On Feb. 21, a day when Northgate students had no school due to the President’s Day holiday, Michigan State students were returning to their classes just eight days after a horrific shooting that occurred on campus caught America by storm. The tragedy unfolded Feb. 13 when a gunman allegedly shot eight Michigan State University students on campus in East Lansing, killing three and injuring five.

School shootings have been recurring along with an increase in terrifying threats for two decades, and the danger only continues to rise over time. According to data compiled by the Washington Post, in 2022 there were 46 school shootings, with over 360 school shootings since Colorado’s Columbine High School shooting in 1999. Within the 24 years since then, over 338,000 students have experienced gun violence. 

It is a common experience to practice lockdown drills in the case of an intruder on campus, just as we practice earthquake or fire drills. I’ve been doing them since kindergarten, as has everyone else on campus. And although I didn’t know the full intent behind the drill while in kindergarten, I do now.

The crisis of increasing gun violence on a campus seems somewhat far-fetched – an impossibility, a headline or a distant shadow unlikely to affect me and my classmates directly – we just don’t know how close or how far such a threat or possibility exists. 

In fact three days before the Michigan shooting, on Feb. 10, there was such a threat very close by.  Walnut Creek’s Las Lomas High School received an active shooter threat, forcing the school into lockdown, proving that even gun violence threats are a legitimate crisis that can happen anywhere at any moment. Thankfully, the Las Lomas threat was determined to be just that. Walnut Creek police have arrested the person who allegedly threatened and nobody was hurt, but the fact that there was a genuine threat in a Walnut Creek school describes how important and relevant this issue is.

The returning Michigan students received a visit from a college student who knows their pain and fear after experiencing what they did as a high school student. David Hogg, a high school shooting survivor and activist for gun reform, was a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018 when a shooter opened fire there, killing 17 students and staff. 

Media outlets reported that Hogg, now a Harvard student and advocate for reasonable gun control, spoke at Michigan about the need for change after the incident: “I know that this is not something that just Democrats are tired of, or just Republicans are tired of, every single student in America is exhausted. Every single parent in our country is exhausted, not just because of the shootings that happened at places like MSU, at Parkland, at Oxford, but by the fact that what happened at MSU, what happened at Parkland, in the form of individual shootings, happens every single day, multiple times a day in our country and it does not get the attention that it deserves.”

Hogg vividly portrays the emotions of students in the United States: exhausted by tragedies like these. 

With the number of school shootings only increasing and becoming more lethal, it is vital that direct action be taken by the government regarding the restrictions of gun use. This crisis will only worsen, as the horrifying numbers we saw in 2022 could keep increasing in the following years. 

As a high school student, I believe that a school should be an area that protects students, not one that puts them in possible danger of losing their life every day that they attend. No parent should have to deal with the horrifying fear that their child could not return from school one day. 

If reforms are not enacted and significant legislative changes are not made to defend against gun violence, this fear of crisis will become more and more realistic for students and parents.

In two years and one month I will be able to do more to keep students safe than simply participating in an intruder drill. I will move from the defensive plan I’ve been rehearsing since kindergarten to an offense plan at the polls, using my voice through a ballot. I’ll vote. I’ll vote for reasonable gun control and against high powered weapons. I’ll vote for school safety.