Benicia High School students light candles in City Park to honor the victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. (Photo by Nick Sestanovich)
In the wake of the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. that left 17 people dead, Benicia High School students marched down to City Park for a candlelight vigil Saturday to pay respect to the victims.
The event was organized by a large group of students, including Carson Rendell, Karah Fisher, Chloe Bonini and Morgan Bundy. Rendell said Benicia High students were inspired by the efforts of Stoneman Douglas High students who survived the shooting and have been actively promoting stricter gun control legislation. The vigil was promoted through word of mouth via social media and announcements in classes and club meetings.
“The goal right now is to pay our respects and show that we are in solidarity with the students in Florida,” Rendell said.
Additionally, Rendell said the group was standing in solidarity with the Never Again movement, which formed in the aftermath of the Stoneman Douglas High shooting to advocate for safety in schools and stronger regulations to prevent gun violence.
“(We want to) promote safety and well-being in schools and make sure people aren’t scared to go to school in fear of being shot,” he said.
The group, consisting mostly of Benicia High students with some families and faculty, met by the school’s front steps prior to the vigil. They were donned in black and were given tags bearing the names of those killed in the Stoneman Douglas shooting as well as other major shootings, including Columbine High School in 1999, Virginia Tech in 2007 and Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Rendell said that there were so many victims of these four shootings that they actually ran out of nametags. They then marched down the sidewalks of Military West, receiving honks of approval by passing cars along the way, to the gazebo at City Park. The crowd stood with lit candles as they listened to a group of their fellow students go into details of the individuals whose lives were lost during the Stoneman Douglas shooting.
“We carry these people with us tonight to represent what they could have been,” Rendell said of the names on the tags. “We speak for them because they can not.”
The students spoke of athletic captains, volunteers, National Merit Scholar finalists, Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps cadets, recent immigrants, marching band musicians, soccer stars, aspiring Navy pilots, heroic faculty and others whose lives were cut short. They also invoked the Never Again movement by making pleas to end gun violence.
“As students of Benicia High School, we’re gathered here to remember those who have been affected by senseless acts of gun violence across the country,” senior Caitlyn Clark said. “We’re here to say: never again all we lose our peers, our children, our classmates and our future leaders.”
Neha Yadav, also a senior, discussed the gun control debate and stressed a need to come together.
“We need to stop focusing on the Second Amendment and start focusing on what unites us: the fact that we are all human beings, the fact that we all want the chance to live out our lives peacefully, the fact that we all have the right to live,” she said. “I do not know if those who were brutally shot and killed at Stoneman Douglas were Democrats or Republicans, and I don’t know if they were liberals or conservatives, but I do know that they all had potential to live a long and beautiful life, potential that was destroyed within a matter of minutes.”
“This is a nonpartisan issue,” she said. “It’s a students’ issue.”
Rendell said the group has further plans, including getting the speech and debate students to sign a petition to deliver to the State Capitol and take part in the national school walkout on April 20. Additionally, Rebecca Roberts, a spokeswoman for Rep. Mike Thompson, said the congressman was planning to hold a town hall on Saturday, March 3, but details are still being worked out.
(Left to right) Morgan Bundy, Karah Fisher and Carson Rendell lead students in a march down Military West to City Park. (Photo by Nick Sestanovich)
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So proud of our kids. Good job and carry on!
Neha Yadav makes some good comments. What is the saying: Think globally – Act locally.
Why not transfer those good intentions to the high school by:
1) closing the campus
2) install metal detectors at 4-6 key entry points.
Yes, there would be costs, yes there would be inconveniences, but metal detectors could be installed in a matter of weeks. Removing guns from the hands of people? Not going to happen in my lifetime.
Where does that money come from, though? 6 metal detectors would cost about $30,000. In addition, funds would need to be allocated towards repair and maintenance, as well as paying for operators/guards at each. If we want the guards armed, they’ll likely require much more than minimum wage.
https://www.careerbuilder.com/salary-armed-security-officer-in-san–francisco,ca?utm_campaign=google_jobs_salary&utm_source=google_jobs_salary&utm_medium=organic
Let’s say we work on the National Average, even though that’s probably lower than reality here in the Bay Area. And between 4-6 points, let’s pick 5. Campus opens at 7, closes at 3:05. 8 hours of making sure nobody enters improperly, 180 days a year. Taking account only wages, that’s an additional $90,000 a year for wages alone. However, we also have to account for extracurricular activities, as well as games and competitions on campus. So we would have to add some extra time there, too. We also will need to re-adjust the schedule of our schools, because it will take significantly more tome for all students to get to class in the morning, since they each will have to show up, take off belts and metals, have their bags searched, since they will definately have metal in them, and then returned to them. We may also need to re-do the driveway around Campus, since there’s no good place to have students wait in queue for inspection with the current structure. Considering Benicians are already wary of increased costs with the current sewer situation, I’m not sure how the majority would feel about it all.
Garret walk through portable Metal detectors cost less than $4,000 each:
http://www.pti-world.com/product/garrett-pd-6500i/
OK, so you have raised objections to a proposed solution. Please offer your solution.
As to the costs…………… what is the cost of 17 dead kids?
Firearm restrictions. The same system used by most large countries. You already took that option off the table.
Thanks for that comment. Folks who have never taught or tried to run a school with hundreds of kids almost never understand the scope of these “my dad’s got a barn, let’s put on a show” ideas, no matter how well intentioned. When schools don’t have funding to provide paper, copiers that work, decent bathrooms, enough books, etc. etc. how can we expect the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of “safety measures” to be practical? Of course, maybe we can stop buying desks and toilet paper and that would make up the difference?
j.furlong, I will look forward to your constructive idea also on how to protect our kids.
Regarding costs of saving lives. I will quote from the BH from 2015:
“But the biggest project is the planned demolition of Drolette Stadium – which is as old as the school itself – in favor of a more modern facility. Thanks to a bond measure passed two years ago, Benicia High should have around $7 million available to completely rebuild the stadium with a synthetic turf field, a modern all-weather track, and new locker room and bathroom facilities.”
Somehow $7,000,000 was available for a football stadium. but people voice objections to $4,000 metal detectors.
interesting.
You make a very good point DDL. To be raising objections to cost before even looking into the issue, speaks to the priorities of not only our small town, but also the nation we live in.
Money for lives – really people? If you have a better argument please let me know. You have my name, not just my initials.
You’d be right, if your assumption that nobody has looked into the issue, but that’s wrong.
https://www.ncjrs.gov/school/ch3a_5.html
Turns out, it’s expensive, and requires a huge amount of restructuring for each school.
How about this? Better gun regulations. Is having to take more examinations and have more restrictions too heavy a cost for children?
The cost of metal detectors is the smallest cost of the entire proposal.
I have made no comments on this topic.
It isn’t just the cost of the detectors, which might be considered negligible in a district that has more comfortable funding levels. It is the cost of having someone on staff to watch and maintain them, and in the case of a larger school, like our H.S., more than one extra staff person.. Solution? Sensible gun laws, enough counselors and support staff in schools to identify students who are struggling (more hundreds of thousands for salary, benefits, resources, etc.), sensible gun laws, more education for parents and others to be able to see problems more clearly, sensible gun laws – nationally, so that someone in CA can’t drive a couple of hours over the border and fill a trunk with AR 15s from Walmart, decisions about school safety put in the hands of educators and law enforcement and out of the hands of politicians who, in some cases, are more concerned about porn and gun sales than children’s lives.
Curious … someone define “sensible gun laws”.
I’ll bet if 20 people post answers, we will get 20 different answers.
Laws are only effective if they are enforced.
jfurlong — Anyone who has worked in schools (with the kids) knows that some students stand out in a very non-positive way, They are troubled and need help. Unfortunately too often these troubled kids are passed on to the next grade and with that so is the problem. Cruz in Florida was an example. In Benicia it was a boy named Patrick Scarpaci.
My son was the same age as Patrick and shortly after we arrived in Benicia (’92), a friendship was developing between the two boys, My wife recognized the boy as being “not right” (she worked for a school district). She put an end to the budding friendship and years later, as you likely remember, the boy killed his mother.
I am sure others saw the signs, but he went through the system. Similarly, Cruz in Florida was known to be ‘not right’, but he slid through the system
One thing that needs to be done is to get help for kids like Cruz at an early age.. Unfortunately too often the hands of the educators are tied (as they were at Broward County). We need to stop being politically correct by treating all kids the same. They are not. They are all individuals with individual problems. Those with issues need to be identified and then reevaluated as to what is the best method of providing help to them.
— Dennis Lund
There is no price we can put on the safety of our kids.
You are correct Reg!
Please join the Benicia March for Our Lives march and rally on March 24 at 10 am in Downtown Benicia starting at the Green and marching up to the City Park for a rally and speakers to support victims of gun violence, we hope the march and rally will inspire concrete legislative outcomes and demand a comprehensive and effective gun laws.