On March 14th, students from State College Area High School gathered outside the main entrance in a ceremony that aimed to remember the 17 victims of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida on February 14th. March 14th commemorated one month since the fatal incident.

State High was not the only school that remembered the victims. According to the Washington Post, more than 2,800 high schools across the country participated. All over the world, students participated in what is now being called National Walkout Day. Students and staff gathered at ten in the morning for 17 minutes, to represent the 17 victims of the shooting. The hashtag #NationalWalkoutDay was the number one trending hashtag on Twitter on the 14th.

At State High, the memorial started as 17 students read short biographies about all of the victims from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.  The victims of the shooting included three adults and 14 students. “Given that everyone wants to feel safe at school, the activities scheduled on March 14 were something all students could rally with regardless of their political views,” sophomore Annie Gustafson said, who spoke at the event.

“I choose to speak at the ceremony because I wanted to support the families of those lost. It is important to honor them,” freshman Madigan King said.

The children and teachers who were fatally shot were normal people who had their whole lives ahead of them, many of who were youths. Although many of the memorials around the world were not political, the actions showed that people are losing tolerance for gun violence. “No matter what the solution is, I think this is the generation that will solve the mass shooting problem,” sophomore Elliot Sheehan said. After all of the short biographies were read a moment of silence was taken to honor the lives that were lost.

At the end of the memorial, the Master Singers sang a song titled “Somewhere (There’s A Place For Us).” “Even though they are gone, people everywhere will remember them and the song was dedicated to them and is in their memory,” sophomore Will Fecko said. Fecko is a member of the Master Singers.

The memorial service was purely in memoriam, and organizers have no intent of it being political. Regardless, the events held at State High were well organized and showed the survivors of Parkland that the student body stands with them.