The Parkland, Florida, school shooting was a tipping point that drove students to action

On February 14, 2018, a former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, opened fire on campus, killing 17 students and staff members. The tragedy was not the first of its kind, nor was it the last, but, for many students, it represented a tipping point. Enough was enough.

For 14-year-old Lauren Hogg, the day started out feeling special. Students exchanged Valentine’s Day cards; a sense of celebration hung in the air. So when the fire alarm went off during her last class of the day, she, like many other students, wondered whether it wasn’t just another holiday prank. After all, they’d already had a fire drill that morning.

In fact, they had been told by teachers to expect a shooting drill at some point soon, complete with actors and the firing of blanks. So when they saw students running across campus, some still felt there wasn’t anything to worry about. Drills for what to do in the event of a school shooting had become routine.

But Lauren was scared, and when she heard teachers shouting, “Code red!” she grabbed her friends, ran back to their classroom and hid in the back room. They waited there for three hours, terrified and unsure of what was happening. Now and then, they’d get a hasty, fragmented text from a friend.

Eventually, they were found and pulled out by the police, who sent them outside to the parking lot. Many parents were waiting there, and Lauren managed to find her dad. They went home, but everything suddenly sank in when they turned on the TV and she saw the faces of the students, her friends, who’d been pronounced missing.

That was when her 17-year-old brother, David, decided he needed to go back to the school and tell reporters what had happened. He explained to the media that something needed to be done to protect schoolchildren, and, over the next few days, he banded together with other students to try and do something themselves.

These kids were all born after the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. Each was familiar with red-code drills. Each had grown up in fear of just such an event. They were ready for change.