'Enough is enough': Prior Lake High School students protest to end gun violence

Prior Lake American

At 9:30 a.m. on a Tuesday during Spring Break, Prior Lake High School students Hailey Seifert and Hannah Seifert climbed into a Mazda Tribute and hit the road.

Dappled sunlight filtered in through the windshield, while Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” played on the radio. Ski equipment jutted over the back seat.

Both 18 years old and both seniors, the twins were not headed out to enjoy the day free from school with friends or hit the slopes.

They were going to protest gun violence.

“We just feel like the government is not doing enough and it’s time for students to get involved and say that we want to be heard, too,” Hannah Seifert said. “We just really want to be noticed so something changes. We don’t care what the change is as long as something happens.”

Because it was Spring Break for Prior Lake, high school students joined Independent School District 196 — which includes Apple Valley High School, Eagan High School, Rosemount High School and the School of Environmental Studies — on March 14 to take part in a nationwide walkout to protest gun violence in the United States and ask for legislative change.

“I think it’s great that so many students realize they’re important in America and they have a voice and they can really inspire change if we all gather together as a collective and protest where we see injustice,” Prior Lake High School junior Dan Faragher said. “We’re all kind of here to maybe inspire our lawmakers to change the ways assault rifles and other guns are obtained in this country.”

The walkout took place exactly one month after 17 students were killed and 17 injured by a gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, one of the world’s deadliest school massacres. The protests were expected to last 17 minutes — one minute for every student who died in Parkland.

“Every time there is a shooting, it’s forgotten about,” Hailey Seifert said. “We don’t want that to happen. We’re seniors, so we’re going to be leaving next year, but we don’t want to leave the high schools unsafe. We still have friends in high school. I’m a gymnastics coach and I don’t want the kids I coach to be growing up in unsafe schools.”

As the radio turned to “How to Save A Life” by The Fray, Hannah Seifert turned into the parking lot of the Apple Valley Community Center, where students met up before walking over to Apple Valley High School. A sign reading “this is what democracy looks like,” sat in Hailey Seifert’s lap.

Though there has been some pushback from adults in the community that students don’t know what they’re talking about or are too young, Hannah Seifert said students are the only ones who can talk about school shootings.

“We’re the ones in high school — so you can say that, but you’re not the ones who have to go to school every day and worry about, ‘hey, maybe there’s going to be a shooter coming in today,’” Hannah Seifert said. “We’re the ones experiencing it firsthand.”

The students congregated in a corner of the community center parking lot before marching over to the high school, demanding change in the form of chants and signs. Police officers and volunteers in neon vests guarded the road to keep the path safe.

As they walked, the students cried out “enough is enough,” “disarm hate,” and “hear us now.” Those who made signs held them high above their heads: “g(un)safe,” “the men that wrote the second amendment owned people,” “arm teachers with opportunity, not guns,” “I don’t feel safe” and “one life lost is too many lives lost.”

Hundreds of teenagers flocked into the Apple Valley High School parking lot, only to be joined by the students of the school when it struck 10 a.m. The names of places where there had been school shootings were read off — Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, Red Lake High School, Sandy Hook Elementary School and more.

“I don’t like school shootings, and I don’t like that they keep occurring because of poor legislation,” Prior Lake High School junior Emily Albrecht said. “You’re never too young to see something wrong and try to stand against it.”

One by one, organizers of the local protest stood up and made speeches calling for gun control legislation and gun control legislation alone — not arming teachers and not “a good guy with a gun will stop a bad guy with a gun.”

“The main part of my speech is to reach to the people that don’t believe in gun control and haven’t bought into the idea that gun legislation is the step we need to take to decrease violence and crime,” a student organizer at the School of Environmental Sciences said. “So to all of them, I don’t mean to be harsh, but I will be blunt — you are wrong, and here is why,” before listing statistics associated with gun control legislation.

Every strong point was met with cheers or chants.

At the end of the speeches, organizers asked the students to take action, urging those old enough to vote and those younger to call or write their legislators. The speeches prompted more chants — “funds not guns” and “we need change, we are change.”

As students went back to class or back to their cars, the sense of urgency did not dissipate. Chants continued. Action was still demanded.

And students will continue to protest.

A “March For Our Lives” will be March 24. Prior Lake High School will participate in another national walkout on April 20, the anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting.

Many students feel fed up, as expressed by one of the last speeches made by an organizer: “enough is a f------g enough.”