The fear, the fight, the future: The threat of gun violence is a new reality for today’s students

The lights were off and the door was locked in Shreya Mahadevan’s fourth-grade classroom at Johnson Elementary School. Small bodies huddled quietly behind a wall of backpacks—their teacher in tears. “It was really scary. Petrifying,” says the 9-year-old girl about the lockdown her school was under last October, when a man in nearby Johnson Village […]

Charlottesville students make their voices heard at national march

Photos and story by Natalie Jacobsen “Bandanna or beads?” asks Cynthia Neff, walking up and down the center aisle of the bus. Hands reach for the bright orange options that will be used to distinguish Charlottesvillians in a sea of hundreds of thousands at the March for Our Lives rally held March 24 in Washington, […]

In brief: School walkouts, vegan dating, butt whupping and more

Walking the walk Exactly one month from the day that a gunman shot 17 people to death at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, local students and their peers across the nation said they wouldn’t stand for that—so they walked. March 14 marked the first National School Walkout, where thousands of students left […]