Performing Arts Academy Students At Joint Base Joining Walkouts

LAKEHURST, NJ — Students at the Performing Arts Academy of the Ocean County Vocational Technical Schools will be joining their peers across the country at 10 a.m. in walking out of school to honor those killed in a massacre one month ago at a Florida high school.

Ashley Vitale, one of the student organizers of the PAA walkout, said students participating have written poems and speeches, and some will peform songs to honor the memories of the 17 students and staff who were gunned down at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14.

Vitale, a senior at PAA who shared her planned speech with Patch, said students want to see changes to gun laws and they want to feel safe.

She was inspired by a poem written by a student who had previously attended Parkland and who knew many of the students who were killed as well as the survivors.

"It's a really powerful poem," Vitale said, adding that the poem summed up what many students are feeling in the wake of the shootings. The students also gathering donations to send to the victims' families in Parkland to help with some of the expenses the families face, she said.

Here's a portion of Vitale's planned speech, and the poem that inspired her:

"Why do I have to be afraid to go to school everyday? Why do I have to be afraid of going out because at any moment I can get hurt? Why does it take something as awful as a mass shooting to fight for what is right? ... I believe that there are more good people in this world and if all the good come together, we just may be able to fight and defeat that evil. This is why I am speaking here today. To fight for what is right."

The poem reads:

“This was our home
But you turned off the lights
Broke through our windows
And robbed us of life

This was our home
But you tore down the walls
Stole all that we loved
With hope that we’d fall

But a home is a home
And to live is to fight
We’ll build a new window
And search for new light.”

Vitale's mother, Debra, said she supports the walkouts.

"I hear people saying they're not old enough to understand, that they don't have enough experience, but they should be heard because they just went through it," Debra Vitale said. "We adults may have more experience but we never had to deal with something like this as kids."

An activist holds up a placard during a rally at the Florida State Capitol building to address gun control on Feb. 21 in Florida, days after a mass shooting at a Florida high school that killed 17 students and staff and injured 14 others. Photo by Don Juan Moore/Getty Images