The purpose of this article isn’t to say what’s right and what’s wrong or to discuss politics. This article is to discuss how current events are affecting people. This affects so many people on so many levels and it’s hard how to understand something that seems so abstract, extreme and random. All that I’m asking is to stop politicizing tragic events so quickly. This act of hate isn’t meant to be used as a way to push your own agenda. We need to let people grieve first then act later. An entire community has been uprooted and many people are at a loss for words because America was supposed to be the safe place for them.

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I’ve never seen a teacher get emotional until today. I walked into class late and my teacher was talking quietly, nearly in a whisper, not looking at any of the students and staring blankly at the wall across the room. I realized the quietness when I could hear the stuff in my backpack moving and the squeaking of my shoe as I walked to my seat. At that moment, I learned the true meaning of being able to hear a pin fall to the floor in a quiet room. My teacher had paused while I was walking; what she had to say was too important for any sort of distractions: she was trying to talk about the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting.
As she began to talk again, I realized why it was so quiet–what she was saying was powerful, every word lingered in the air after it was spoken, each filling the room until it was no longer empty. She continued on, talked about the hate and the power that words unmistakably hold. She questioned why a person would do something so horrible. She wondered what led a person to give such a horrible fate to innocent people. But as she spoke, the wall across the room never left her sight.
She suddenly shifted the attention away from her and asked us to answer questions she had prepared. She wanted us to ask questions and what feelings the shooting provoked in us. As everyone shifted their attention to answering the questions, I watched my teacher. It was almost as if she was pacing, she was walking back and forth across the room, she couldn’t stay put in the same place for more than what felt like seconds. She was trying to figure out how to make us realize the severity of what happened and the hurt that she felt.
Our generation is desensitized. Because we are growing up in an age where there have been 222 school shootings since 2000. Because there have been over 292 mass shootings this year alone. There are shootings wounding and killing people that are not getting any more than local coverage.
For us, hearing about tragedies like this is normal; but by no means are these tragedies normal.

Do not forget the names of those the nation has lost:
Joyce Fienberg, 75
Richard Gottfried, 65
Rose Mallinger, 97
Jerry Rabinowitz, 66
Cecil Rosenthal, 59
David Rosenthal, 54
Bernice Simon, 84
Sylvan Simon, 86
Daniel Stein, 71
Melvin Wax, 88
Irving Younger, 69