Student Decorates Graduation Cap With Tribute To School Shooting Victims
ASHVILLE, Ohio (CBS4) -- A soon-to-be high school graduate in Ohio is honoring school shooting victims - including Kendrick Castillo - on her graduation cap. It's a powerful way to honor those lost to school shootings.
Gina Warren, 18, created a QR code and stuck it on her cap. When scanned, it sends users to a list of all high school students killed in school shootings in the United States since 1999. It starts with the latest victim, Kendrick Castillo. It goes back to 1999 and the shooting that killed 12 students at Columbine High School.
Warren says the list is ridiculously long. She wants to keep the memory of each one alive.
"I was inspired by the orange price tag caps that many students did last year after the Parkland shooting," Warren told CNN, referring to what Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School's class of 2018 did after 17 people were killed there.
Warren is planning to wear the cap at her graduation ceremony Sunday at Teays Valley High School.
"Their caps were a message to the NRA and lawmakers. I wanted to do something just as powerful but send a message to everyone who saw it."
Last year, some members of the Marjory Stoneman graduating class such as David Hogg, a voice in the Never Again gun control movement, wore orange caps with price tags of $1.05 attached to their tassels.
According to Never Again, the tag was intended to represent how much each student in Florida was worth to Sen. Marco Rubio based on how much money he received from the National Rifle Association.
In a CNN town hall last year on gun violence and the Parkland massacre, Rubio defended accepting support from the gun lobby. "There's money on both sides of every issue in America," he said. "I will always accept the help of anyone who agrees with my agenda."
Warren said she built the "ridiculously long" list by looking at Wikipedia and other sources, such as the gun control advocacy organization Everytown for Gun Safety.
"This is mostly about honoring these kids," Warren said. "I want more than anything to keep their memory alive. But looking at that list, I'm hoping that everyone is touched and sees that there is a serious, serious problem in our country."
A tweet from Warren shows how to scan the QR code to redirect it to the list called "I graduated. These high school students couldn't." The tweet went viral, with more than 300,000 likes and 90,000 retweets.
The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, although some accused her of using the graduation cap to "push an agenda," she said.
But Warren said she wanted people to "look at the cap and see that there are far too many names and that this is a problem."
"I encourage people to speak up and vote, I'm not going to tell anyone how to think or who to vote for," she said. "But whether you think we should arm teachers or place restitutions on guns all together, we need to fight for a safer country."
People are now asking Warren to provide a picture of the QR code so they can put it on their graduation caps.
(The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2019 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.)
