Malia Battafarano and Julia Steiner
Lance Managing Editor and Lance Designer-in-Chief
At 10:05 a.m. on March 14, students gathered in the landing and sat, shoulder to shoulder, on the ground. Within minutes, the group covered the entire second floor of the landing as well as the stairs going to the third and first floors, leaving a narrow path that was taped out earlier that day for people passing through. For 17 minutes, there was silence.
March 14 marked the one month anniversary of the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Each minute of silence at the sit-down was meant to recognize one of the 17 victims of the shooting. According to the Omaha World-Herald, about 200 students attended. Across the nation, students from countless schools participated in similar walkouts and protests in memoriam.
The sit-down was organized with the collaboration of Student Council and Principal Jay Opperman. Opperman approached Student Council after talking to Superintendent Blane McCann, and they agreed that if Westside High School was going to participate in the national conversation, they wanted it to be student-run.
Opperman emailed Student Council Supervisor Kathlene Groth and asked to go to a Student Council meeting. He said he wanted to discuss ways students could productively use their voices on topics like school safety. According to Opperman, the school cannot take a political stance on the issue of gun violence, but it can approach the issue from the standpoint of school safety.
“Even though [the Parkland shooting] didn’t happen directly here, it impacted schools all over the country,” Opperman said.
At the first Student Council meeting Opperman attended on Friday, March 2, he said he brought up the idea of Westside student action and then sat back to let Student Council brainstorm.
“I guess I was really planting a seed,” Opperman said. “I was just encouraging … some ideas to be generated through Student Council.”
Student Council President Steph Lund said students discussed how Westside’s action should be a positive experience for everyone and not cause too much disruption to the school day.
“It was really [Opperman’s] initiation of the conversation about who’s going to do it,” Lund said. “Because we as students obviously knew about [the walkouts and protests] … we just didn’t necessarily know exactly how Westside was going to do it.”
For March 14, Student Council decided to do the sit-down during mod four. Students who participated were not counted absent or late to class as long as they came mod five.
“From a supervision standpoint, I just feel that [a sit-down] is better,” Opperman said. “It’s safer.”
According to Opperman, Lund and Student Council Vice President Hailey Tierra, the sit-down ran smoothly.
“I actually thought [the sit-down] went very well,” Opperman said. “I’m appreciative of our Student Council leadership for kind of helping map it out, to keep some pathways open and the students who participated I thought handled it fantastically [in a] very respectful manner.
Opperman said one of his primary concerns had been that there would be tension between those students who chose to participate in the sit-down and those who did not, but he didn’t see anything of the kind.
“I felt that people who didn’t want to participate [in the sit-down] were respected and allowed to do what they needed to do and I felt like the people that participated in the sit-in were also respected and did things in a respectful way,” Opperman said.
Lund and Tierra agreed that the students handled the situation well.
“It was really nice to see the solidarity of the student population,” Tierra said. “And I thought it was really cool that we didn’t have to say anything, but nobody was on their phones. We all just sat there in silence, and I really, really appreciated that.”
Lund said she felt that students demonstrated a maturity that adults do not always recognize they have.
“Sometimes students and teenagers get a bad rap, and it was nice to be like, ‘No, we genuinely care about this. We’re not doing it just because we want to miss class,’ and we showed that by being silent and not being on our phones and just genuinely sitting there,” Lund said.
Tierra said her only wish was that there had been a greater turnout. However, students had different reasons as to why they didn’t attend. Some said they had to do homework, others were in the middle of a double mod class.
“I mean there wasn’t really a specific reason why [I didn’t attend the sit-down],” junior Aidan Flairty said. “Honestly, I didn’t really think about it much and I just kind of went to class. I didn’t have anything against it or anything like that.”
According to sophomore Mackenzye Swan, however, missing class was worth it.
“I think that showing that we will even take class time out of our day to go support something that we really think should be changed [is important],” Swan said.
Swan said she wanted to help advocate for more gun control.
“Since we’re just kids and [gun violence is] happening in our day and age, us participating [in the sit-down and] showing that we don’t like it will help it go away,” Swan said.
Freshman Mary Lenhart said her motivation for attending was to show her respect toward the people at Parkland.
“[I went to the sit-down] just because it was a really tragic thing that happened, so to just kind of honor those people that had to go through that,” Lenhart said.
On March 24, students around the country protested in the March for Our Lives. According to the Omaha World-Herald, 2,500 people attended in Omaha. Another national school walkout is planned for April 20. Student Council and Opperman are trying to collaborate again to coordinate it, but haven’t worked out the details of what will occur. Lund and Tierra said they appreciated the support that staff and administration showed both in planning the sit-down and during it.
“It’s nice because I think [the administration] can’t condone everything that we do, because obviously truancy is illegal, but at the same time they are working really hard to work with us because they know that this issue is important to many students,” Lund said. “They want us to exercise our right to protest and to speak out as well as doing it in an appropriate and a conducive manner to Westside.”
Although Opperman said he wants to continue to work with Student Council in coordinating student demonstrations, he said he is concerned about keeping them apolitical.
“Everything in the public is that they really want these walkouts to be … more of a political thing related to how should we handle gun rights, what should the gun laws be, and that’s really a place for us as a school [where] we can’t be supporting any political side,” Opperman said.
Additionally, Opperman said he is worried about students missing class due to protests.
“I’m going to struggle if we continue to lose class time to be honest,” Opperman said. “But I want to provide some other ideas of ways that students can have an impact [on this issue].”
