Oceanside students mull path forward after walkout

On March 14, the Ocean-side High School football field was crowded with between 300 and 400 students. Usually a gathering of teenagers on that scale would be reserved for jubilant occasions — a Homecoming game or graduation.

But in an era when mass school shootings occur on a regular basis, absent were the cheers and shouts. Instead, the silence was deafening.

For 17 minutes starting at 10 a.m., the students stood, eyes downcast in windy, 35-degree weather as the names of the 17 students and teachers killed in last month’s shooting at the Marjory Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., were read over the field loudspeaker. The ceremony was part of a nationally organized school walkout meant to protest congressional inaction on gun control and to promote school safety.

But far from the cause célèbre the movement’s national organizers purported it to be, Oceanside’s student government leadership framed the walkout as a commemoration in order to encourage more participation among the student body, many of whom are passionate about gun ownership.

“For our school specifically, we know we have a diverse student body regarding their views,” Student Council President Julianna Risi, 17, who helped organize the walkout, explained afterward. “We know there are people who support gun control and people who don’t, and people that are pro-Second Amendment and will literally fight for it until they die. But we wanted to make sure that this walkout could be available to everybody.”

“I think that for our school in particular, it was important to take this walkout and really stress the fact that it was solely about remembrance,” senior class President Martina D’Angelo, 17, said, echoing the concept that Oceanside’s walkout was tailored to prevailing community attitudes. “. . . It says something to all the other schools that are walking out or are protesting . . . that this was more for us, and those students.”

The event was entirely student organized, because state law prohibits school districts from taking political positions. But despite not officially condoning the event, Schools Superintendent Dr. Phyllis Harrington expressed pride at the student activism on display.

“We turned it over to the students, and together the plan was developed,” she said of maintaining a secure environment for the walkout. “Security was tight, and there was a police presence just outside school grounds.

“When we empower the students to work with us, this is what came as a result of that,” Harrington explained, gesturing to the field where, just moments before, the students had gathered.

The next steps

Despite the apolitical tilt of the March 14 event, speaking days after the walkout, 17-year-old Rachel Finkelstein, co-editor in chief of the Sider Press, said she saw indications that this may be her generation’s Vietnam War moment.

“That made a change,” she said of the anti-war protests that roiled the country throughout the late 1960s and early ‘70s. “We pulled out.”

It was not a perfect analogy, she said. “We were trying to get out of a [foreign] war,” Finkelstein explained. “Now we’re trying to get out of a domestic war,” and, referring to the randomness of the violence, she added, “We don’t know necessarily when the war is going to start up.”

In her view, she said, the solution lies in a unity of ideas, messaging and legislation, particularly the need for federal regulation of firearms and enforcement of the laws that already exist. “Right now, gun-purchasing laws are different according to the different cultures of different states,” she said. “A shooting could happen anywhere, and that’s scary.”

But in terms of mobilization, Finkelstein cited the confusion surrounding the meaning of the walkout as an example of the need for more unified messaging. “In our case, not many people knew what this protest was for,” she said. “Any protest is going to mean something different to different people. Everyone’s goal is safety. It’s just, how do we make that happen?”

Finkelstein said she plans to attend the March 24 protest, dubbed the March for Our Lives, and will participate in the April 20 walkout organized by the Parkland shooting victims on the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre in Jefferson County, Colo. She added that she is curious to see the reactions from administrators, and whether the movement will continue.

“It will be interesting to see if it’s stronger or weaker as more time goes by,” she said, and noted that among students, the issue of domestic gun violence would be easy to ignore. “Students are busy,” she said. “It’s easy to put off, and no one wants to think about it anyway.”

But Finkelstein said she is determined to keep going. “Everyone has to go to school. Everyone has to live their lives. We can’t just stay in our houses,” she said of the need for continued activism. “Although it’s a burden, that’s what it takes. We can’t be scared of making a change.”