How the Parkland Students Are Using Their Clear Backpacks for Protest
In Parkland, Florida, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School has finally reopened, and students are returning to new security measures that are quite, well, cosmetic: fences around the school, wearable IDs, and clear backpacks meant to make it harder to conceal weapons. But the students behind the March for Our Lives aren't thrilled with the changes.
It's no surprise that this is the first visible change in response the shooting. These are common, kneejerk security changes seen in schools across the country that are part of the idea of "hardening" them for safety: in other words, redesigning a school to function more like a prison, allegedly to keep students safe. And the media-savvy activists in Parkland are calling it out.
The biggest target most of the students are focusing on are the transparent backpacks, which they say are an invasion of privacy on top of being useless. Some are filling them with tissue paper to obscure the insides while others are covering theirs with protest paraphernalia, like an orange price tag for $1.05 (the total NRA donations to Marco Rubio divided by the number of students in Florida).
Junior Cameron Kasky combined the two ideas, filling his own backpack with loose tampons.
It's a move reminiscent of the 2016 protest at UT Austin, when, after a state law allowed concealed-carry on public campuses, students filled their bags with dildos and sex toys—which are still banned on campus.
A see-through backpack wouldn't have prevented the mass shooting in Parkland. The Parkland shooter used an AR-15. Fences and IDs also wouldn't have kept him, a student, from entering the school. These are quick-fixes that make other people feel safe while students bear the brunt of surveillance. And it's as misguided in Parkland as it is in poorer schools already on lock-down.
