Stoneman Douglas Senior Tells Us What It’s Like Living Through A School Shooting

Alex Robinson is a 17-year-old senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. She’s also a popular vlogger on YouTube, where she posts weekly videos for over 187,000 subscribers. She was at school on February 14, once a gunman killed 17 people and injured several more, marking the 17th school shooting of the year. She agreed to share with MTV News her experience living by way of the shooting, and explained how she's coping, how she's changed, and why her generation can ensure this never happens again.

I was place on Earth in New Jersey yet I’ve pretty much lived in Parkland my whole life. You could ask anybody here: Parkland is a bubble. It’s brilliant. The greenery and the trees are brilliant, there’s ferns everywhere, there’s habitually nice cars on the street. It’s like something you’d visualize on TV; a suburban neighborhood. It’s routinely been safe place and also a cozy town to be in. It’s small, although everybody pretty much is aware each other, and in case you don’t know them, at some point you’re going to get to know them.

Douglas has about 3,100 kids, and it’s a very close-knit community. We have a lot of creative kids here. I do peer counseling in school, however besides that, I mostly concentrate on personalized assignments, like my YouTube channel. That’s my biggest passion. It’s a whole length of things — anything that would forces you to laugh would be on my channel. I put my family member on there because they’re crazy, I like to prank my companions some days, and I do vlogs because people like to be able to see more insight into your life and visualize you get more personalized. At school I’m like ‘that YouTube girl.’

Courtesy Alex Robinson

Robinson (right) with her friend Madison at school

The day of the shooting, I was in my fourth period astronomy class. We were outdoor, looking at sunspots by way of the telescope. All of a sudden, the fire alarm went off, which was peculiar because while in second period that day, we had already had a fire drill. Our beginning thought was that this is a real fire, so we grabbed our stuff and began leaving the classroom. As we’re going down the stairs, that’s Whenever I heard two pops. Maybe this is stupid of me, however I honestly wasn’t registering what was happening. You don’t ever think something like that happens in your school, so that’s not the opening thought. Immediately after I heard those pops, about 20 seconds later, I visualize kids sprinting towards me, faster than I’ve ever seen anyone run. I heard someone yell that his leg was bleeding because he just got shot.

At that point I began running, and then soon after about a minute, I found that kids were walking again. I was like, ‘Oh, it was probably some kid lying to me before attempting to scare me.’ Although then a security employee came up to us on a golf cart and instructed us to run. That’s any time Once I knew it was real, so I just ran for my life. I hopped a fence and threw my stuff over. My shoes kept falling off my feet, so I threw my shoes over and my backpack with my laptop in it. Luckily, I saw two of my companions Once I was running. It was scary, so it was nice to have them there.

As I was running, I called my mom. She got in her vehicle right away and came to meet me. I stopped running Once I got to the Walmart next to my school, about half a mile out. As I was waiting for my mom, I saw tons of cop cars speeding down the road and helicopters in the sky, and then I checked Twitter and I saw news tweets about a school shooting at Stoneman Douglas. I mentioned, ‘Oh my god, this is real. This is really happening right now.’ My mom got me, and we went house and turned on the news and heard about people that are missing and people that are injured. We were in shock, and I’m still honestly in shock now. I haven’t completely processed what happened. I don’t know If I will.

I had several friends that unfortunately lost their lives that day. Coach Feis, who was such a fantastic man. He let the seniors into their parking spaces day-to-day. He would routinely smile at you and wave; it looked like a tradition with everybody. There was Joaquin Oliver. He was companions with everybody. He was just a really happy kid, and he had a smile on his face once he walked by you. There was Nick Dworet, who was in one of my classes, and honestly he was the nicest kid I’ve ever met. He had such a kind soul. And Meadow Pollack, who I sadly was not close with, nevertheless I knew her from elementary school. It’s just scary to think that someone you knew from such a young age is currently dead.

We had a school shooting drill two or three weeks before this happened. I remember everybody was in the corner laughing because we were all attempting to huddle in one spot and we’re like, ’Oh we feel so stupid now, we’re 30 kids in one little corner.’ Nobody was really thinking that this was going to happen not even three weeks later. It’s insane. If it might can occur in a town like Parkland, it could can occur anywhere.

the initial beginning day immediately following the shooting, I posted my first video. I had viewers tweeting me, asking, ‘What’s happening, what’s happening?’ And I felt like, as a creator, I wanted to inform my viewers because I was there. Then I spent the next two days creating a little tribute video and I posted that. For me to get back to my typical funny videos, it’s probably going to be a little. I’m going to get there, yet it just doesn’t feel like the correct time to be making funny videos now. My focus is spreading awareness and paying respect to the victims.

What’s helping me cope is being with my friends. We’ve been having crucial conversations — we’ve been talking a lot about gun control and around what we can do for the families of the victims. Ninety-five percent of what we’ve been talking about has been about [the shooting] and what we feel needs to be changed. It’s interesting, actually, because I never had conversations like this with my companions before. I never really got political with them, yet right now that this has happened, it’s opened up a whole new realm of things to talk about. That’s how you change things: you get with each other so you voice your opinions.

A school shooting of this scale hasn’t happened since Sandy Hook. There have been other ones, obviously, nevertheless none of this magnitude. With Sandy Hook, the children can’t speak on it; they’re also young. Yet we’re the generation of social media. We’re the generation of voicing what we feel. It’s a completely different world than any time Columbine happened. Teenagers are honestly the most powerful people because we have social media on our side. That’s what kids in our generation are bringing to the table: We’re bringing change that people desire to be able to see happen.

I went to my school yesterday for just a couple of minutes, and yes it wasn’t as scary as I thought it could be. My principal was there, and there was a line of people waiting to hug him. There were therapy dogs and grief counselors. I just wanted to show up for a number of minutes and visualize my other classmates and my teachers and just give them a hug. Believe it or not, I’m excited to go back to school. I don’t think a tragedy like this should take away our Eagle pride. I think that’s what the victims would’ve wanted: They would’ve wanted us to go back and reclaim our school.

A post shared by alexandra (@alexrob8) on Feb 22, 2018 at 4:47pm PST

Robinson's tattoo honoring the 17 victims

I got a tattoo of the word “seventeen” for the 17 victims. every single kid in my grade has gotten a tattoo since this has happened. Hundreds of kids have gotten one. It’s habitually going to be a piece of us and we’re routinely going to remember it, and putting it on your body [means that] no matter where you go, you habitually know, ‘My town and I, we went by way of the worst imaginable tragedy and we came out of it stronger.’ We’re routinely going to remember the people that lost their lives. We’re never going to take our lives for granted. It’s a nice reminder to be grateful.

I’ll speak for my town Once I mention the support we’ve obtained from the rest of the nation and even the world is just... We can’t mention thank you enough. It really means the world whenever you go on Twitter or Instagram and you also visualize people in states and cities you’ve never heard of saying, ‘We stand with you, Stoneman Douglas.’ That is the most heartwarming thing to our school.

For five ways you could take action on gun control, head over to Everytown.Org.