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Close call demonstrated need for change

Close call demonstrated need for change

Editor’s note: Rachel Ware graduated from Aspen High School in 2015 and has written this from Rollins College in Florida.

Today I experienced the most terrifying eight minutes of my life.



Eight minutes is not a long time. In eight minutes you might be able to listen to a song or two, read your emails, send a couple of texts or maybe even, if you are very efficient, sort your laundry.

Today, I spent eight minutes in a closet, scared for my life, texting friends and family members that I was OK.




I could hear the panic in my classmates’ voices, trying to be as quiet as possible just in case the shooter was in the building.

I cannot even begin to explain what it feels like to not know if you will ever see your loved ones again, talk on the phone again, or see the outside of a small closet again.

With that being said, I know I will never understand what the survivors of Parkland and other active shootings felt when they watched the shooter take their friends and classmates away from them forever. I am so incredibly lucky that the man on my campus today did not have a firearm, and it was all a big misunderstanding.

I am so grateful no one was hurt today, but that does not mean it will not happen tomorrow. Something needs to be done in this country. The only country in the Western world that students feel this much fear on a regular basis just because they are in a classroom.

Rachel Ware

Winter Park, Florida