MSD Senior Isabelle Robinson has written an extraordinary Op-Ed for The New York Times. Its title: I Tried to Befriend Nikolas Cruz. He Still Killed My Friends.
My first interaction with Nikolas Cruz happened when I was in seventh grade. I was eating lunch with my friends, most likely discussing One Direction or Ed Sheeran, when I felt a sudden pain in my lower back. The force of the blow knocked the wind out of my 90-pound body; tears stung my eyes. I turned around and saw him, smirking. I had never seen this boy before, but I would never forget his face. His eyes were lit up with a sick, twisted joy as he watched me cry.
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I am not writing this piece to malign Nikolas Cruz any more than he already has been. I have faith that history will condemn him for his crimes. I am writing this because of the disturbing number of comments I’ve read that go something like this: Maybe if Mr. Cruz’s classmates and peers had been a little nicer to him, the shooting at Stoneman Davis would never have occurred.
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The idea that we are to blame, even implicitly, for the murders of our friends and teachers is a slap in the face to all Stoneman Douglas victims and survivors.
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It is not the obligation of children to befriend classmates who have demonstrated aggressive, unpredictable or violent tendencies.
The New York Times
Ms. Robinson, who writes with a clarity and purpose so missing on so many Op-Ed pages these days (including, on many days, those of The New York Times) also relates an instance when she, as a peer tutor, was left alone in a room with him. She took her responsibilities as a tutor seriously, and kept going even as he cursed her and “ogled” her chest. She should never have been left alone with him.
She is so very right: It was never her responsibility (and should never be the responsibility of any student) to “befriend” her dangerous classmates. In this stunning piece, she notes that this responsibility lies with adults. This is absolutely true.
These young Americans, these Parkland students, speak truth. We need to listen to them, support them, and thank them for their courage and the movement they have started.
Ms. Robinson’s classmate, Parkland Senior Hayden Korr, is a photographer for the school’s Yearbook. See her extraordinary photographs here.
Contemplate being a high school senior and having to write an Op-Ed about the murders of your friends, or having to photograph your friends making speeches to a nation about those murders.
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