After several high schools in Minnesota were closed yesterday because of a gun threat, classes have resumed. This shouldn’t be normal.
By Alexis Aryeequaye, Rosemount High School
On Tuesday, December 16, I was getting ready for school, like millions of other K-12 students across the country. I bundled up to face the Minnesota winter and got picked up by my boyfriend and his sister, unaware of what the morning would bring.
When we pulled into the parking lot, the entire school was outside. Students were running to their cars and calling their parents. Staff were ushering students out of the building and back onto buses. Those who knew what was wrong were terrified. Those who didn’t were confused and disoriented.
There had been a gun threat.
Videos showing guns and warnings about shooting several high schools in my school district were posted online, including threats against my school in Rosemount. All the district high schools were canceled for the day. A single threat caused mass panic among students, staff, and families. In many other countries, this would spark national shock. In the United States of America, it was just another Tuesday.
Only three days after the mass shooting at Brown University that left two dead and eight wounded, I was overwhelmed with anxiety. Yet students are expected to return to class after incidents like this as if nothing has changed. We are supposed to take tests and write essays while quietly mapping exits and escape routes. Lockdown drills are framed as preparation, but they mostly remind us how vulnerable we are.
District 196 alum and Minnesota senator Erin Maye Quade, who represents the south metropolitan area (Rosemount, Apple Valley, Eagan) shared this on Instagram:
“This is really messed up for young people to experience this kind of trauma all the time, to experience this constant app that tells them how to run, hide, and fight,” Quade said. “Not one adult, not one in the legislature, have ever carried that with them from the time they were little, growing up. No adult who makes decisions has ever experienced that, and we should be listening to young people when they’re begging us to do something.”
I’m a senior in high school. I’ve grown up watching mass shootings and seeing schools targeted again and again. I used to myself, it will get better when I get older.
It never did.
What makes this moment especially disturbing is how routine it has become. The response was a district email, a canceled school day, and a few news articles. Then everything moved on.
For students, nothing about this feels normal.
We carry the fear into classrooms, onto buses, and back home. We learn early that our safety is negotiable, weighed against political convenience and inaction. Schools are meant to be places of learning and growth. Instead, they have become places where survival has quietly become part of the curriculum.
A 16-year-old from Eagan was taken into custody by Apple Valley Police Department for the threats. But the fear didn’t disappear with the arrest. It’s still there, and real, too. We are expected to return to school like nothing happened.
Tuesday morning was supposed to be ordinary. Instead, it was another reminder that gun violence has been normalized in this country. Until that changes, there will always be another Tuesday like this one. Another parking lot filled with panic. Another community shaken. Another generation growing up in the shadow of a threat that should never be acceptable.
I ask people to vote for leaders who are committed to keeping children safe. I ask for lawmakers to push for real gun reform.
This isn’t normal. Something has to change.
