Students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, VA push for gun control during the student walk out.
Exactly one month after the Parkland shooting, students across America walked out of class for 17 minutes to demand stricter gun laws in honor of the 17 lives lost on Feb. 14.
The walkouts began at approximately 10 a.m. in each time zone, and the demonstrations continued throughout the day in different cities.
In response to the #WalkOut movement started by student activists, the #WalkUpNotOut movement started to trend after being proposed by Ryan Petty, a father of a Parkland victim.
The #March4OurLives supporters will accomplish only two things. 1. They'll exercise their 1st Amendment right. 2. They'll get a little exercise. If you really want to stop the next school shooter #walkupnotout pic.twitter.com/9kY3k53xcr
— Ryan Petty (@rpetty) March 13, 2018
The movement suggests that instead of walking out of schools for a simple 17 minutes, students should walk up to those considered “outcasts” and befriend them.
The idea that school shooters are social outcasts goes back to the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. The shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were reported to be social rejects, and discussion surrounded the bullying by popular kids.
However, the FBI decided Harris was a psychopath, and that kids didn't like him and Klebold because they walked around giving the Nazi salute.
A few days before the attack, Klebold took a date to the prom and got into a limo with a bunch of friends.
The lost life of Rachel Joy Scott - the first victim of the Columbine shooting - exemplifies the flaws in the #WalkUp effort.
The first victim of the Columbine shooting in 1999, Rachel Scott. Scott was a devout Christian who wanted to dedicate her life to spreading compassion and love.
Scott was known for her dedication to both God and the spread of compassion. She wrote journals filled with entries on how compassion and just simply being kind can change the world.
She even wrote a paper a month before her death called My Ethics; My Codes of Life that advocates her belief in compassion being "the greatest form of love humans have to offer."
Klebold had known Scott since kindergarten, and in that respect, most likely knew that she cared for everyone and didn’t partake in the exclusion or bullying of anyone.
That didn’t stop her from being shot in the head, torso and leg.
The danger with combatting #WalkOut with #WalkUp is that it makes it seem like students can’t do both. The other danger in #WalkUp is that it’s straight-forward victim blaming.
It also allows students to target others that they think might have "school shooter" potential. In the wake of all that's been happening, if someone who doesn't normally have that much interaction with others starts to suddenly have more people sit with them at lunch, they will know why: because other kids think they will shoot up the school.
The movement is just another way to trick students into not using their first amendment rights. The reason students are walking out of schools in the first place is to emphasize the fact that too many children have died in schools.
In the past month since the Parkland shooting, students across the country have been advocating for gun reform, asking for better background checks, a raise in the legal age to buy guns, bans on semi-automatic and automatic assault rifles and mental health checks.
The #WalkUpNotOut movement does nothing but insist that if children were nicer, they wouldn’t be killed. It’s extremely dangerous and appalling to even suggest to kids that their potential deaths could be their fault.
Students should walk up and walk out – push for a change while being a decent human being. This isn’t an either/or situation. Everyone can do both.
