Students and staff gathered today in the Commons for a walkout honoring of the 17 victims of the Parkland shooting, exactly one month ago.

Some students held simple signs with names of the victims forming a sort of circle. “Fear has no place in school” was written on the only poster in the area.

Seventeen minutes of silence ensued, one minute for each victim murdered. After the allotted time of silence, students and teachers said the name of the student who was on their piece of paper. This was probably the most moving part of the short 20-minute display, but I don’t think it was enough.

Everyone scattered after the names were said. Seventeen minutes of silence is powerful, and I’m surprised so many kept it up.

The only emotional display was when a women walked around to each person holding a person’s name and said it out loud.

No one spoke out against gun violence and what happened. We gathered, stood in silence, and went back into our own lives. 

What is the point in a display of togetherness if it is not used to further the agenda the whole walkout was designed for?

The united feeling that emerged from the silence we all shared down in the Commons was immediately lost as most people dispersed back to classrooms and cars.

There were no big speeches, displays of emotion, words about the victims, shared fear that we could be next or worry that it could have been us. The DVC students and faculty need to band together if they want anything to happen. 17 minutes of silence is an encouraging start, but a fire will not come of a spark if nothing fuels  it. We need a plan, just like the kids from the school in Florida have. 

The kids in Florida have created a platform to speak out and make a difference through twitter.

That little blue bird of a logo is doing more for the argument of guns than our 17 minutes of silence will ever do.

If DVC wants to make a change, members of its community have to talk about what they need. We need to talk about how we can make our classrooms safer in case of a mass shooting of our own. We need to mobilize to change our laws to make guns harder to get to stop something like Florida dealt with not happen to us. We need to capitalize on everyone’s attention on guns and make a change.