Lack of walkout upsets SM community

At 10 a.m. on April 20, San Marin’s campus was silent during a nationwide school walkout honoring the nineteenth anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting.
Across town, Novato High School students rallied outside with handmade posters in favor of gun control, leaving many students at San Marin wondering why the anniversary was treated like a normal Friday on their campus.
“I would’ve liked to see San Marin more active in participating in these types of events,” freshman activist Elizabeth DeRuvo said. “I tried to get in contact with the school to coordinate a walkout, but unfortunately I think what it came down to was the school and Leadership’s busy schedule with Spring Fling.”
According to Leadership student Claire Weber, the leadership class is not involved in planning events like the walkouts. It would require a group of students to take initiative.
“I would have loved to participate in one if San Marin’s students organized one,” Weber said. “However, after all the work I put into the first one and some of the negativity I received from students and staff, I personally decided not to take on the responsibility of planning another one.”
While students at San Marin stayed in their classes at 10 a.m., Novato High School students walked out of their classes and marched to city hall to protest. A Novato High student created an Instagram account called “Never Again Novato,” which posted information relating to the walkout and important announcements. As the events got closer, the account posted a picture with a caption that read, “This account is officially for Novato High School participants because we didn’t have many respondents from other schools.”
English teacher Melissa Muñoz-Matheny said that students should have prepared a walkout if they had felt inspired, adding that she felt like it was a chance for herself and the student body to have a do-over for what happened during the walkout for the Parkland shooting on March 14.
Along with DeRuvo, sophomores Alicia Castro and Kelsey McIvor agreed that they had hoped for a better result on April 20.
“I wish there was a walkout on April 20,” Castro said. “Nothing was truly organized, and it’s sad that other schools have done so, and ours hasn’t. It says a lot.”
Many students felt like San Marin did not care and had let them down.
“I was truly disappointed by the lack of awareness, participation and passion within the student body, staff and faculty of San Marin,” McIvor said. “Watching so many other high schools take part in a major national movement while we sat through third period made me wonder why so many don’t seem to care.”
“I hope that we can participate in an event as a whole soon enough where students are able to speak, and we are able to participate and get people excited about keeping the community safer,” DeRuvo said. “We have to continue working hard to resolve this issue, because it is far from over; our work is definitely not finished yet.”