To honor the victims of the Nashville shooting and raise awareness for gun control in America, BSM students wore orange to school yesterday. Orange is widely recognized as the color of the gun violence prevention movement. 

The “wear orange” movement originated in 2015 after Hadiya Pendelton was shot and killed on a playground in Chicago, and the organization dedicated June 2-4 “Wear Orange Weekend” to raise awareness for gun violence. Outside of the wear orange movement, Students Demand Action organized a national walkout on April 5 to protest gun violence and school shootings. 

Inspired by this movement, student council members Brynja Lockman and Lauren Carlson asked members of the BSM community to wear orange on April 5. “The purpose of wearing orange was to stand in solidarity with the victims of school shootings and also to protest gun violence, specifically school shootings in general…I think the school shooting in Nashville was more of a galvanizing moment for people than we thought; for some reason, that seemed to kind of be a tipping point,” Lockman said. 

By asking students to wear orange instead of participating in a walkout, Lockman and Carlson made the movement more accessible to students who were unable to miss class.”We didn’t want people to feel left out if they didn’t want to get an unexcused absence or get a detention…we wanted to show our school standing in solidarity with [victims],” Carlson said. 

For high school students who can’t vote, wearing orange is an opportunity to advocate for change. “I think all of us are really fed up with the fact that our political leaders are not taking the action that we need from them. It was also in support of a national walkout…to put political pressure on our lawmakers to pass laws that make it harder for school shootings to happen,” Lockman said. 

Carlson and Lockman hope to continue raising awareness and pushing for change at BSM. To start, they are working to change lock-down procedures to better prepare students for an active shooter scenario. “We’re first trying to get information from the student body about whether or not we feel that the way Benilde conducts drills is preparing us adequately for emergency situations, specifically the way we do active shooter drills. I know that’s something that I’m worried about because personally, I feel that we don’t practice [drills] we need, like barricades or evacuation drills. I know a bunch of people feel the same way,” Lockman said.