Lane Murdock's Wild Ride: Ridgefield Teen Now a Media Celeb

RIDGEFIELD, CT — On February 14, 2018, just hours after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Ridgefield High School sophomore Lane Murdock was moved to create an online petition, on the activist platform Change.org. Murdock’s petition,“National High School Walk-Out for Anti Gun Violence,” calls on the U.S. Senate and President Donald Trump to enact legislation aimed at preventing gun violence.

The date she chose for the march was Friday, April 20 -- the 19th anniversary of the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado. She envisioned beginning the proceedings with 13 seconds of silence, one second for each person killed that day.

It's a story often told, which is sort of surprising, considering how little time has passed.

Shortly after launching her petition, Murdock enlisted the aid of two RHS seniors, Paul Kim, 17, and Max Cumming, 18. The three of them then set about organizing their nationwide walk-out with the help of professional nationwide walk-out organizers Indivisible, a non-profit group whose mission is "to fuel a progressive grassroots network of local groups to resist the Trump Agenda." They're clearly expert at what they do, as barely two months after their services were enlisted more than 150 member chapters of National School Walkout have formed around the country.

Less than a week after the Parklands shooting and Murdock starting her petition, the 15-year-old found herself the subject of an article on Gizmodo. The writer was impressed that Murdock's new Twitter account, @schoolwalkoutUS, had racked up nearly 100,000 followers in just four days. Gizmodo also wasted no time declaring Ridgefield High School "suddenly ground zero for a national youth movement combating school gun violence." That's a significant achievement given how large still loomed the Parkland shootings, a mere six days earlier.

Barely two weeks would pass before Murdock found herself the subject of a feature on the Huffington Post website, where the writer seemed sympathetic to the plight of the young girl they clearly identify as the leader of the national walk-out: "When she’s not in class or doing homework, Murdock, a sophomore, is checking her email, posting to Twitter and speaking with reporters."

CNN sent a crew to Ridgefield ("this affluent Connecticut enclave that brims with the charm of small-town America") and interviewed Murdock in the run-up to Friday's march. In the online news article published April 19, the writer noted that Murdock's Twitter feed had amassed 131,000 followers, and praised her "sharp website" that offered a social media toolkit and other materials to help students join her cause.

NPR filed their Lane Murdock report the same day. That reporter found notable, as did many of the Murdock-profilers who preceded her, the fact that Ridgefield is 20 minutes from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. That's the sort of grim hook journalists can't help but latch upon.

On the eve of the walk-out, with so much keen preparation behind them, there's more than a little irony in the fact that Murdock and the national organizers won't be allowed to follow their own agenda. The national plan of preferred action calls for students to walk out of class at 10 a.m. and continue marching off campus. In Ridgefield, however, the Board of Education decided at their March 27 meeting to keep all the proceedings on school property.

In a release, Ridgefield High School Principal Dr. Stacey Gross said, "To better support our students’ actions, to create minimum disruption to student learning, and to provide as safe an environment as possible, Walkout activities will occur in Tiger Hollow. There will be increased Ridgefield Police Department presence on the RHS campus throughout the day. "

RPD Captain Jeff Kreitz told The Patch that they will have "numerous officers working the event tomorrow and... have worked closely with school officials to ensure the safety of all." He did not go into specifics as he did not want to "compromise safety by the release of any plans."

The real work of the day begins when the speeches are over. That's when Murdock hopes to have volunteers capturing email addresses and phone numbers onto the TurboVote platform, which reminds its users to vote.

What happens to Murdock after the March is anybody's guess (but you can be sure somebody in that Room Where It Happens has a clear plan). She told Gizmodo that she hopes to one day be a journalist. That's not surprising: she's hardly spent time with anyone else these past two months.