I would like to preface this opinionated editorial with a personal declaration of gratitude for my Archer sisters and the faculty and administration, who supported and protected us today. The following editorial refers to administration in general, and I acknowledge that this is a generalization and that there were members of administration who stood alongside us in sharing our message. I am grateful for their participation.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the administrations, who have hindered and restricted the rights to which they are entitled, a decent respect to the opinions and well being of humanity requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to advocate for these rights.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all of humanity is endowed by their governments and institutions with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life (thousands of kids dead, their last breaths inhaled in their classrooms), liberty (What about our First Amendment rights?) and the pursuit of happiness (How can we be happy when every single day, our peers are robbed of their lives?). — That to secure these rights, administrations are instituted among humanity, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed (screaming ‘let us out’ at the schoolhouse gate). — That whenever any form of administration becomes destructive of these ends (claiming to protect our safety, restricting our March to Protect Our Lives), it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it (and we will):

When our school administration threatens students with punishment for advocating for their lives, we will walk out.

When our school administration preaches the mission statement of empowerment and shuts down our modes of self-advocacy and expression, we will walk out. 

When our school administrations restrict our path to the school gates, we will persist, and we will walk out.

When our school administration tells us that our screaming does nothing, we will scream louder, and we will walk out.

When our school administration attempts to take credit for and profit from a student-led, student-organized movement that occurred with reluctant support from officials, we will remember their blockade, and we will walk out.

When our national administration repeatedly fails to provide protection to which students are entitled, we will walk out.

When our national administration is incapable of empathizing with victims, we will provide our support, and we will walk out.

When our national administration believes the best way to limit gun deaths in schools is to put more guns in schools, we will walk out.

When our national administration refuses to deliver justice, we will walk out, and we will do it ourselves.

– Natalie Grant ’19