From Blacksburg to Parkland

I've taken the past week to process. Every time something like this happens, I need more and more time before I'm willing to talk about it with anyone else. But during this week I've also been remembering and thinking and listening. I don't think that we failed the next generation back in 2007, but I'm not sure we did quite enough for them either. And I'm not even really sure what more we could have done. We talked about gun control and policy and mental healthcare, and many of us became involved in various forms of activism. But the Internet and social media didn't exist then like they do now, and we weren't yet good at amplifying our voices. We, as a nation, had not yet become so exhausted by the horrors of routine mass shootings, so the "now is not the time" refrain seemed to make more sense. As a student body, we were less innocent than Sandy Hook, less angry than Parkland, and therefore less compelling to the nation. In the intervening time, this country has been wounded time and time again by shootings at schools, concerts, churches, nightclubs, movie theaters, public gatherings. It seems to me that there are far fewer deaf ears than there were nearly 11 years ago; and certainly myriad more ways to reach those who might be willing to listen. And so, my conclusion from the past week, after processing old trauma and anger and grief, is that I'm so damned proud of these kids. These teenagers who are going to do what my friends and I couldn't do, what the parents of innocent children couldn't do, what terrorized nightclub and concert attendees couldn't do. I have real hope that these kids might just be the catalyst for some change, for some action. And along with that, I have some hope that we might start to heal. Because these brave young men and women deserve a future where they don't have to relive their trauma every time something similar happens. They deserve better than the world that students from Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook are currently living in. Their incredible resilience and determination will shape that future and I hope to stand with them every step of the way.