majory stone man douglas high school, senior, survivor. [applause] ask some questions here, please? we have actually one more speaker. with due respect. and then representative jacobs and i have a few comments. but, let s hear our last speaker. good afternoon. my name is tamzel phillips. i m 16 years old and tenth grader at majory stone man douglas high school, to think last week at this exact time i was complaining about not wanting to go to rehearsal after school and trying to think of an excuse to get out of it. that day will be with all of us and all of our parents, all of our teachers for the rest of our lives. when we saw this stuff on the news, i wept and
this is more than parkland. this is more than florida. this is more than the united states. this is something serious. it is about human lives. please, i beg and i demand that every single person in power who has the ability to change the fear that kids feel going back to school, that they do something. because i want everybody to know i m supposed to be going back to school in less than a week. and i m not ready i don t think anybody here is ready i don t think anybody here is ready to go back to class and just have an empty seat. and you know that empty seat is because because someone is dead. because somebody lost their lives. and i don t know how i m going to cope with it i have spoken to grief counselors. grief counselors can only do so much. what we need is action. we need it now more than ever.
always welcome. juan: i appreciate it. what a day for the funeral. those kids such heros to me. the young people that died. some of them are being now acknowledged by west point given posthumously. harris: posthumously by one. juan: i think all of us feel the passion of those people attending the funeral today. harris: glad you are here. survivors of last week s school shooting are marching on the capitol. one student detailed the ongoing struggles many are facing in the wake of the devastating attack. we want our schools to be safer. i don t want to be afraid to go to school anymore. we just want them to understand what we re feeling right now. i don t know if i ll be able to walk into the building where i sat for three hours wonde wondering if i will come out alive or if i will see my parents again. i just passed the school for the first time the other day, it was heart-breaking to see all of the students faces who unfortunately
2:20 p.m. the fire alarm went off. this was a second one of the day. i had complained to my teacher and said i wasn t going outside again. it was hot and i was tired. yet she said we had to go. she was following protocol. little did we know our evacuation root was taking routg us directly to the shooter. we would have walked straight into the student s line of fire and even more of the students high school myself included would not be standing before you today it is nothing but luck that saved us from being killed. and this is not okay. while the people around me recognize the gunshots, all i could hear was get down, get down, get down. and shooter. without thinking, i ran to the opposite side of campus fearing more phi life. a school that once reverberated with laughter and inquisitive thoughts now reverb united states of screams and cries of thousands of students fearing for their lives.
the swimming team both in and out of school because he was friendly to all and mean to none. i had never scenic frown because he was always optimistic in life. every time i saw him, he had a smile. he had a smile when we were competing. he had a smile when i taught him spanish. he had a smile, even something he dreaded so much like math, i taught him math and he would never never frown. and before the week of that fateful day last week, the week before that, nic had his own fateful day, the week before that i saw nic get signed into und for swimming so he could chase his dream of becoming an olympian. but that is a dream he can no longer achieve because nikolas cruz decided to take nicholas dworet s life. we can t just blame nikolas cruz for this tragedy.