The cycle: Tragedy strikes. We grieve. We get angry. We ask, beg, plead for change. Time passes. We wait. We wait some more. Politicians can’t agree, can’t compromise, won’t compromise. Time passes. We move on.
Repeat.
We have been going through this since I began teaching 12 years ago and the horror of Sandy Hook rocked our nation. Surely we can’t be okay with this, but as time goes by and nothing changes, maybe we are. Why have those in positions of power done nothing to say “We will not stand for this in our country and for our children”? Perhaps it’s because of their constituents; perhaps it’s because of their “constitutional right”; perhaps it’s because they receive money and funding for campaigns from those who don’t want laws on gun safety (as the saying goes, follow the money and see where it leads). But we won’t know because the truth never seems to get told.
I say all of this because it seems, as a nation, we have already moved on. Only three days after the tragedy that took the lives of three Michigan State students and left five others in critical condition, national news was no longer covering what happened a mere 30 minutes from where we live. I know because on Thursday, Feb. 16, I checked: I checked CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, NBC News, Fox News, and CBS News. Of all those network and online news sources, only two had any sort of headline about the shootings at Michigan State University. TWO. It only took three days for national news to move on to the next story; but here in Michigan, perhaps for the first time, we haven’t.
Is it because this is our second mass school shooting in less than a year and a half and some students have now survived both?
Maybe.
Or maybe it’s because Michigan has had enough. Parents have had enough. Family members have had enough. Teachers have had enough. Students have had enough. The students at MSU will never back down from this. They will not stop until change is made and I know this because of the people in my life who attended, and that my former students now at MSU are terrified to return (some never will).
As an educator, I have had enough. With every tragedy we come together at our family morning meeting, and I do my best to answer questions for my students and once again tell them that I will do everything I can to keep them safe. We practice, and our children practice what to do to try and not die in school. How can that not effect change? How has it not happened yet?
While I have these conversations with my students here in Howell, I know my son’s second-grade teacher is having the same conversations. While I absolutely can put myself in her shoes, I still ask myself: ”Will he make it out alive if it happens there?”
My son has a physical disability, so running isn’t exactly an option. His school has a plan in place should this happen; it’s hard to wrap my head around that we even need it. His aides and the staff there are amazing humans who I know would do anything to keep him safe, and yet, asking them in the moment to pick up an 80-pound child and run while also making sure the other 24 kids get out is hard to fathom.
Requesting — no, begging for — safe gun laws shouldn’t be an astronomical task. There have been numerous surveys of the American people, a good number of whom are legal gun owners, and they, too, agree. Because if you are a safe gun owner, wouldn’t you want and hope that others are too?
Apparently hope isn’t enough because we have been hoping for change and nothing has come. So now I’m asking, PLEADING, as a mom, a teacher, a friend, a human being: prove that these lives matter to you. Call your reps, send the email, demand change, request their support for these new bills to be passed, because we have had enough.
The cycle needs to end.
