First-year UMD student Lainie Curlew, who’s from Cokato, also walked out. “I think people have the wrong priorities right now,” she said, referring to the banning of books but not guns.
1:15 p.m. – Hundreds of students from St. John’s Preparatory School solemnly walked to the steps of the Abbey Church on St. John’s University campus in Collegeville.
Many carried signs with messages such as “No more violence” or “Students demand action.”
“While our government has too often failed to take meaningful action, we cannot allow that failure to silence us or convince us that we are powerless,” said Grace Hofer, a junior from South Dakota who lives on campus. “We are not powerless.”
St. John’s Preparatory School students in Collegeville, Minn., participate in a school walkout to protest gun violence. (Jenny Berg/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Sophomore John Soon, who grew up in South Korea, where guns are “strictly banned,” said he was shocked by the number of school shootings in the United States. Brandon Anderson, the school’s theater director, read aloud a spoken word piece he titled, “Enough,” which moved through the five steps of dismantling a gun, “and with it, the violence that has dismantled far too many lives.”
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