Atlanta Students Plan To Honor Columbine Shooting Victims
Students from Lassiter High School in Cobb County participated in the ‘March for Our Lives’ rally last month.
Courtesy of Hannah Andress
Thousands of students participated in school walkouts last month, prompted by the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Many of them also took to the streets during the ‘March for Our Lives’ protests to support gun control measures. Now, national organizers are planning a second round of walkouts for Friday, April 20. That’s the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado.
Metro Atlanta school districts varied in their responses to the March 14 walkouts. Some, like APS and DeKalb and Clayton counties, encouraged students to participate. Others, like Cobb and Gwinnett, said students who took part could face consequences.
Sophomore Natalie Stembel helped plan the walkout at Lakeside High School in DeKalb. She’s also one of the organizers of Friday’s Columbine walkout.
“We will have a display of 200 t-shirts, which represents the gun deaths in schools since Columbine,” Stembel says. “We will also have lots of speakers, students, politicians, activists. The drama department is doing a performance for us. We have some very talented students who are singing for us. We also have one of our teachers who writes songs, and he’ll perform.”
Three of DeKalb’s state lawmakers have agreed to attend.
Stembel says organizing the gathering has been a lot easier with the support of her principal and school district. If she didn’t have that support, she says, she’d be even more determined.
“Knowing that they didn’t support us would make me want to [protest] even more,” she said. “But it would be harder to get students involved because there would be more consequences.”
Hannah Andress knows what that’s like. She organized the walkout at Lassiter High School in Cobb County. Andress served an in-school suspension for participating. She’s not deterred. However, she says Lassiter students will honor Columbine victims through acts of service. That’s what Columbine High School does every year. Instead of going to school April 20, students will work on service projects.
“We’re going to organize a few service projects probably sometime at the end of this week, the beginning of next week,” Andress said. “So, we’re not doing a walkout, more of a memorial and then organizing some service-related activities.”
Andress said those projects may center around mental health services. She says kids who are struggling need more resources.
“There are about five counselors for the entire student population, and there’s 2200 of us that go to Lassiter,” she said. “So, that’s kind of a problem. We don’t have enough funding to actually reach out to these students that might need help.”
Both Lakeside and Lassiter have more than 2000 students. Each school has one school resource officer. However, Andress and Stembel take a cautious approach when it comes to hiring more armed guards.
“I’m white, so more police officers doesn’t really scare me,” Andress said. “It just changes the feel of the school. But for African-American students that suffer from police brutality, that might be a problem for them. So, we’re trying to create a school environment that everyone feels safe and comfortable in.”
Andress wants to continue the conversation after school hours. So, she’s trying to organize a town hall meeting to talk about school safety.
Public and private schools–and some colleges in the Atlanta area–will hold walkouts to commemorate Columbine victims Friday. Organizers have also planned a march to the state Capitol.
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