Local students foot soldiers in war on gun violence

La Conner students showed they can walk their talk on Friday.

The local teens, walking in shifts, kept pace with a nationwide student movement that served as a vigil for those killed in school shootings as well as a plea for more strict gun laws.

The key word above being movement.

Students here managed to sustain their part of the National School Walkout Protest for more than five hours, repeatedly circling the La Conner campus, though some ventured off at one point to bring the message to Town Hall and through both legs of La Conner’s business district.

About 70 students rallied at Whittaker Field Friday morning to receive instructions from walkout leaders Sophia Benetti and Jack Tronsdal, both La Conner High juniors, and offer their own reflections if so moved.

Those missing classes risked being marked for unexcused absences. In addition, students leaving school grounds without permission were subject to office referrals prior to dismissal at the end of the day.

“We wanted to show support for the cause, but the students also knew they needed to take care of their academics,” said La Conner Middle and High School Principal Todd Torgeson.

Students thus rotated between class attendance and the walkout.

“Our number one concern,” Torgeson stressed, “was safety. We had a lot of supervision out and about.”

Torgeson and School Security Specialist John Aguilar, carrying radios, monitored the start of the walkout from various spots on campus

The National School Walkout Protest came just five weeks after La Conner students had marched en masse up North Sixth to Morris Street in response to Feb. 14 campus slayings in south Florida. That tragedy had also sparked student walkouts across the country. On March 24 several students, their parents and siblings and area residents joined over 1,000 others in Mount Vernon for the local March for Our Lives. Millions marched worldwide that day.

Tronsdal said La Conner students had for some time planned to take part in the April 20 national protest that coincided with the 19th anniversary of the horrific Columbine school shootings in Colorado.

“But the date kind of snuck up on us,” Tronsdal said, “so a lot of this kind of came together at the last minute.”

The response, like the student marchers themselves, was fast-moving.

Senior Parker Rivas learned about the walkout from a poster in a school hallway. He had helped organize the March walkout. Now he was a last-minute participant. The goal this time was to spread awareness, he said.

“We have a very supportive community,” Tronsdal noted, while making his second lap around the school, “and we appreciate that support. They encourage us to take a stand.”

And, in this case, it was more than a stand. It was a long-distance walk.

The 40 students who marched to Town Hall from the northeast ball fields took a chance, knowing they were not authorized to leave school grounds.

Junior Arlo Liddell wondered if there would be consequences for going off campus. The students will take responsibility for their decision he said. Liddell understands the administration’s need to have rules and have them followed. He also had found them to be “amazing” in their support.

Returning from Town Hall up First Street, they chanted “protect kids not guns” as they turned on Centre and then took North Third Street to Morris. Merchants and people in the street clapped and shouted their support.

Aguilar was following the students in a car.

A sympathetic Mayor Ramon Hayes joined the students at Town Hall. He marched with them back to campus.

Noting that response from adults on the streets, Hayes said “the applause is great, but that is not going to solve anything. These kids are going to solve it. They are going to vote.” The need for control – not abolition – is real, Hayes said. “It is a safety issue, not a political one,” he noted.