While spring break may hinder National School Walkout in Iowa City, area students organize their own march

Aimee Breaux
Press Citizen

Iowa City students won't join their counterparts across the nation in bringing attention to gun violence and school shootings Wednesday morning. 

The timing of spring break at the University of Iowa and area schools hindered plans to join in on National School Walkout day, but students still have plans to protest.

Wednesday’s nationwide demonstration will consist of students faculty and staff stepping out of class for 17 minutes — one minute for each of the 17 people killed in the Parkland, Florida, shooting — at 10 a.m. in their respective time zones.

While area students will not be participating in this event, local high school students are organizing their own march on March 24 in conjunction with the March For Our Lives demonstration in Washington, D.C.

Community members, consisting mostly of high school students, gather at the Pentacrest following a walk-out on Monday, Feb. 19, 2018. Students from around the school district gathered at the Pentacrest and pedestrian mall to protest gun violence following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

In an effort to support the student-led movement, dozens in the community have also pitched in to send a West Branch High School student and her mom to the main Washington, D.C., march in hopes that they might bring some of that energy back to Iowa City.

Those behind the local march — tentatively planned to go through downtown Iowa City from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. — say they hope to show Iowa lawmakers that the topics of gun violence and preventing school shootings will not go away easily. 

Lujayn Hamad, a senior at West High School, is one of the organizers behind Students Against School Shootings, the group responsible for the march. Echoing student organizers across the U.S., Hamad said the demonstration is intended to keep the issue of gun violence on people's minds. Too often after a mass shooting, Hamad said, the nation has an emotional outpouring for victims but then quickly moves its attention to other issues. 

Listing off mass shootings in the U.S., Hamad said protests like the one on March 24 are now a matter of being on the "right side of history." 

“We’re students, and instead of focusing on algebra, focusing on pre-calculus, we’re focusing on our lives and how to have what happened at Parkland and what happened at Virginia Tech and what happened at Columbine not happen here,” she said. “What we’re saying is, you’re either with us going forward and you are going to do something about gun control or you’re against us. This is happening, one way or another.”

Like the path of the march, the changes the group hopes to see are also unclear.

In the month since the Florida shooting, one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, Hamad said SASS has been working out what specific measure to bring before lawmakers.

Some ideas floating around, Hamad said, include longer waiting periods for gun purchases and raising the minimum age to purchase and own a firearm.

Shayna Jaskolka, a senior at City High who is helping organize the event, added the idea of reinstating a version of the assault weapons ban that went into effect in 1994. 

The demonstration comes after City High, West High and South East Junior High students walked out of class on February 19 to protest for gun control.

In the days that followed, Jaskolka said the group logged around 50 calls to representatives, sent more that 40 letters to lawmakers and registered 40 people to vote.  

Protesting gun violence has almost become a kind of student-led, informal class. The group of 19 or so students have added gun violence research and weekly meetings to their regular routine, said Jaskolka and Hamad.

“Just because we are high school students, doesn’t mean we don’t know anything," Jaskolka said. "I’ve seen a lot of politicians say, ‘Oh, they’re just high school students. They don’t know what they are doing." 

Some parents involved with the Johnson County chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America say they've seen active shooters become more of a reality for younger students, too. 

Donna Wong-Gibbons, Faith Outreach Lead for MDAGSA, recounts students who talk about being scared to go to school — for instance, a girl who wanted to trade in her light-up shoes because a gunman might be able to see her if she moved.

“These are not the kind of things kids should have to think about,” she said. “When you are at an age where you like sparkly, light-up shoes, you shouldn’t have to worry about needing new shoes because a shooter might see you.”

High school and junior high students march to the pedestrian mall following a walk-out on Monday, Feb. 19, 2018. Students from around the school district gathered at the Pentacrest and pedestrian mall to protest gun violence following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

MDAGSA will be at the March 24th protest. Holly Sanger, a MDAGSA leader in the Johnson County area, describes her group as parents focused on gun violence prevention, or being a “counterweight to the gun lobby.”

Some of the most recent pushes detailed on the organization's national website include a campaign to dispel “the myths the gun lobby spreads,” a campaign against concealed carry on campuses and a campaign to encourage families to properly secure firearms out of reach of children.

Sanger says the aftermath of this mass shooting feels different than previous ones, and she thinks this is because of student protests. 

“I don’t even know how to explain this — it feels like with every one of these mass shootings, everyone is upset and then we just go back as if it sort of didn’t happen," Sanger said. "That’s heartbreaking to me, and it just doesn’t have to be that way. I think what these students are saying is, ‘No, it doesn’t have to be that way.'”

She says the drive of students has now given her organization's cause a push — and new members. Sanger says there are typically about 150 people in MDAGSA with a core group of around 30-40 active participants.

Last Monday, 50 people showed up to their meeting, with at least 90 percent being people who had never attended a meeting before.

It also motivates other adults in the area. Kathryn Slemmons was so moved by the students walking out and demonstrations across the U.S. that she took up a collection to send as many students and chaperones as possible to the Washington, D.C., march.

Her goal of raising $9,000 through a GoFundMe effort was lofty, but enough people have chipped in to send one student and her mom to Washington, D.C.

She said she had the realization that what happened in Parkland "could happen to my kids — this has gotten to the point of prevalence where it’s not 'if,' it's 'when.'”

Seeing the Iowa City walkouts shortly after the shooting, she was inspired to do what she could to support their cause. 

“When they did that (walkout), I just thought, ‘this is their revolution,’” she explained. 

The GoFundMe is still active — if enough people donate, she says they may be able to send another student; if not, the money will just go to the West Branch student and her mom to use on the trip.

The fact that the donations they received came from various people in the community, she says, speaks to the community’s buy-in.

“We’re parents and we’re sitting here thinking, what can we do to keep our kids safe and what can we do to keep this going?” she said. “That’s been most of the comments I’ve heard — let’s keep the momentum going.”