicide.
Columbine High School (CHS) is a public high school in Columbine, Colorado, United States, in the Denver metropolitan area. It is part of the Jefferson County Public Schools district.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is a public high school in Parkland, Florida, United States. Established in 1990 as part of the Broward County Public Schools district and named after the writer Marjory Stoneman Douglas, it was the only public high school in Parkland, serving almost the entire city as well as a small section of neighboring Coral Springs.
Forest High School is a school near Ocala, Florida, United States. It has an EMIT (engineering) program. The school's colors are green and gold and the school mascot is the Wildcat. As of 2014, it had an enrollment of some 2,058.
West Boca Raton Community High School (WBRCHS) is a magnet high school in Boca Raton, Florida, United States. It was established in 2004 and is part of the School District of Palm Beach County. The school primarily serves students from the western unincorporated part of Boca Raton known as West Boca Raton.
Ridgefield High School (RHS) is a public high school in Ridgefield, Connecticut, United States. It is part of the Ridgefield School District. It was ranked 119th in Newsweek's 2015 list of the top 1,600 high schools in America and 226th in U.S. News & World Report's 2012 list of the top 4,813 high schools.
The Parkland high school shooting was a mass shooting that occurred on February 14, 2018, when 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire on students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the Miami metropolitan area city of Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and injuring 17 others. Cruz, a former student at the school, fled the scene on foot by blending in with other students and was arrested without incident approximately one hour and twenty minutes later in nearby Coral Springs. Police and prosecutors investigated "a pattern of disciplinary issues and unnerving behavior".
X González is an American activist and advocate for gun control. In 2018, they survived the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history, and, in response, co-founded the gun-control advocacy group Never Again MSD.
Never Again MSD is an American student-led political action committee for gun control that advocates for tighter regulations to prevent gun violence. The organization, also known by the Twitter hashtags #NeverAgain, and #EnoughIsEnough, was formed by a group of twenty students attending Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (MSD) in Parkland, Florida at the time of the deadly shooting in 2018, in which seventeen students and staff members were killed by the gunman, Nikolas Cruz, who was a 19-year-old former student of the school and was armed with an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle. The organization started on social media as a movement "for survivors of the Stoneman Douglas Shooting, by survivors of the Stoneman Douglas Shooting" using the hashtag #NeverAgain. A main goal of the group was to influence that year's United States mid-term elections, and they embarked on a multi-city bus tour to encourage young people to register to vote.
March for Our Lives (MFOL) is a student-led organization which leads demonstrations in support of gun control legislation. The first demonstration took place in Washington, D.C., on March 24, 2018, with over 880 sibling events throughout the United States and around the world, and was planned by Never Again MSD in collaboration with the nonprofit organization Everytown for Gun Safety. The event followed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting a month earlier, which was described by several media outlets as a possible tipping point for gun control legislation.
Cameron Marley Kasky is an American activist and advocate against gun violence who co-founded the student-led gun violence prevention advocacy group Never Again MSD. He is notable for helping to organize the March for Our Lives nationwide student protest in March 2018. Kasky is a survivor of the February 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Kasky was included in Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People of 2018".
In 2018, protests against gun violence in the United States increased after a series of mass shootings, most notably at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14 that year. An organized protest in the form of a national school walkout occurred on March 14. March for Our Lives was held on March 24. Another major demonstration occurred April 20, 2018.
Stand for the Second was a student-led demonstration in support of the United States Second Amendment held on May 2, 2018. The demonstration was in response to the March for Our Lives protest held on March 24, 2018.
Future Coalition is an American nonprofit organization resourcing movement-building solutions led by and for young people addressing the needs of their communities.
Lane Maxine Murdock is an activist and founder of The National School Walkout.
50 Miles More is a youth-led American nonprofit organization working to end gun violence in the United States through local, grassroots action to pass gun control.
The Columbine effect is the legacy and impact of the Columbine High School massacre, which occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado. The shooting has had an effect on school safety, policing tactics, prevention methods, and inspired numerous copycat crimes, with many killers taking their inspiration from Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold by describing the two perpetrators as being martyrs or heroes.
Aalayah Eastmond is an American activist and advocate for gun violence prevention, social justice, and racial equality. After surviving the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Eastmond began her activism during the 2018 United States gun violence protests. She has testified multiple times to the U.S. Congress. Eastmond is an executive council member of Team Enough, a youth-led gun violence prevention organization which is part of the Brady Campaign. Eastmond co-founded Concerned Citizens of DC in the wake of the murder of George Floyd to organize protests supporting social justice issues in Washington, D.C. She supports Black Lives Matter and protests against police brutality.
