[I]n February 2018, police arrested an 18-year-old who had detailed plans to shoot up his former high school in Fair Haven. A girl Jack Sawyer was texting had reported him to the authorities for his messages applauding school shootings like the one in Florida the day before.
The girl who reported him employed the “see something, say something” tactic that police across the country have championed for years.
State officials took the incident as a sign that it was time to remind students of the importance of the phrase. Gov. Phil Scott and the Vermont-NEA launched a contest for student-made public service announcements to remind other young people to speak up when they see something suspicious.
At a Monday press conference, the governor recognized three winning groups for their videos, which will be distributed to local TV stations and the Vermont Association of Broadcasters.
“This is a group effort,” Gov. Phil Scott said. “We can’t do it on the state level, we can’t do it on the local level, state police and so forth. We need students to be involved.”
Don Tinney, president of the Vermont-NEA, added: “We want our students to be vigilant without being vigilantes. Our schools must be sanctuaries for the children and youth of Vermont.”
The top group won $1,000 toward a program of their choice at their school. Second place won $500, and third took home $250.
In the winning PSA, a student finds a concerning note on the floor, and decides to take it to the principal’s office. The video ends with a reminder that it only takes one person to make a difference.
Tivy Parchment, a senior at Hazen Union High School, said her video was inspired by personal experience—from when she found a note at school with references to self-harm that she decided to turn in to a teacher.
“On the news nowadays, it’s all about school safety and school shootings, and I know as a high schooler, and being surrounded by other high schoolers, when we get threats or when we hear some things, it’s unsettling,” Parchment said.
“To be proactive and to acknowledge it and to try to be be an activist to fight against that makes people feel more secure,” she added. “I know for us as high schoolers, [it helps] to make us feel more empowered and to say ‘I have a voice and I can do something.’”
She said the PSAs serve as an important reminder for students to speak up, because the social pressures of high school make saying something harder than it might seem.
“You don’t want to accuse someone of something if you don’t know,” Parchment said. “Or that feeling of like ‘what if I say something and it’s wrong,’ almost like when you raise your hand in class. I think it’s that kind of nerve wracking ‘Oh I don’t know if I should do this, what will people say if I’m wrong?’”
In second place was students from Stafford Technical Center, led by Logan Kenyon. Kenyon said the project hit home for him because of how many friends he had at Fair Haven who were shaken after the near-shooting at their school, which prompted the competition and a package of gun control measures signed into law last year.
“You see it happening right in your backyard, literally, and it kind of makes you think ‘What if a bunch of people I know aren’t there tomorrow at school?’” Kenyon said. “And it makes you kind of want to make a difference and say something or make a PSA so other people can know what to do and make this not a thing anymore.”
A teacher from Stafford said the students there have been doing “run, hide, fight” drills this year in coordination with Vermont State Police and local police authorities to prepare kids for the worst case scenario.
“I can only imagine how people would feel if it had actually happened at their school,” Kenyon said. “It’s unimaginable. I don’t know how to put it into words.”
The third-place PSA, from Northwest Technical Center, led by Declan Couture, Kylee Green and Greg Torbert, takes place outside of the school setting, reminding students that warning signs can show up anywhere.
“We know there’s a lot of scary aspects of this ‘see something, say something,’ like at Fair Haven there could have been an active shooter, and that’s a scary idea,” Green said. “But we wanted to focus on shedding light on how this campaign brings safety to our community — this idea of keeping the entire community safe, not just the schools.”
