Today on March 20th of 2018, another school shooting has occurred. This makes it the the 17th school shooting since the beginning of 2018. The shooting occurred before class began at Great Mills High School in Maryland. There were 3 casualties. Two of them being students who were injured by the shooter. One is a female student by the age of 16 who is currently in critical condition. The other is a 14 year old male student who is in stable condition.

However there was one death. The death being of the shooter, who also happened to be a student. The student was pronounced dead after the interaction with the school’s resource officer. The school’s officer came into contact with the shooter in the hallway before class began. The shooter fired a round as well as the officer which ended the threat of the shooter. The shooter was pronounced dead and the school’s officer was left uninjured.

About a week ago schools across the nation walked out in memory of the Parkland victims and in protest of stricter gun laws. Great Mills High School was one of the thousands of school who participated and showed support for Parkland. Now students at Parkland and everywhere else are offering their condolences and support for the students at Great Mills.

This particular situation that occured today relates to us as students here at Pinole in many ways. One being the issue that our SRO is being removed from our campus next year. Imagine being put in a situation as tragic as the one at Parkland or Great Mills. Thanks to the SRO at Great Mills the situation did not escalate further. Had there not been an SRO we would have heard of much more than 3 casualties. As sad as it is to say that in times like these we need an armed officer to feel safe at the place where we are supposed to be getting our education, to think that is going to be taken from is us is scary. If having an officer at our high schools to prevent things like these from happening or atleast to reduce the severity of these incidents then so be it. Keep the officers here to ensure the safety of the students.

These incidents happen far too often. We cannot let things like this become normalized. Everytime this happens we have to be as enraged as the first. That is the only way we will get any sort of change. We absolutely cannot let ourselves believe that these things are normal. We have to do anything and everything in our power to ensure change is being made.