What Campus Shootings? This High School Is Letting Seniors Use Guns as Photo Props
America’s 87th school shooting since the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre in Newtown, Conn., happened on Friday morning in Marysville, Wash. Two students—including the shooter—are dead, and three are in critical condition after a freshman opened fire in the school’s cafeteria. Meanwhile, 1,501 miles away in Broken Bow, Neb., the school district is letting seniors at the local high school pose with real guns for their yearbook photographs.
Broken Bow High School graduates 60 to 70 seniors every year, and hunting is popular in the community. In response to pressure from parents, the school board of the tiny 3,500-person town voted on Tuesday to allow weapons for use as props in senior photos, which will be taken at an off-campus location. The new policy will allow the teenagers to bring guns for their photos as long as they’re unloaded and the way the students pose with them is “tasteful and appropriate.”
“The board, I believe, felt they wanted to give students who are involved in those kinds of things the opportunity to take a senior picture with their hobby, with their sport, just like anybody with any other hobby or sport,” superintendent Mark Sievering told the Omaha World-Herald. “We are a very rural community right in the center of Nebraska where hunting and other shooting sports are very popular.”
Matthew Haumont, a board member who is also a hunter education instructor in the state, told the paper that “the policy’s important because it allows those kids who are doing those things a chance to demonstrate what they’re doing and to celebrate that. I think that’s important and fair in our country.”
However, some education activists across the nation are troubled by the school board’s decision.
“I find it disturbing that a school would be OK with a policy that further normalizes guns when we should be exercising far more restraint around them,” said Sabrina Stevens, the executive director of the nonprofit advocacy organization Integrity in Education. “A gun isn’t a prop, or a toy, or a trophy. It’s a deadly weapon, and we need to remember that.”
Prior to the board’s vote, the district had no policy governing props for senior photos. However, Sievering told the World-Herald that due to concerns about school shootings, posing with a gun hadn’t been allowed.
“There is a devastating social and human cost to the fetish this country has with guns,” said Melinda D. Anderson, a Washington, D.C.–based education writer and parent activist. Since Newtown, “there have been an average of 1.37 school shootings for each school week—why would we want to associate an academic milestone in a child’s life with guns, an instrument that’s been the source of such violence and mayhem for schools?”
Anderson says there are also racial implications of the district’s decision to allow firearms in senior photos. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Broken Bow’s population is 95.7 percent white—which makes Anderson wonder how well the news of guns being allowed for senior portraits would be received if the demographics of the community were different.
“Just imagine the reaction if an overwhelmingly black or Latino school district announced its high school seniors would be posing for yearbook photos with guns,” she said.
Indeed, although gun advocates have vocally supported mostly white open-carry activists, this summer 22-year-old African American Ohio resident John Crawford III was shot by police after shoppers in a Walmart called 911 and reported a man carrying a gun. Crawford was carrying a toy gun he had picked up in the store, and Ohio is an open-carry state. Prominent firearm supporters have been markedly silent in speaking out against Crawford’s shooting.
At the same time, in the nation’s schools, “white students are proudly displaying guns like they’re badges of honor,” said Anderson, “and black students are disproportionately suspended and expelled for infractions like refusing to turn over a hat.”
As for implementation of the new policy, the Broken Bow district plans to take consider requrests to pose with guns on a “case-by-case basis,” said Haumont. “But I think that goes with any photo, whether it’s a scantily clad girl or something like that.”
Related stories on TakePart:
• After 9-Year-Old’s Uzi Accident, NRA Tweets Ways Kids Can Have Fun at Gun Ranges
• Gun Violence Is So Out of Control, Now There’s a Bulletproof Blanket That Protects Students
• This Utah High School Photoshopped Clothes Onto Girls' Yearbook Pictures
• Puzzled Parents Demand to Know Why Topless Photos Appeared in High School Yearbook
Original article from TakePart
