‘Make sure nobody ever hurts like they did.’

Within the walls of EvCC there is a total sum of 2,827 students that live in Marysville and 67 of those students are also part of the EvCC Running Start from Marysville Pilchuck High School. The shooting on Friday, Oct. 24 at MPHS has impacted the EvCC community, many people have been shocked, realizing that it is so close to home, but for many others, specifically 2,827 others, it is home.  The story of the shooting has traveled accross twitter pages, phone calls, newspapers and television broadcasts. The story that is being shared here is one of not the incident itself but rather the effect that it has had on students within our own EvCC community. These students relay heartfelt stories of the pain of the past week and the struggles of the weeks to come.

David Gloyd

MPHS/EvCC Running Start student

I wasn’t in the cafeteria, so I can’t say it was traumatic for me, or even that I have much of a story to tell.  I can say that as a senior on the cross country team, when I heard it was 5 underclassmen involved there were 30 faces that ran through my mind all at once.

It’s really cool to see so many kids who used to post “There’s nothing to do in Marysville,” and stuff like that on twitter, go to posting “I love my hometown.” It sucks it had to take something like this to bring everybody together, but it’s really cool to see what adversity can do to a community.  That’s a word that’s used a lot around here the last week, from speeches to rumors everybody says “community.” It’s a word I never really knew the meaning of until now, after everything that’s happened.  There were so many schools from the Pacific Northwest, all the way to the East Coast who all supported us in a time of need.

The media’s been all over this, and all up in everybody’s faces.  At the first meeting the school held in the gym on the Sunday after, when all the students got grouped together with just other students, the grief counselor’s asked what would help us the most.  People said things like “metal detectors,” “a new cafeteria,” “more cops,” but when one kid said “make sure the media-cameras don’t follow us around at school,” everybody stood up and applauded.  It’s obvious that the kids are tired of having cameras in their face.  The other the thing the media does a lot is talk about Jaylen, and most of the information is either twisted or completely false.  I didn’t know Jaylen very well personally, but I know he was a good kid.  I know not from testimonials from friends, but from the pain everybody felt over this whole situation.

Everybody saw Jaylen as a happy kid, and everybody loved happy Jaylen.  Whatever happened to make him feel like that was his only way out must have been really terrible.  Nobody really knew what to say, because there wasn’t much to say.  The most anyone came to a consensus on was that this was never something that could happen again.  But how do you stop something like that from manifesting? Nobody knew Jaylen had that gun, how many days could he have brought it to school before that? There were so many questions left unanswered within the whole thing that it’s tough to say what could’ve prevented this.  They say hindsight is 20/20 but this hit Marysville so hard nobody even could say what they SHOULD have done.  I think the only way to stop this from happening is to stop it at it’s roots, where the problem started.  Jaylen was angry, because he was hurting.  He was hurting from a plethora of different ailments, mentally and emotionally, and nobody was able to help him.  I think this is a wake-up call for students, parents, teachers, for everybody in a community.  At the same meeting, Jon Nehring gave a speech where he said “Look up from your phones, and say hi to the person next to you.” He wasn’t talking about spending too much time on your cell phone though, he was talking about caring about the people around you.  We absolutely are a community, and it is essential that we take time out of our day to check up on people, to be a little nicer every day.

At its best, Friday was a huge lesson to learn; you never know what straw broke the camel’s back.  So I think the best way we can remember Jaylen, Zoe, Gia, and Shay is to be kind to those around us to make sure nobody ever hurts like they did.  To me, that’s the way we make sure my classmates don’t die in vain.

Alex Pimentel

MGHS/ EvCC Running Start student

Together as a community we stand here today, broken, with no understanding of a senseless event that happened to us just weeks ago. Leaving us collapsed in a puddle of illogical feelings, as we feel unsure of how to respond, we just sit and think… As questions lurk in the back of our mind, you just wanna scream out “WHY!” because we simply want the answer. The feeling of desperation for understanding yanks at your heart, although you know those answers made their departure from this world. How do we move forward without so much as being acquainted with the truth? How do we get past the irrational feeling of pain? Those are questions that we all want the answers to…. Unfortunately we’ll never receive those answers.

Kyle Coon

MPHS/EvCC Running Start student

I was at the college when I heard what happened. A few friends texted me to ask if I was okay, and I had no idea what was going on. When I heard there was a shooting at my school my first response was to text my friends and make sure they were all okay. I was shocked. I had been at the school just 3 hours before it happened. My mom and one my sisters called me when they heard. When they heard that I was okay they started sobbing. I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about the whole ordeal.

                Later that night I went to the prayer vigil at the Grove Church. It was heartbreaking. A lot of the kids there just broke down. I’ve never seen so much pain. I started to feel almost guilty. Like I should’ve been there, like maybe I could have stopped it from happening, but eventually I scrapped that line of thinking. Even if I was at the high school, I never go to the cafeteria, so there was no way I could have done anything about it. But I still felt guilty. I should have been there with my friends, gone through it with them.

                On Sunday I attended the community meeting. I think that’s when it really started to sink in for me. Kids had died. That’s not supposed to happen to you, not at your school. It always happens in a different community, and we all hear about it and give our condolences, but we don’t feel any of the trauma. There were a lot of emotions that I was feeling, though I couldn’t pinpoint any one feeling. All I knew was that I felt like crap. There was a point where I snapped. Too many emotions that I didn’t want to sort through. It would break me.  I didn’t want to talk about it anymore, I was done. I try not to think about it anymore. I guess that’s the way that I’ve coped with it, running away. Now that I think about it, in my head I try to pretend that it never happened. It’s too painful a memory to not block out.

Alex Ratynski

MPHS/EvCC Running Start student

I was at my house having just left the high school, the first thoughts through my mind were that of my brother who is a freshmen and his safety, and once I knew he was okay, it shifted to all the other people I knew and the pain, confusion and sadness that came shortly after. It has affected me a great deal, I knew three of the six people involved and they are dead. It’s a bit overwhelming really. The community has absolutely been amazing, the support and love and comfort can’t be described. Today seeing everyone and the first responders brought most to tears! The love and support is indescribable, I am and always will be MP! I love the people, the school and my community!  #mpstrong