6/7/2024
Seattle Student Union
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
In response to a shooting at Garfield High School
School shootings should not be normalized.
Yesterday at lunch time, a young student of color was shot and killed at one of our schools. He stepped in to calmly break up a fight between two students. Later, one of the students pulled out a weapon and shot the 17 year-old. This comes after many shootings around Garfield in the last year. We risk our lives everyday by just simply going to school. Many of us feel numb to these tragedies, but we cannot be quiet and we will not be silenced. We cannot take this any longer.
Mental health counselors prevent school shootings. We need sufficient school mental health support and fewer guns in our communities. Seattle Student Union is proud of the statewide assault weapons ban and millions of dollars for school mental health counselors we helped win last year, but the City of Seattle and Mayor Bruce Harrell have not implemented this money. As a result, students continue to not receive adequate mental health support. We have been told that the $20 million we won last November will not be implemented in schools by the start of next school year. This is almost a year of delays. Meanwhile, students are being killed. Counselors at Garfield and across the school district are overworked, and appointments with the school’s therapist are hard to come by. The city has a responsibility to protect students and prevent school shootings. We demand Mayor Bruce Harrell and the City of Seattle work to ensure the staff funded with the $20 million are in schools by the coming school year.
We also denounce any call to reintroduce police to our schools after Black students and allies worked tirelessly in 2020 to successfully demand their removal and are opposed to the use of racist police technology such as Shot Spotter.
Until our elected officials start caring about our lives, we will not be safe. We stand with our grieving community and will continue to fight until there are no more school shootings.
Solidarity,
Executive Board, Seattle Student Union