At 1:30 p.m. on Sept. 17, over 400 students walked from the school up to the Staples parking lot in protest of gun violence within schools and in support of Evergreen High School. Meeting with parents and Evergreen students, students walked the half-closed highway, posters in hand while multiple news outlets like CBS and Denver7 reported and broadcast the event live.

Following the school shooting at Evergreen High School on Wednesday, Sept. 10—leaving two students injured and the shooter dead—mountain communities were faced with Jefferson County’s third shooting, following Deer Creek Middle in 2010 and Columbine in 1999.

“I was worried that only like five people were going to show up. I looked back up towards the junior lot and it was just flooded with students. It was amazing, it was more support than I could have ever imagined,” Seevers said.

During the protest, many students expressed their discontent with the status of school safety, some with posters and signs.

“I really care about everything that’s been happening in our community. I can’t just stay here and stay silent,” junior Zaylee Orsi said. “[Being here] means that as a school, we’re standing up for what we believe in, trying to make change happen in any way.”

Seevers said that the intent of the walkout was to push change for school safety, not to advocate for or against guns.

“School safety as a student, a daughter of a teacher, [and] someone who’s been in the school system my whole life, it’s not a question,” Seevers said. “I should be worried about my grades. I shouldn’t be worried about where the nearest exit is, whether I have to sacrifice myself for my peers as a 9 year old. It’s not a question. I think it’s a certainty that we need to protect children in schools, that should be our first priority.”

Numerous parents attended the walkout, some handing out snacks and water to students in support.

“[The Evergreen shooting] brought a known reality close to home very quickly,” Conifer parent Laly Cohen said. “We wanted to make sure that the kids knew that we support them. It’s good to see a light of the community coming together in a time like this,” Laly’s partner Deb Cohen said.

Discussing support for Evergreen, Seevers noted the changed presence in trauma resources following the shooting.

“Evergreen has huge access to mental health [resources] now, but before then, they lacked an SRO officer,” Seevers said. “Now they have police officers, law enforcement, therapy dogs, but they had no such system in place.”

Seevers also emphasized the importance of addressing the school-bound roots of gun violence.

“Typically, it boils down to an issue with a student being [in] an out group, and they seek support elsewhere,” Seevers said. “And in the case of peer shootings, they typically get this  isolation that comes from not having access to mental health necessities. You need doctors for your brain, and you need quick access to them.”

Senior Emmett Wheeler said he wants to support active change within school communities, stating the need for resource funding.

“There’s always stuff schools can do better, but there’s not enough funding. Schools themselves aren’t paid well enough to implement the best changes needed,” Wheeler said.

Comparatively, Seevers said that schools do receive the funding to support mental health, yet improperly allocate them.

“We have money for temps for the football team and a ton of these school activities that are, quite frankly, not necessities whereas mental health [is],” Seevers said. “One of the ways that we could attack this proactively is attacking this stigma around going to ask for help. Mental health resources without the shame of needing [them] is huge.

Other students want to see changes in district and national policies in order to increase school safety.

“We can have more policies and change and still have guns and our lives. Our lives should not contribute to political views,” senior Elisio Graham said.

As both the daughter of an Evergreen teacher and part of a family who owns guns, Seevers believes the necessary change goes deeper than simply bearing arms or not.

“I think that there are a lot of ways that we could go about attacking gun culture the same way that we approach driving culture,” Seevers said. “Car accidents happen, but they’re a lot less frequent because we have education about it. If you have all of these conflicting opinions, I think you need to come up with some solutions. You can’t avoid the issue, and you can’t veto people’s ideas without giving another one that you think is better.”

“Foothill communities are really closely intertwined,” CBS reporter Andrew Haubner said. “It was important for us and the other media outlets to be out here and make sure this walkout got the coverage it deserved.”

In contrast to the statewide school walkout against gun violence in 2020, this protest was larger and more quickly covered.

“Typically when there is a movement like this that happens statewide, the way that between what is going on here and in the metro today, the next step is to stay within coverage and for us to have a degree of organization that comes afterwards,” Haubner said. “What the next step is [is] to actually institute the change and harness the power of the collective action.”

Seevers hopes that the walkout acts as a prompting for people to put their efforts toward the issue, suggesting contacting local and state representatives like Colorado Representative Tammy Story, who attended the walkout.

“You can call and say ‘I’m a concerned teenage constituent and I have some thoughts on the gun violence issue. Do you have time to talk?’ or you can give them your thoughts right then and there, or you can send them an email or a letter,” Seevers said.

Many students continue to express their desire for change and support for Evergreen, taking moments of silence during sports games, making social media posts, and producing collective gifts like posters and bracelets.

“If you have ideas, I think that it’s crucial now more than ever to strike while the iron is hot and make sure that you get ideas to people who can make them a reality,” Seevers said.

This story was originally published on CHS Today on September 29, 2025.