While the losses weigh heavy on athletes and coaches alike, from the bottom, the only place a team can go is up. Whether that is seen in winning games or growing a stronger mentality. 

“It’s allowed us to raise our level of competition, and it’s allowed us to raise our level of preparation. I think a lot of times, it’s natural for us as humans to get comfortable. It’s definitely pushed a lot of our student-athletes and coaches out of their comfort zone,” said head coach of the boy’s basketball team, Josh Ortmann. 

Switching from the Mississippi 8 to the Lake Conference was a huge jump in competition level. It was a shock many athletes and coaches weren’t prepared for, but players have used the challenge to make them stronger.

“I feel like it’s a good challenge for us at the same time because then it like makes us strive to do better,” said Kaylee Dehmer ‘24, captain of the gymnastics team.

The endless challenges of being in the Lake Conference have forced Buffalo teams to grow mentally, but at what point do the challenges cause more harm than good? 

 “It kind of changes our mindset to work harder and like gets us to put more effort into practice, but I also think it can kind of get in our heads a little bit if we’re constantly losing. In a way, it takes away from the mental part of it. I ultimately think it does help us get better because we’re getting challenged more and more every game,” said Anya Pery ‘25, a member of the girls’ basketball team.

Some sports teams have been able to find success in the Lake Conference, while for others, it has been a continuous struggle. Being in the Lake Conference is a challenge for all, no matter the level of success. There has been some push to switch conferences now that we are eligible and many people are questioning if the challenge of being in the Lake Conference is worth it.

“I think every one of our student-athletes deserves an opportunity to see success. When it gets continuous, and you continuously lose, and lose and lose in different areas, it can be hard, it’s hard for the players, and it’s hard for the coaches because it’s not like anyone’s going out there trying to lose. Mentally, to be in a state of mind after losing a lot can be extremely difficult. And that’s when you’ve got to lean on the people that you trust in buying the little victories within the games itself,” said Ortmann.

At the start of your high school journey you get assigned an Advisory, with the same teacher/advisor and peers for all four years of high school. As an incoming 9th grader you imagine Advisory being a “safe space” or “another home,” but after your walk into the classroom for the first time you see students sitting in their chairs, eyes on their phones, very few people talking, and no one listening. 

In a perfect world, Advisory brings people together and prepares students for the “real world.” Using tools like MCIS 360, motivational videos, and curriculum slideshows, students are supposed to learn about companionship, perseverance, and how to create strong bonds between people. In the real “real world”, there is no companionship or strong bonds to be found in Advisories. Students enter the room to feel dread once again, as Advisory is more seen as a chore, 30 minutes to play on your phone in silence, not a homeroom. 

With each Friday comes “The Harbor” videos, these videos tell students how to improve time management, relationships, and steps for what to do as they enter into young adulthood. Some students enjoy these videos, getting ideas on what they might want to do going forward with their life, and helpful information for their personal and academic lives. There are students who feel otherwise; finding the stories to be unconvincing and overall irrelevant to their everyday lives. While some don’t even know what the videos are about. 

 “I just don’t pay attention, [the videos] don’t reel you in,” says Myia Mcdonald ‘26.

In high school students are expected to have their phones put away during class, although this rule doesn’t seem to apply to advisory. Some students are using their phones or chromebooks to work on school work, while some are mindlessly scrolling or playing mobile games, all while a motivational video runs in the background talking about support and having a strong relationship that can last, the message landing on empty eyes and closed ears. 

The videos talk about personal challenges and how to overcome them without truly connecting to the teens. Instead of bringing up ways to help students after high school or to help them plan out anything truly useful in their lives, students are left with bland inspirational quotes and empty generic advice. With the school day feeling long and slow for many students, advisory was supposed to break those feelings and make you feel a sense of security and community. For some students, with the right advisor, it does.

“When I had Ms. Hauer she would always do simple things to make us feel more connected. She brought in donuts, ice cream, and did other small acts to make us feel more as a family than a class,” said Jazz Johnson ‘24. ”It depends on your advisor though, when I had my old advisor it seemed like they didn’t care much for slides or trying to connect us together.”

Some students feel like they drew the short straw with their advisories.

“In my advisory we don’t get donuts or ice cream, we are just supposed to sit there and pay attention to the slides even though my advisor also finds them ‘dumb’,” said an anonymous sophomore.

As advisories come up tomorrow and the next couple of days, be mindful of the class setting. Is your advisor watching the videos and doing what the teacher puts up? Or does your advisory do the exact opposite? Advisory isn’t supposed to be another class or another BASE, it’s supposed to be a way to connect with people, to learn from others, and to become more as a community.

Both teachers and students have found that using AI for some assignments can be helpful. However, teachers have also found it to be a detriment to teaching.

“[AI] can make some tedious work much more efficient,” CIS World History teacher Tara Rosh said. “For example, today I showed some students how to very quickly create some APA citations [with AI]. The fact that students can definitely use it to cheat and basically not do anything. That’s really concerning to me.”

However, students can also use AI as a positive aid for school work.

“For one of my projects, I had to make a slideshow about a picture book,” Lucas Lawrence ‘25 said. “I didn’t want to do the illustrations myself, but I knew pictures out there of what I wanted just didn’t exist. I was able to utilize an AI-generated image thing, and ask the AI to generate me an image of this. It gave me a great picture that I was able to use in my presentation.”

AI has changed the relationship between teacher and student as well as the way that teachers view assessments and assign work. It has also changed the way that work must be turned in.

“It makes it a less trusting place to be,” said English Teacher and creator of the Writecheck AI feedback generator Ryan McCallum, “and then teachers are starting to spend more time chasing cheaters, which is very much not fun.”

There may be a need for change, but can we change fast enough to keep up?

“I think [progress we make] is probably slower than how fast AI technology [is developing],” said Rosh. “We’re just sort of beginning to have discussions about AI as a staff.”

Students and teachers that use AI have the ability to use it for good.

“People got nervous about [AI] until they realized that it could actually be used for good things,” said Lawrence. “Now I think that if it continues to be used for good things, it can be a great resource for the students and the teachers both.”

Students and teachers found uses that benefit everyone yet there is also a common problem. AI being misused as a form of intelligence.

“Some teachers know kids are cheating,” said McCallum, “and I know some who have said ‘I wasn’t hired to be an AI scanner’. So they’re just gonna roll with it and pretend like everything’s legit because it makes them miserable to spend 12 hours copying text into various AI detectors and analyzing document histories and looking at everybody’s changes and to see if they wrote a whole essay in 10 minutes, or if they actually did the work Or did they put their phone up next to their computer and have their Snapchat AI type it and then they type it so it looks like it was written over time instead of pasted into the document?”

However, others do not agree that cheating is widespread at BHS.

“It’s not widely used by students yet,” said physics teacher Paul Anderson, “because there’s not enough understanding. You need to know what to do in the first place in order to cheat.”

Teachers found misuse of AI is common for students looking for shortcuts. That idea is tiny in scale considering the world as the presence of AI has brought changes benefiting people around the world.

“I think this is equivalent to the printing press or even the internet itself,” said McCallum. “This is a world-changing invention.”

AI is here to stay and will likely have an increasing presence in the future world.

“I definitely think that [AI is] going to do some incredible things,” said Rosh. “There’s talk that it could have the ability to diagnose people and cure diseases – maybe far better than what people are capable of doing. There is also the possibility that it will take over a lot of jobs that we currently have and those jobs will no longer exist. So as a society, we will have to come up with new economic theories as to how to deal with the changes in the workforce it’s going to bring. Just like with the Industrial Revolution, humankind came up with economic theories of capitalism, socialism and communism. There will be new economic theories that you will all have to come up with to deal with the changing workforce under AI.”

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, 10% of youth in grades 9-12 reported that they had made at least one suicide attempt in the past year, not including the many more who struggle with suicidal ideation. With this in mind, it’s clear to see how prevalent the effects of suicide could be for BHS students. Not to mention, those living in Minnesota often are higher at risk for depression due to the long winter months.

Many students may not know that the people around them are suicidal because they might be scared to speak up. A large stigma around suicide is that it’s selfish and disrespectful to others, which only keeps those struggling from getting the help they need. One might be suicidal because of many reasons which may include: depression, difficult households, stress, or (cyber)bullying.

“I have a couple of friends who have attempted suicide,” Maddison Tabbout ‘25 disclosed, “I was sad about it for a long time, but after taking some time for myself and urging myself to keep going, I managed to get through it. I’m still very sad about it, but I’m still able to cope through it today.”

Students are suffering the effects of poor mental health around family and friends, and even themselves. If you know someone struggling ask questions to understand, show that you’re listening, watch for nonverbal cues, and express your concerns to them or a trusted adult.

If you are struggling with suicidal ideation or poor mental health here are some resources you can reach out to:

988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline

1-800-273-8255 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

The Trevor Project 

Suicide Prevention Resources List

The most obvious challenge with shorter passing times is being able to use the bathroom. On average, without any hallway traffic, a walk from the A-wing to the C-wing of the school takes 1 minute and 48 seconds. If a student needs to go up or down a flight of stairs, that walk time increases to 2 minutes. This leaves only 3 minutes to use the bathroom, and that doesn’t include the hundreds of students coming from music, health, phy ed, art, or tech ed classes each passing time. Walking into the door as the bell rings isn’t good enough either, as many teachers expect their students to be fully set up by the time class officially begins. Students are also discouraged from packing up early to prepare for the sprint.

On top of this difficulty, BHS administration has implemented a new policy that doesn’t allow students to use the restroom during the first or last 10 minutes of a class. Adhering to this rule takes away yet another 20 minutes from the already shortened class times that students are allowed to use the restroom each hour. In total, if students are missing passing time to use the restroom, this leaves 25-minutes between the next chance to go.

Having two fewer minutes to use the restroom than last year means this change has impacted almost every student. However, this new rule breaks the school’s promise of equity by unfairly impacting one group of students. 

According to the US Department of Education, sexism in schools can occur when a student faces greater challenges due to their sex. With this definition in mind, the question for BHS is: does the shorter passing time pose a greater challenge to one sex?

50 randomly selected students – 25 young men and 25 young women – were surveyed on whether this new passing time has made it harder for them to use the bathroom and still make it to class on time. Sixteen of the 25 male students (64%) said that they had experienced this problem, whereas 22 of the 25 female students (88%) said they were having difficulties. Even Freshman, who have had shorter passing time at the middle school are experiencing more problems at the high school level, with 89 out of 104 people (86%) citing issues.

These results show that something is definitely off. But why? If there are roughly the same amount of men and women in the school, why aren’t more male students facing this challenge? Shouldn’t it be equally difficult for everyone to use the restroom? Well, unsurprisingly for the women reading this article, using the bathroom is always a more time-consuming task. 

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The lines for the women’s restrooms are much longer than the ones for men’s rooms. This is because while the average women’s bathroom only has three toilets, the average men’s bathroom has three urinals and two toilets, allowing for more people to go at once and the lines to flow faster. Women also generally require more toilet paper than men, which causes the pipes to face more blockage and disgusting leaks, which can lead to extended periods of time where they are out of order.

However, the biggest factor of the bathroom discrepancy is that a majority of male students can generally wait longer to use the restroom. Many decide to wait until they get home. Most women, though, do not have this option. Many female high school students are currently menstruating, which is something that – contrary to popular belief – cannot be simply held in. Why are more women using school toilets? Because they are forced to. Bathroom access is necessary for all menstruating students, as misuse of feminine hygiene products (i.e. not changing them at the proper time) can lead to a wide array of health problems, one of which is deadly TSS (toxic shock syndrome). 

It is also important to note that women’s restrooms aren’t the only ones with long wait times. The gender-neutral bathrooms at BHS are few and far between. Students who require these bathrooms arguably face even more difficulties with long lines, and if they need to change a pad or tampon after that wait, getting to class on time can become an impossible task. 

Students aren’t the only ones facing these challenges. Many teachers are struggling to use the restroom in the short time allotted, and leaving a class unattended for a bathroom break is not a within-the-rules option. Teachers also use gender-neutral bathrooms which, as previously mentioned, are nearly impossible to get into. 83% are citing newfound issues getting to the restroom. 

So does this new policy disproportionately affect female students? Simply put, the answer is a resounding yes. However, it is important to note that while some students are impacted more than others, this change has had a negative effect on everyone. Some men say that they can wait until they get home to use the bathroom, but this wait is unhealthy and can be dangerous. Students can become dehydrated or face different infections in the quest to get to class on time. While efficiency and productivity are both important traits, the safety and well-being of all students should not be compromised. 

If the school administration wants to prioritize or simply acknowledge the health of their students, they should look into extending passing times and giving more leeway to students who are late to class. Bathroom access is a basic human right that all people should be able to have available to them. 

Now that students have access to AI on Snapchat, teachers are getting more concerned that kids are using it. Students who didn’t use AI, have been accused of it when they were innocent. 

“The one and only time I wasn’t using [AI], I got accused of it and had a long talk about something I didn’t do,” said an anonymous sophomore.

“Once I got caught talking to my AI and the teacher saw me,” a junior said. “I got a long talk on how I’m cheating my education by using it.” 

Cheating using AI is not only against academic integrity but some believe it defeats the purpose of learning on your own. Society has different opinions on this topic, and some believe it helps students.

“It by far helps. It gives people ideas, and it really helps when you are able to get away with it,” a sophomore added.

Teachers at BHS have struggled with their students lying and cheating. They have developed far different opinions. 

“It’s plagiarism and it’s not beneficial for kids to be getting away with it, they aren’t learning by using this machine and it’s corrupting them,” said a BHS teacher.

AI can be a problem because it can make students think that the AI knows everything and can always be trusted. AI can give biased opinions making the student value the AI’s opinion over their own.

“I think I’m smart enough to not use it but when I am stumped, I ask it a question,” said a junior, “I still don’t know if it’s going to be right or not. [AI] is very inconsistent.” 

Artificial intelligence is not always reliable. Many students and teachers have strong opinions about whether it’s helping or destroying our education. 

New to BHS, there was a change with Advisory from doing Character Strong to video lessons. Different from everyone else, freshmen have not experienced the old curriculum.

Jillian Pack ’26 has successfully finished over half of her first year with the new Advisory lessons where she gets to focus on fun, but sometimes she can’t meet her needs. “It’s a lot of fun,” Pack says, “but when I want to get work done it’s hard.”

Every Advisory is different. Some can be the opposite of what Pack experiences. Faith Schmidt ’25 doesn’t feel so positive about hers. “It’s just kind of boring, and I don’t really like my Advisory,” Schmidt says.

Although upper-classmen have had more time to be in Advisory than Freshmen or Sophomores, they still-with the most recent years of inconsistency-have finally gotten into the swing of it. “I have just gotten a good community,” says Bode Russell ’24. “I like that I have time, but still less because of the lessons,” Russell says.

Now the ones whose first year of high school was over a screen. The students who have a span of fewer than three months left of their high school careers. Which means they are on the last stretch of Advisory. Gavin Juenke ’23 shares his thoughts on what he has had for almost four years. “My teacher is cool, but most people don’t pay attention,” Juenke says. “The lessons have been good, but people don’t care,” Juenke says.

Last, but most certainly not least, teachers. The ones who while we have been experiencing it all, they have been here every step of the way. Ashley Lostetter, a FACS teacher, currently has juniors, and she’s sharing her experience as a teacher in Advisory. “The legitimate reason could be helpful, but with my 11th graders, I am just getting to really know them.” Lostetter says. “Independent relationships are there whether it’s related to the lesson or not,” Lostetter says.

All the opinions and different perspectives about something people all have in common here at BHS can never be shared through 5 people, but it’s a start to hearing voices from a wide range of the school.

“The mind of a black woman” is a rare topic of conversation. What it may be like for them in environments where they aren’t welcome is equally as uncommon. Many African American women talk and think about it, but it’s more silenced than understood in our society. What is it like to be a black woman? Is it glamorous, with their perfect lips and hips that attract the eyes of horndogs, or is it lonely and full of hardships and insecurities?

LL* is an outstanding student at Buffalo High School. In her years of high school, she has accomplished many things and she is full of ideas, including big plans for her future. She’s been in music classes since she was young and she’s been an honor student from the moment she started school. Even with her high status, cool friends, and good grades, she still experiences the mistreatment of being a woman of color.

“At the beginning of the year, when I was still taking the bus, there were these middle schoolers,” LL said. “Basically, they were dehumanizing black women talking about ‘oh BBW’s, their tits this, their body that.’ All the stuff they wanted to do to them. They were saying the n-word and stuff too. I was just like, ‘Wow! You’re literally in middle school, pipe down.’ This energy, it starts young. I think that’s what showed me that racism is taught early. [Those kids were] so young and they were already exhibiting this behavior.”

LL gets into depth about racism that mostly occurs on the bus. She says that the bus is a place where kids feel the freedom and the need to express themselves without being monitored by a teacher or staff. Racism is a common practice on the bus. Most of the time, the bus driver doesn’t say or do anything to stop it.

“I’ve been [in Buffalo] long enough that people shouldn’t [treat me] differently because I’ve been cool with a lot of people from different groups and backgrounds,” LL said, “but sometimes they still treat me differently. It’s gotten a little bit better since I’ve grown up, but it was worse in elementary school. Even now in high school, I see a lot more people that look like me.”

Principal Mark Mischke says that Buffalo High School has been taking intentional steps over the last few school years to ensure that the school is a safe place – physically and emotionally – for People of Color (POC). 

“Every kid should see themselves in our building,” said Principal Mark Mischke. “Regardless of their race as they come in, they should be able to see themselves in our building and feel comfortable here, and not be exposed to negative, negative, slanderous comments being made to them.”

Much of the racism that POC experience, however, can come outside of the walls of the school. Unfortunately, it’s not just on the bus where these things happen. On social media among teens, there are many racist and homophobic things said on those flashing phone screens. The freedom teens are granted online can be truly abused, and an issue that black women seem to face more often than not is being stereotyped and being called harsh names.

“I don’t think anybody deserves it,” LL said. “I don’t think… I hope I don’t deserve it, and I feel like I can recover. It’s high school, and everybody’s going to grow up. If you peak with this energy, then good for you, that’s what you deserve, but I don’t think it fazed me too deeply because I grew up and realized that people that look like me, are going through this too. My biggest [issue] was when George Floyd died and everybody’s perspectives suddenly changed. Like now, now is when you wanna change? You had all these years [to change]. There’s not a time for enlightenment. You should have always known that we’re human beings, and it shouldn’t take someone dying for you to understand that.”

Frenzy* is another student of color that goes to Buffalo High School. In the past and present, she has dealt with the hardships of being discriminated against as a student because of anything from her braid style to how well-spoken she can be at school. She’s seen and heard the truth of what really happens at this high school.

“[Even] a couple of days ago, I was minding my business and I could feel that people were treating me a certain way just because I was black,” Frenzy said. “Nothing major, but it’s just disheartening because you have done nothing, and you don’t deserve that, but you still feel that judgment from people.”

Buffalo High School is a PWI. According to US News and World Report, About 90% of BHS students are White, 4% of students are Hispanic, 3% of students are two or more races, 2% of students are Black, and 1% of students are Asian. 

“Over the last three years, we’ve done training of our entire district staff,” Mischke said, “and we are continuing to take steps and move forward in terms of preparing a more well prepared staff to be able to work through [racial] situations both proactively and reactively. We’ll continue to move forward on that because we have a lot of work yet to do.”

Even though some progress appears to have been made, racism remains an issue for POC in this region of the U.S. 

“I feel like I’ve grown from the bad things that have happened to me or the environment that I’m in, but it also has caused me to question myself a lot,” Frenzy said. “It’s caused a lot of self-doubt within me. I feel like we don’t get any or just the same opportunities as everyone else, and they don’t have to try as hard as we do to just get to the same level.”

A black woman’s story isn’t too distant to understand. Their experiences are shared worldwide through a number of platforms, some of the most common being TikTok and Instagram. The shared trauma among PWI survivors is spoken about clearly so that others don’t feel so alone about being the rejected black woman.

“I feel like there’s a lot of different [reasons why],” Frenzy said. “There’s people whose parents are just like them, and they’re also racist so that’s all they know and all they’ve learned, but that’s not an excuse. There’s the people who just learn that from being [around] people who also think that way so they’ve just adapted that way, and then there’s the people who just hate black people.”

There are countless untold stories that go back tens of years, to even before the current building was built [in 1997]. Behind the velvet and brown brick walls, there has been and still is much mistreatment and issues caused by the severe racism that is experienced by black students here. The ignorance that has been allowed to continue for generations still happens today, causing trauma and problems for POC that don’t deserve it, and it all starts at a very young age. 

The dirty looks and stares, name calling, derogatory terms, fake pity, sexualization, covered trauma, being the last picked, racist jokes yelled across the room, gagging sounds being made at you, and being treated like entertainment if you’re even noticed at all are all examples of racially motivated bullying and being seen as “less than.” Frenzy, LL and other POC have heard things like “that blackie,” generalizations about “black people,” fellow students stating “I will pay you to say the n-word,” or whispers of “look at her hair.” These are things black children become used to hearing in school from early ages in a PWI, regardless of the changes that an institution may make.

This article truly represents a very small percentage of this issue around PWIs and the painful experiences that happen to POC, especially black women. When children are only sent to school to make friends and get an education, shouldn’t school be a good experience for everyone? I know there are many opinions on this article already forming in your mind. You’re wondering why it matters, debating if you want to protest, or sending evil thoughts my way, but really question yourself and think if you want to waste your time being part of the problem.

* Due to the sensitive nature of the story, names have been changed to protect students.

Illustrations by Amelia Butler

For the rest that’s unsaid, here’s a poem written by a student in 2021.

My poem.

I feel like I’m screaming

Yet my mouth doesn’t move

I just want to cry

The day will be over soon

The sight of my skin to another

Is far from a ten

anxiety is tangled

Inside my head

They seem not to like me

Even if I try

I’m the elephant in the room

My feet feel tied

I desire to be accepted

But I’m far from their standards

Yet my lips are a trend

And my hips are highly favored

My heart gets broken

Every afternoon

I’m far from their perfect

They see me as a fool

The comments and insults

Never come to an end

Someone’s ignorance

stays loud in my head

My strength can only last so long

But until then

I’ll have to be strong.

My curls

My body

My skin

My nose

The evil in others completely shows

I’m not a threat

But my breathing is dangerous

To someone close-minded

I’m black.

6:30 Koren starts her typical day by snoozing her alarm, trying to preserve what little sleep she got over the past night. She does her morning routine slowly and sluggishly, only half awake after her long hours the day before.

8:10 Koren prepares her backpack, throws on her coat, and leaves for the bus stop.

8:45 She heads to her first block trying to cram as much information into her brain as it can take the entirety of the school day.

3:25 Koren sprints out of the school as fast as possible and heads straight to the rink for hockey practice.

4:00 She spends an hour working hard on the ice.

5:15 Koren begins her post-ice workout.

6:30 She departs the rink.

6:45 Koren arrives at home and hurries to make dinner. She pieces herself together whatever leftovers she can find from the dinner the rest of her family already ate without her presence.

7:30 She changes out of her sweaty clothes and takes a shower.

7:50 Koren then does her homework, typically spending an hour and a half across her four subjects.

9:30 She then does some hockey stickhandling and shooting practice that is technically optional but is expected of her team by her coaches.

10:15 Koren gets in bed and watches TV for about 45 minutes.

11:00 She goes to sleep only to repeat it all again tomorrow.

To many people, Koren’s schedule seems perfectly fair. Others might assume she has everything balanced and she is handling it fine That is not the case. Being a student-athlete sacrifices some parts of being a teenager.

Koren is missing out on sleep. Teenagers are supposed to get around 9 hours of sleep per night. Koren typically gets about 7 hours. Getting enough sleep is very important, and it has many benefits, yet many student-athletes don’t get enough sleep. The extra hours of sleep that many student-athletes miss can bring down their mood, productivity, and performance in both school and athletics.

Because of her busy schedule, Koren doesn’t have much time to spend with my family, and she never is available to hang out with her friends. Social connections are very important for growing and developing teenagers, and not getting these connections can affect both their mental and physical health.

Another thing she is missing out on is her hobbies. Koren loves to read, paint, sew, and bake. These things truly bring her joy. But lately, she hasn’t had time to do much of anything besides the sports she plays.

The immense amounts of pressure on students who choose to double as an athlete are causing them to miss out on important things in their lives. Students-athletes are going to be healthier and happier if we take away some of that pressure and let them live their teenage life to the fullest. Being productive and doing things that matter is great, but having fun and enjoying life is important, too.

Students gathered by the Rock, a meaningful spot for many BHS students. The Rock is a monument unique to BHS. To memorialize significant events, students get the chance to spray paint the Rock, a boulder that has been part of BHS history since 1984. It has also been the site of multiple walkouts and marches among BHS students. This walkout, like previous events, was organized and publicized by students. Principal Mark Mischke emailed families later in the day, saying that administrators were present to ensure students stayed safe. 

As students surrounded the monumental place, Ella Kragerud ‘25 and Mae Knoell ‘24 stepped up onto the rock and addressed the crowd of their peers. They started the gathering with a moment of silence to honor the lives that have been lost to gun violence and to acknowledge all that are affected.

The moment of silence was followed by powerful testimonies from several students. Olivia Telecky ‘24 was one of many to speak.

“We, as students, don’t deserve to live in fear and shouldn’t have to. In order to make things safer, we all need to join together as a community,” said Telecky.

Between suicide, homicide, murder, and accidental firings, there have been 18,056 gun related deaths in the first 5 months of 2022 in the US (gunviolencearchive).

In 2014, there were 12,356 gun related deaths in 12 months (gunviolencearchive). The numbers are only rising. BHS students are pushing for action. 

“There needs to be a lot more ability and willingness to want to try something for change because not everything is going to change overnight. I don’t even know if I’ll get to see it in my lifetime, but to get the ball rolling is the most important part,” said Jack Hintz ‘22.

“We can write letters to our congressmen or to local state officials. We could even write [letters] federally. And even though they may not read it, if we crowd up a room full of mail, or clutter their inbox on email, that sends a message enough and then they’ll get annoyed,” said Hintz. 

Gun violence lies close to the hearts of many BHS students and Buffalo community members. In February of 2021, Allina Health Clinic suffered a major tragedy. An active shooter walked into the clinic and opened fire, injuring 4 and killing 1. After the tragic event, BHS students wanted to get involved. Andrew Macheel ‘23 took an extra step to make a change.

“Following the tragic shooting at Allina Clinic, Zach [Muellerliele ‘23] and I were upset and saddened and it was scary to see this happen in our own community. Obviously it’s sad whenever something like that happens, but when it happened in our own community, it was almost unreal. So we decided to take action,” said Macheel. 

He and Muellerleile planned the March For Change, a march through downtown Buffalo to protest gun violence. They planned the date, made an Instagram page to spread the news, found a location, and found guest speakers from different organizations. Around 100-200 students and community members took part in the event.

The Allina Health Clinic shooting was a turning point for many BHS students. Macheel and other students are working to make a change in their community and the world.

“The walkout didn’t immediately change anything,” said Macheel, “but it was a step in the right direction.”