PARKLAND, FLA. (WSVN) - Students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School paid tribute to the classmates and teachers they lost with a special edition of their news magazine.
The latest issue of The Eagle Eye covers the extensive series of events that unfolded in the six and a half weeks since the Feb. 14 mass shooting at the Parkland school.
From the funerals, to the memorials, to the student-led March For Our Lives, Stoneman Douglas journalism students spent hours and hours making this magazine a reality. It’s cover is a partly out-of-focus photograph of a memorial with two words printed in the lower right corner: “In Memoriam.”
The issue is comprised of portraits of each of the 17 people who were fatally gunned down in the freshman building.
Advisor Melissa Falkowski helped students put together the issue, and she said she felt the enormity of the loss.
“We were trying to capture the essence of who they were as a person and what they meant to their friends, their families and their community,” said Falkowski. “I was sort of the starting point for the project.”
Those responsible for the issue felt compelled to write about the victims before they delved into politics and gun control issues.
“I think the kids who wrote the profiles did a really, really good job on them,” Falkowski said as she held back tears. “They’re really in-depth, and they’re really well done. When I was editing them, I was crying, and the kids, too.”
“I took the picture that’s on the front and back cover,” said Kevin Trejos. “Taking those photos was tough. Less than a week after the shooting, I had to come back to school to do my job as a photojournalist.”
Trejos also wrote the article about shooting victim Alex Schachter. “I felt like, through reading what my fellow staffers and editors wrote, I felt like I got to know each and every one of the victims, and especially the person that I wrote about, who I felt even more connected to after writing the story about him.”
“We reached out to each family as we were working, at least one member of each family, because it felt wrong to write about their family member without at least trying to get their perspective,” said Falkowski.
“It embodies them as people, so that we all can remember them, even though they are gone,” said student Tenaj Gordon.
Flipping through the pages of the large magazine was difficult for some students. “I had to comfort my friend Alex, who lost his brother, and that was the hardest thing I’d had to do in a long time,” said Nicole Healey. “In a way, it’s good for closure, but at the time, I shouldn’t have to be reading something like that. There’s not enough pages anyone could ever write to commemorate all the lives lost.”
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