Red Construction Paper
If you had a piece of red construction paper, what would you create? How would you use this paper? I have to ask myself questions like these at “Crafty Happenings” get-togethers, where my friends gather at one of our homes to finally complete personal unfinished or forgotten craft projects.
When I look at red construction paper, I used to imagine cutting out hearts for a collage or using the paper in a scrapbook, in a cozy but cluttered room surrounded by people I love. Unfortunately, my imagination recently expanded to include other possibilities.
My sister is a teacher at a middle school. Last week, I was helping her pack up her classroom in preparation for the end of the school year. I helped with the cleaning, and I was looking around her room for things that needed to be thrown away when I saw it. It sat there, innocuously, on top of a light brown hutch located to the right of her classroom door.
There, with a 30-fluid-ounce bottle of hand sanitizer, a yellow binder, and a pile of items belonging to a student, rested a rectangular piece of red construction paper. I wondered why it was there in the first place. Did a student forget it in her room who needed it for an art project that was never completed, or had my sister intended to use it to create a sign for her students before becoming distracted by another task? Either way, its purpose was gone. I asked my sister if I could toss the red construction paper in the trash.
That’s when I learned about the red construction paper. My sister informed me that I could not throw the red construction paper away because she needed it to cover the pane of glass in her classroom door, the door that is always closed and locked during school hours, in case of a school shooting. It was an extra line of defense, she said, so that the shooter would not be able to see where to aim if he wanted to fire on the students in the classroom.
I didn’t know what to say. How could I? A single rectangular piece of red construction paper is the line of defense that my baby sister, a middle school teacher, and her students will have to utilize if and when a school shooter is walking with a gun down the school hallway. I pray that never happens, but I can’t be so sure.
As of May 24, 2019, there have been 24 incidents of firearm-related injuries or deaths in the United States on K-12 school property according to Education Week. I believe murder is immoral. I value life and support red flag laws. I believe that no one is entitled to own a gun if they are mentally unstable, a criminal or fail a background check. Unfortunately, the state of Texas does not share my values and has failed to enact proper legislation to require background checks of all gun sales, deny access of guns to the mentally unstable and terminate gun ownership of all criminals. Unlike our legislators, I believe inaction is immoral.
Each school year we as a nation demand that students and teachers hold their breath until summer, hoping that a shooting does not occur on their campus. Unfortunately, the possibility of a school shooting occurring on their campus is no longer a matter of if but when.
When these shootings happen, people die. Students die and teachers die. But those students are someone’s kids and those teachers are someone’s sisters. One of them is mine.
Failing to act is killing our children and I won’t be able to live with myself if it ends up killing my sister. They deserve protection and our legislators have to give it to them. We have a moral imperative to act and we have to give them more protection than a single piece of red construction paper.
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