Run, hide, fight. These were outlined as directions in an email sent out to a student body of freshly independent adults, myself included. In a generation of students born into a post-Colombine world our instincts kicked in.
While looking to my friends in fearful confusion, I heard the voice of my elementary teacher telling me how to most effectively barricade a door.
When passing out every pair of scissors we could find in the dorm, I heard my middle school teacher telling me it’s okay to fight back and to be brave.
As I huddled in a corner with 5 of my closest friends; blinds drawn shut with the window open just a crack to hear if the gunshots got closer, holding hands, frantically trying to get ahold of our parents to tell them we love them, I was there with my high school teachers and classmates desperately trying to remember how best to stay calm and how to cry silent tears incase a nearby shooter would hear my panic.
In a country that idolizes freedom, I need freedom. I need freedom to go to my dining hall without checking over my shoulder to see if there is a gunman. I need freedom to tell those close to me I love them without fear it’ll be the last time I say it. I need freedom to get a violence free education.
A right to bear arms? I need the right to live the carefree childhood and early adulthood I was promised by generations before me.
Instead I am given the right to pray to a god I don’t believe in, hoping he will take pity on me and spare me from the bullets my classmates were victim to. You trained us well, to run, hide and fight.
Wake up America, your children are scared.
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