Graduation is an exciting time for many high school seniors, but for the Sandy Hook survivors graduating in 2024, the milestone is also "heartbreaking" because 20 students that should've been graduating with them will not be. On December 14, 2012, 20 students and six teachers and administrators were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut.
One of the survivors, Grace Fischer, 18, told the Associated Press that "as much as we’ve tried to have that normal, like, childhood and normal high school experience, it wasn’t totally normal."
She added that the shooting "took away a lot of the joy that we could have experienced when we were 6 years old."
She told CNN that "that day really took a lot of my childhood away from me."
Another student who survived the shooting, Lilly Wasilnak, 17, told the Associated Press that everyone has "very mixed emotions" leading up to graduation because "there is a whole chunk of our class missing."
Six of the graduating Sandy Hook survivors also recently spoke to Good Morning America about how people affected by gun violence don't just want sympathy — “they just want change," Emma Ehrens, who was one of 11 children in a classroom to survive, said.
Henry Terifay explained that sympathy isn't enough because "it’ll never get easier no matter how many times I talk about it, and honestly it’s just time for it to change."
"It’s happened too many times. Your prayers honestly don’t mean anything. It doesn’t help me," Terifay said.
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Many of the students are involved in anti-gun violence advocacy and plan to continue to advocate after high school, with some of them planning to pursue degrees in political science or law.
Matt Holden, 17, told the Associated Press that "in Sandy Hook, what happened is always kind of looming over us."
