On March 14, Kinnelon High School students joined the thousands of others across the country in a nationwide school walkout organized by Women’s March Youth Empower. This walkout occurred on the one month anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. At 10 a.m. students walked out of class for 17 minutes to honor the 17 victims of the Parkland shooting and to demand an end to gun violence in schools.

The walkout was also a large part of the Enough movement, an activist effort dedicated to school safety. The movement advocates for a student’s right to an education without a fear of being injured or killed through gun violence. Through the #Enough platform on social media, American students united to say that the time is now. Enough is enough for school violence.

During the walkout, some students around the nation protested gun control in order to ensure that the Parkland victims are the last school shooting victims. Kinnelon students, however, stood in solemn solidarity for seventeen minutes, each minute a moment of silence for a victim lost in the Parkland shooting.

Senior Hayden Burt, an organizer of the walkout, created a KHS page on the Women’s March Youth Empower site using action network. Through this page, Kinnelon High School’s walkout became one of the 3,136 walkouts registered.

“When we are unhappy with the way our leaders are doing things… we have a responsibility to express that view and take steps to actually enact change,” said Burt.

Likewise, Senior Olivia Hurtado said, “[The walkout] shows that there is support for this issue. In however many numbers, just showing that people care is what the government needs to see.”

Other KHS students chose not to participate in the walkout. Some simply stayed inside because they did not have a jacket and others because of their personal beliefs on the issue of gun control.

Junior Vito Caprio did not participate because he was “unsure of what it was about… [and] felt that the second amendment was in jeopardy.” If he had known that the walkout was centered on the victims of the Parkland shooting, Caprio said that he “certainly would have gone outside.”

Junior Rachel Stuart also chose to stay inside and said that “the politics of… the overall movement itself… undermined the fact that we were respecting the people who died.”

Many students agreed and believed that the walkout was too political. However, Senior Lara Ulrich said that, “I don’t think that you are ever too young to start paying attention to politics because it will eventually affect you… We’re going to grow up and we have to start voicing our opinions now so we know how to advocate for ourselves… in the future”

KHS students were deeply divided on the subject of the walkout. Despite these obvious tensions, however, Burt said that, “everybody who went out was respectful and everybody who stayed in was also very respectful.”

While Kinnelon High School and the entire nation remain divided on the issue of gun control, this national school walkout did have one important success: Students across America have united to be a voice that cannot be ignored. As Burt said, “We are the future.”