The latest school shooting, this time at Robb Elementary School on May 24th, in Uvalde, Texas, left 19 children and 2 adults dead. The sadness that filled many hearts quickly turned into frustration and anger. Why are we still letting this happen?

During the first student walkout, which occurred on May 26th, days following the Uvalde shooting, participation was low and freedoms were limited: no chanting, no signs. Sophomore Dani Ingle decided to take a stand and do something about it. She wanted to organize a walkout that actually had an effect. After creating an Instagram page , laying out the details of her plan, she followed people from school to spread the word. The next walkout was set on June 3. It would last 19 minutes, one minute for every elementary school child that died that day.

Dani didn’t want to tell the administration for fear of them adding restrictions. However, the morning of the protest, an administrator caught sight of one of the walkout posters, which was plastered near a bathroom sink, and assigned security to stand outside, ensuring a safe and peaceful walkout.

The turnout was greater than she expected with a total of about 75 people. At that moment Dani felt as if she wasn’t crazy. 

“You see people like and follow, but I didn’t know who was going to come,” said Dani. “I was super nervous leading up to it,” Dani added. “I think it is important that, yeah, we had a walkout, but every time we have a mass shooting, we kinda just stop talking about it after a week. I think it’s important we keep talking about it as students because it’s important that the administration keeps listening to us. But the fact that students have to be scared to go to school is concerning. We need to keep up to date with legislation and we just need to keep talking about it because nothing is going to change if we don’t do anything about it.”

Even though the walkout is now over, the Instagram page is still up and running to post updates, list information about new events, and even to discuss other topics that need attention. You can find the Instagram page @bwhs19minute.walkout