Habersham Central High School students express opposing views from opposite sides of the street during Wednesday’s student walkout.
It began as part of a national protest against gun violence and a memorial for those who died in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Florida. It turned into a microcosm of our national divide over gun control.
Some 200 students at Habersham Central High School in Mt. Airy Wednesday morning took part in the National School Walkout. HCHS was one of approximately 3,100 schools nationwide to participate. The event was largely organized through the social media #NeverAgain movement. It was held to coincide with the one month anniversary of the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida.
Two sides of the national divide
Habersham Central school administrators and law enforcement kept a watchful eye as students began streaming out of the building onto the sidewalks and lawn in front of the school at precisely 9:55 a.m.
The plan, as announced on social media by student organizers, was to stand by the flagpole “for seventeen minutes for seventeen lives lost.” Within minutes it was clear that another group of students had a different plan. As the one group gathered by the flagpole, the other formed on the sidewalk opposite them.
School administrators and deputies stood in the middle of the road between the two camps. The media was kept in an area about fifty yards away. Students on both sides of the street carried signs. When a female student by the flagpole started speaking, those on the sidewalk started chanting, “NRA, NRA.” In response to their chants, a number of students broke away from the original group and joined them. By the time the two groups settled, they were nearly equal in size.
Chants and cheers frequently drowned out the voices of students near the flagpole. At one point, a chorus of “USA, USA” rose among counter-demonstrators as a male student ran in front of them holding an American flag.
A female student in the group trying to memorialize the school shooting victims yelled back at those trying to drown them out asking, “How would you feel?” In an apparent attempt to diffuse the escalating tensions, student leaders instructed their peers at the flagpole to “turn around.” With their backs to those chanting, they continued to read off the names of the seventeen victims of the Florida school shooting.
While the situation became boisterous, it never got violent. School officials and law enforcement saw to that. They calmly and effectively kept the two groups separated on opposite sides of the street.
When the walkout ended around 10:20 a.m., administrators led the two groups back into the school through separate entrances.
Peaceful yet polarized
“It was a peaceful demonstration which is what they wanted to do,” says Habersham County Sheriff’s Lt. Matthew Wurtz. Wurtz was one of about a half a dozen deputies who were on campus to observe and maintain order during the walkout.
Habersham Central High School Principal Jonathan Stribling issued a written statement after the event. In part of it he says:
“HCHS Student-leaders met with school administration prior to the event to make their intentions known. School administration, working alongside School Resource Officer Sergeant Murray Kogod of the Habersham County Sheriff’s office, executed a plan to ensure the safety and security of all involved. The HCHS students were compliant in their manner and had a chance to voice their concerns. Following the event, classes resumed as normal.”
The media was not allowed to interview students on campus and school officials offered no other comment. Still, it was evident in the way school administrators handled the event, they were prepared for it. It was also evident by the way students stood on opposite sides of the street just how polarizing America’s gun debate is, even among today’s youth.
The HCHS student walkout was a somber reflection of gun violence in schools and a stark reminder of the national divide over how to address it.
“I think we’re prepared well,” says Lt. Wurtz when asked about local law enforcement’s readiness to respond in the event of a school shooting. “Can you always have enough training? Probably not. Can you always be one-hundred percent prepared for a catastrophe like that (Parkland, Florida shooting)? Probably not.” Still, he adds, “We’ve set up throughout the county the ability to respond to incidents like that and I feel as though the way that we have it we’re pretty well prepared for it.”
If there’s one thing students who participated in today’s walkout most likely agree on, it’s that they and their peers hopefully will never have to find out.
This article has been updated
