Student suggests walk-in poses similar dangers as walk-out

Monroe High decided that on April 20, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine shooting, instead of participating in the national walkout, Monroe would be doing a walk-in. The walk-in will happen during the school day and the students who want to participate will go to the gym, but is this really a good solution to the problems they fear of the walk out?

The reason that the school has stated that they don’t want students to walk-out is for safety reasons. They’re convinced that the students who were participating would become a possible target to any outsiders, especially because it was announced in the Monroe Evening News that the school would be doing so. They didn’t want to risk the student’s safety, since there’s only a limited amount of guards on duty compared to the large amount of students at Monroe. However, a walk-in could be just as dangerous.

What if something were to happen while all the students were all in the gym all together? If something were to happen while students are outside, students will have more of a chance to run to the safety spot or get help than they would if something were to happen while we’re inside. Sitting in the gym, shoulder to shoulder isn’t safer than standing in a large crowd. It isn’t any safer at all. In fact, it could be so much more dangerous.

The walk-out was also nationally planned, which makes students feel like walk-outs create more of an impact than a walk-in. Students are going to want to participate in something that was nationally planned rather than something that their school decided to do instead of that. A lot of students seem to be pretty heated about the matter as we saw with the last walk out.

Also, who’s to say that the kids who feel really passionately about the walk-out aren’t going to walk-out anyways? There’s no one to stop them; everyone else is all in the gym. Students are going to walk-out no matter if you tell them “no” or not. We saw this on March 14 for the one month anniversary of the Parkland shooting. Students walked out even though they were told multiple times not to go out, and they’ll go out again this time, too.

If students want to walk out, regardless, they’ll find a way to walk out. Walk-outs or walk-ins, it’s still not entirely safe.