Area high school confronts gun violence, as it hits close to home
9th November 2015 · 0 Comments
By Allana Barefield
Contributing Writer
A bright future ended in one split second for Jawara Givens. He was a rising senior at St. Augustine High School, who was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Givens was shot multiple times in a car in a New Orleans East apartment complex parking lot on June 30. Friends and family say he was a victim of gun violence. He died a day later, but his spirit lives on at St. Augustine High School.
The entire school, led by their principal, gathered in the school gymnasium on Nov. 4 to honor Givens, who friends said had so much ambition and drive. The young Black men at the all-boy Catholic private school stood side by side with law enforcement representatives from the New Orleans Police Department and the Department of Justice in a symbolic stance for how Black lives matter.
The students recited, fists in the air, The Student Pledge Against Gun Violence: “I will never bring a gun to school; I will never use a gun to settle a personal problem or dispute; I will use my influence with my friends to keep them from using guns to settle disputes.”
As the boys recited the pledge, they did so with 64 other schools and 21,000 students across the state who took the pledge on the same day.
According to local law enforcement, in 2015, homicide rates are up from last year, with 135 people being killed to date. Young Black males, are often likely targets. Alongside Givens, this summer, 17-year-old Gerald Morgan was shot in the head on Boeing Drive on July 21.
“I love this school til’ this day and that’s why I’m standing here,” said Sgt. David Duplantier, a 1984 St. Augustine graduate and an NOPD officer who spoke to the students. Duplantier urged the students to become leaders to their peers in the community. He urged the young men to avoid taking risks that could put them in harmful situations that would cost them their lives. “Every decision you make is important because you can’t click your heels and go back,” Duplantier said.
The vibe of the St. Augustine student body changed from being somber to inspired when their fellow classmates took the microphone. “I still can’t believe I won’t be graduating with Jawara, it is sad to see his life was taken away,” said Jerald James III, a senior at St. Aug. “Hearing the news when I was in Chicago at the time was shocking to know that the shooting happened in our backyard,” James said.
To go from seeing Givens each day for six years to missing him in classes, in the cafeteria, on the court were memories students like James said he cherished and would miss as he addressed the student body.
“African Americans are in the heart of gun violence and we as a community need to put an end to all this violence,” James said. “The process starts with myself to then tell my friends to make better choices. We can’t risk anything because we have one life and need to cherish every bit of it,” James said.
The Purple Knights raised their hands in the air in uniformed response when senior student body president Malik Gibson asked of the assembly, “How many of you love your mom? Or how many of you have dreams and aspirations?” All of the student’s eyes starred with shock when the doors of the gym flew open and a casket was brought to the middle of the room. “Mom’s should not have to stand over the coffin and bury their own child, it’s not the way it’s suppose to be,” said Gibson, adding that the gun was not worth dying for when as students they had not reached their full potentials. James ensured his schoolmates that as young people they had so much to bring to the table. James then added, “I hate to see Black men laying in the casket.”
As young Black men in New Orleans, principal Sean J. Goodwan, said the exercise was an important one to heighten the student’s awareness of the realities facing them outside the school’s walls.
“Losing Jawara was a tragic loss, he had a beautiful spirit that impacted St. Augustine,” Goodwan said. “I wanted to see that flower bloom, it is so hard to start off a school year seeing our own killed,” he added.
He hoped that by allowing the students to grieve in a way that was a learning moment for them it would allow them to rethink the way they thought about guns. “Holding a gun doesn’t make you [a] man,” Goodwan said of the notion that guns are cool. He wants his students to begin to lead the charge against gun violence in their community by seeing the way in which it could take a schoolmate’s life before he had truly lived it.
“Having the students pledge today speaks volumes that we are losing too many Black males,” Goodwan said, adding that he wants his students to be an example on the city’s streets and in their neighborhoods. “This is a school that is doing great things for this community and this world,” Goodwan said.
This article originally published in the November 9, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
