Above photo: Alyssa Winston said that Majorly Douglas High School, the school she graduated from in 2013, has become “a crime scene and a memorial.” Courtesy of Alyssa Winston
By Alyssa Winston
Whenever I tried to describe my hometown to people, I’d say it was a tiny town with a few traffic lights and more horses than people.
Now that tiny, quiet town has been shaken to its core and is being covered on news stations across America.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is one of the focal points of our town. You really can’t go anywhere in Parkland without passing the high school.
But now my high school has become both a crime scene and a memorial.
I was in the first freshman class to use Building 12, and now, less than ten years later, it’s going to be destroyed because no one will ever want to enter that building again. My memories of that building involved worrying about whether I’d make it to class on time or if I’d pass a test that day.
Douglas students’ memories of Building 12 will now be of their friends and teachers being shot in front of them, and having to hide in closets and pray for their lives.
Seventeen families lost loved ones. Faculty and students’ lives will be forever changed. And our community will never be the same.
My senior research at USF St. Petersburg was a 30-page paper advocating stricter gun regulations for those with mental health illnesses, with a focus on mass shootings. Never did I think that my home town, which was recently voted “Safest Town In Florida,” would be the site of the next mass shooting.
I’m back in my home town now, working on my master’s degree and the scene of the latest mass shooting that I’m seeing on TV every day isn’t a high school that’s a thousand miles away. It’s my own.
Since that horrible day, the surrounding community has been gathering almost every night for vigils and candle-lighting ceremonies where we hold each other, cry with one another and vow that we will be the change together.
We are the generation that is standing up and saying “enough is enough!”
There were 39 phone calls to the local police about this shooter, many of which expressed extreme alarm — and the possibility that he might even target a local school.
Instead of taking action, our government officials parrot cliches like “we hear you” and “our thoughts and prayers are with you.”
They hope that those platitudes will hide the fact that they’re cutting funding for mental health and refusing to consider bills that would strengthen gun regulations.
We want action now.
Military-grade firearms should be kept out of the hands of civilians. We need our elected officials to put country before party and unify for the common good.
Our souls — and the souls of seventeen dead students and faculty — cry out for justice. We are on a mission to ensure that their voices are heard and that no other town in America suffers the way we’re suffering now.
