DETROIT (WXYZ) — Today, hundreds of students at Oxford Public schools staged a walk out.
The protest stemming from a mass school shooting in Texas that took the lives of 21 people including 19 children. It’s a pain families in Oxford say is all too familiar.
“You're upset, you're sad but your also really angry it keeps happening,” says Andrea Jones who was one of the parents present at the protest.
Jones's son attends Oxford High School and was in the building the day four people died at the hands of a gunmen. Today, she says, the student body's message is clear.
“They just want an end to school shootings period,” says Jones.
In Ann Arbor, students at Scarlet Middle School stood for a moment of silence while demanding an end to gun violence.
“How is any student supposed to come here and feel safe?" says Alaysasia Dean, an 11th grader at the School at Marygrove in Detroit.
Dean and her schoolmates also walked out in protest today. In addition to ending gun violence, Dean and her classmates want more safety protocols implemented following an incident where a student was able to bring a BB gun into the school and aim it at another student without the teachers' knowledge.
“Anything could have happened to us while we were there,” says Dean.
"Student and staff safety is paramount, bottom line," says Lakia Wilson-Lumpkins, executive vice president for the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT).
Wilson-Lumpkin says the BB gun incident happened a little over a week ago, and the recent shootings in Texas reinforced the severity of the issue.
Right now, Wilson-Lumpkin's says they are arranging meetings with students and parents to come up with a solution.
Dean believes they should beef up security, despite potential backlash.
“I don’t want students complaining about why they're checking our bags, why do we need metal detectors, stuff like this, this is the reason we need metal detectors," says Dean.
When asked if DFT has brought up the topic of metal detectors, Wilson-Lumpkins says “ We're going to have that conversation today.”
Today, the teen shown pointing a BB gun at a student at the School at Marygrove was charged with possession of a weapon in a no weapon zone.
