Lake Forest High School Students Walk Out In Gun Violence Protest

LAKE FOREST, IL — Students at Lake Forest High School took part in a nationwide classroom walkout to protest gun violence organized by a local chapter of Students Demand Action.

They were joined by students from Northwestern University and hundreds of other schools across the country in the demonstration, according to organizers.

A day earlier, on the nine-month anniversary of the mass shooting at the city's 4th of July Parade in neighboring Highland Park, reports of a student with a gun on campus triggered a lockdown shortly after students staged their own walkout on behalf of increased gun safety.

About 100 Lake Forest High School students took part in the protest, which was also attended by about 50 adults, the Lake County News-Sun reported, including several Democratic politicians. Organizers Alia Attar, a Lake Forest senior, and Sophia Zar, a Lake Bluff junior, said the turnout exceeded their expectations. There are about 1,500 students enrolled at LFHS.

Principal Erin Lenart said the school "does not condone or condemn" participation in such a demonstration, though student who walk out of class would be marked with an unexcused absence.

In a message Wednesday, Lenart notified the LFHS community that the event was not a school-sponsored activity and encouraged families to consider discussing school safety and the planned student-led walkout.

Northwestern's demonstration at The Rock on the school's Evanston campus was attended by about 35 students and community members, and organizers plan to hold another protest on April 14 to call for divestment from the gun industry, the Daily Northwestern reported.

Students Demand Action, the national organizer of Wednesday's walkouts, is a subsidiary of the Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit largely financed by former Republican New York City mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg.

The walkouts came nine days after a mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville in which three children and three adults were shot dead by a former student who was then killed by police. Both the Lake Forest and Evanston walkouts included readings of the names of those slain at The Covenant School last month.

“Young people are fed up with lawmakers offering us thoughts and prayers with no action to back it up,” Presely Spiller, a Students Demand Action volunteer in Tennessee, said in a statement. “We deserve to be safe in our schools, to learn and grow up without having to live in fear of gun violence.

According to a database of incidents of gunfire on school grounds maintained by the nonprofit, there were 177 incidents of gunfire on school grounds last year, resulting in 57 deaths and 148 injuries.

So far in 2023, there have been 39 incidents, 17 deaths and 30 injuries across the country.

In the Midwest, they include a Jan. 23 double homicide at a Des Moines, Iowa, charter school, a Feb. 13 spree shooting at Michigan State University in which a 43-year-old gunman killed three and injured five others before taking his own life and the suicide of a middle school staff member in the parking lot of a Middlebury, Indiana, middle school on March 24.

The only incident of gunfire on an Illinois school campus this year was a Jan. 31 incident in the parking lot of Zion-Benton Township High School following a basketball game against Waukegan High School, according to the database. A witness said a teenager jumped out of a silver car and started "unloading an extended clip" before fleeing the scene. No one was injured, but two cars were damaged.

Lake Forest High School has also been the subject of gun-related security concerns during this school year. In September, a student was surreptitiously recorded watching a video about weapons on campus and reported to administrators, who determined he was not a threat.

On Oct. 6, a single bullet was found on the floor of a "well-traveled throughway" in the school library.

Two days later, the school was evacuated after a student using a school bathroom found graffiti on a school evacuation map, which contained "an image of a potential location for a school shooter, a derogatory statement towards a staff member, and a student name was signed," the principal said at the time. It also included an image of a swastika.

By that evening, police had determined three students had been responsible or had immediate knowledge of the graffiti, Lenart said. Four days later, a student came forward to report the origin of the bullet to authorities.

“Subjects in both incidents have now been identified and will be referred to the Robert W. Depke Juvenile Detention Center to determine appropriate juvenile charges,” Rob Copeland, deputy chief of the Lake Forest Police Department, said in a statement last fall.

Highland Park city officials said Wednesday that the police investigation into the reports of a student with a gun at school wound up with the discovery of a handgun at an unspecified, off-campus location.

A student who was taken into custody faces juvenile court charges of possession of a firearm in a school and an unspecified form of the offense of disorderly conduct, according to city officials, who said in a statement that "there was not a plot by multiple individuals to engage in violence at the High School."

Communications Manager Amanda Bennett said city officials believe the Juvenile Court Act prevents them from disclosing whether there was such a plot by a single individual.