Several university students participated in a walkout of their classes Friday in response to this week's gun-related lockdown at UNC-Chapel Hill. The walkouts were led by Students Demand Action groups on UNC-Chapel Hill's campus and North Carolina State University.
This week’s lockdown for an armed person on campus came just 16 days after UNC professor Zijie Yan was shot and killed in a university building.
UNC graduate student Emily Feek walked out of a class along with about 20 students. Two campus lockdowns so close together have been challenging to process, she said.
“We've been really rattled,” Feek said. “We've been really concerned about each other and we want to make noise about it. We don't want to just be complicit and stand here. Even if it doesn't feel like you can do something personally, it feels worse to do nothing.”
Unlike the rally the campus group held last month that called for legislative action on gun control, Friday’s event organizers said they wanted to focus instead on giving students space to heal.
“It really just makes me angry that we have to worry about this,” said Mitchell Pinsky, a UNC graduate student and one of the event organizers. “We also recognize that it takes a toll on your mental health. While of course it is important to have legislative action, you really can't do that if your mental health is not in tiptop shape.”
UNC’s Students Demand Action set up tables near Wilson Library, where they provided water, snacks and a therapy dog for students. At one point, more than 40 students gathered there and responded to prompts featured on display boards at the tables.
One writing prompt asked students how they were feeling. Sophomore Kayla Engler wrote down her response on a small blue sticky note and stuck it to the board.
“The most salient feeling recently has been déjà vu,” Engler said. “That’s what I put down, and that's a feeling that I'm really upset about that I never thought I'd have over a school shooting. Seeing those messages, the same ones come in from friends, family and Alert Carolina. I hope it's a feeling I don't have to feel again.”
Graduate student Isabelle Potts said that’s a feeling students shouldn’t have to feel.
“We are the first public university in the country,” she said. “We should be able to feel safe on our own campus.”
Potts graduated from UNC and went on to be a schoolteacher for seven years. This fall, she returned to the university for graduate school.
“Part of the reason that I wanted to move out of teaching and come back to school was to feel safe again,” Potts said. “I haven't felt safe as a schoolteacher because of all the shootings that happen in our country. And now I'm coming back to a place, and it's more unsafe than where I was.”
At the event, students were also prompted to describe changes they would like to see in the future. Several students criticized UNC’s emergency response system, Alert Carolina, which sends out text and email alerts during campus emergencies. Some students said that it should send alerts out in more languages than English, or it should have more frequent updates during emergencies.
On the other hand, some students said they felt like the administration’s handling of the events has been reasonable, and that change needs to occur at a policy level with more legislative action on gun violence.
“A lot of the gun violence that we're seeing, I don't know that schools are equipped to deal with it,” graduate student Emily Feek said. “I don't really want to see a school where you have metal detectors or clear backpacks, or the measures that have gone on in some high schools. I would like to be able to continue having an open campus and just not have to fear for my life.”
Meanwhile, top Republican leaders in the General Assembly have refused to hold hearings on gun control bills and passed a new law that reduces permit requirements to buy handguns this year.