Opinion: Greenwich HS' Disappointing School Safety Rally

The following op-ed about Wednesday's Unity Rally at Greenwich High School was written by Junior Zack Lori:

On March 14th, high school students across America staged walkouts calling for stronger gun control legislation in light of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last month. Greenwich High School students were not among the thousands of students to walk out of class. Rather, the school administration, in conjunction with the student government, staged what was officially called a “student rally” that took place at the same time as the walkouts around the country.

During one of my classes after the rally, we spent the majority of the period having a class discussion on both the rally and the gun debate. In an ideologically diverse group of students, not one person (including the teacher) thought that the school should have sponsored the rally. By turning the walkout into a school-sponsored affair, Greenwich High School alienated both liberal and conservative members of our student body.

The walkouts across the nation served to send a message to other Americans that we need to pass more strident gun control laws. These walkouts enhanced the public discourse surrounding America’s gun debate by letting students’ opinions be heard.

In contrast, school-sponsored rallies cannot, and should not, have political messages. Accordingly, the GHS rally featured vague platitudes instead of meaningful discussion on solving America’s massive gun homicide problem. Speakers gave generalized speeches about exercising the right to vote and how “we can all agree that no one should go through school scared for their life,” as Student Body President Greg Goldstein put it. “We are here today to bond as a school, community, state, and nation to say enough is enough.” What should be done to stop the occurrence of more shootings was left unsaid.

The rally was effective at honoring the victims of the Parkland shooting. But by turning a political, student-run protest into an apolitical Unity Rally, Greenwich High School limited its students’ freedom to express themselves. Matthew Meyers, a GHS sophomore, noted that “A rally is powerful, but not in the same way that a walkout is. It’s still powerful, just not as striking or unique.” Instead of being able to actually make a political statement, the student body was just told that we should vote in the near future, a disappointing message to liberal students such as myself.

In Goldstein’s speech, he noted that “school safety is strictly an apolitical issue.” But gun control— a term which the speakers were not allowed to use— is an extremely divisive issue in America today. To say the opposite trivializes the matter. If school safety were a nonpartisan issue, Congress would pass unanimous legislation tomorrow. But it is not, which is why walkouts were organized today throughout American high schools. This is one of the reasons why Greenwich High School’s decision not to let students elect to walk out of school was so dispiriting.

Discontent lead some students to attempt to organize a counter-rally in front of the school in order to make students’ calls for gun control heard. Unfortunately, the idea for the counter-rally was created on March 13th, too late to effectively organize a protest.

Like the liberals, conservative students did not like the rally. They were frustrated by the atmosphere of the event, which was implicitly liberal despite any outspoken political messages. Conservatives elected to go to the school media center in lieu of attending the rally. “It was a waste of school time,” one conservative junior told me. “It shouldn’t have been sponsored by the school.” Neither liberal nor conservative students liked the speakers’ vaguely political non-message very much.

One of the largest issues with the school rally was the opacity of the event. At least one GHS student, a senior, asked the school if he could speak at the rally beforehand but was denied because he wasn’t one of the speakers pre-selected by the school. (He was not denied due to ideology.) All of the student speakers but one were members of student government, which organized the event with the school administration.

Press was not allowed to attend the rally, and only Greenwich High School’s Cardinal News was allowed to shoot footage of it. Perhaps the school did not want the press to ask students what they actually thought of the event. While all of my evidence is purely anecdotal, it seems as though students were disappointed by the rally.

Greenwich High School likely held a rally instead of allowing a walkout due to the unruliness of protests. As one student told me, “a walkout would have disrupted the order of the school day, but the school sponsorship allowed the order to continue.” But protests are supposed to be unruly and chaotic. They are meant to be unsettling to those in charge. Vague platitudes about how “enough is enough” simply don’t have the same impact.

By Zack Lori
Greenwich High School, Class of 2019