The students of STEM School Highlands Ranch in Colorado should give us all hope for the future.
A “vigil” for the victims of the STEM school shooting, which left one dead and eight injured, was held Wednesday evening by Team Enough, a student-focused initiative of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
The vigil was, unsurprisingly, used as an excuse for the Brady-connected group to hold a high-profile anti-gun rally, harnessing publicity from the recent school shooting. But many science, technology, engineering, and math students walked out and held an impromptu vigil of their own once they had figured out they were being used for a political stunt.
The Brady Campaign had organized the event. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., a presidential candidate, and Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., spoke at the “vigil.” Moms Demand Action activist Laura Reeves also addressed the STEM students. The politicians and activists behind this event explicitly used their time to call for more gun control legislation.
The students figured it out and walked out. Although the Denver Post did a poor job, trying to make the students look like bad guys whose “protest derailed the organized vigil,” the national media accurately conveyed the backlash this rally generated.
The Washington Post more or less captured what happened with its headline: “‘Not a statistic’: Students walk out of Colorado shooting vigil to condemn politics and press.” “Students walk out of Colorado school shooting vigil, saying their trauma was being politicized,” reported USA Today, which also nicely captured the political nature of the event. BuzzFeed News also picked up the spirit of what happened: “Survivors Of The Colorado School Shooting Stormed Out Of A Vigil, Calling It A ‘Political Stunt.’”
The Brady Campaign has since issued an apology for its role in the fiasco: “We are deeply sorry any part of this vigil did not provide the support, caring and sense of community we sought to foster and facilitate and which we know is so crucial to communities who suffer the trauma of gun violence.”
