Brody's Notes... Henry M. Gunn High School: Be Resilient, Respectful, & Responsible

Students from Henry M. Gunn High School in Palo Alto, Calif.

Photo By Tony Avelar  The Associated Press 

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) Apr 1 | Its been a really rough school year for the staff, faculty, parents, and students of Henry M. Gunn Senior High School in Palo Alto, California. Since the beginning of the school year in September, four students at the School, have committed suicide in the same location, using the same method: stepping in front of an oncoming commuter train. A fifth Gunn student was pulled back from the tracks by his mother and a bystander just before a train passed. 

Students at Gunn High School reacted by starting a blog called HMGGMH, which stands for Henry M. Gunn Gives Me Hope. They also started a peer counseling group known as ROCK which stands for "Reach Out. Care. Know," encouraging fellow students to interact with one another about the events of the past six months. In both forums, classmates of the teens who committed suicide began to focus on the future.

Then in late January came word that members of Fred Phelp's Westboro Baptist Church planned to make a stop at Gunn High on their way to San Francisco to protest the Prop 8 trial underway in Federal Court. San Jose Mercury-News columnist Patty Fisher wrote, in her column which appeared the morning of the planned protest January 29th: 

"With the Proposition 8 trial under way, San Francisco was a fitting destination for Westboro’s winter tour. On the way to the federal courthouse, why not make a stop at Gunn High School in Palo Alto? The Phelpses love to harass those who are grieving, including the families  of murder victims and fallen soldiers. A visit to Gunn, where students are grappling with yet another railroad suicide last week, fits Westboro’s utterly tasteless agenda.

When word spread that today they plan to set up their “America is Doomed” and “God hates Jews” signs at the Gunn campus and Stanford University’s Taube Hillel House, the official reaction was to deny them the confrontation they sought. Gunn’s principal delayed classes so students wouldn’t even have to see the pickets. Stanford urged the campus to ignore them."

According to a press release from Westboro's Shirley Phelps-Roper,

"...Gunn students committed suicide because their parents taught them lies belched forth from the bowels of hell, such as God loves everybody’ and ’it’s okay to be gay.’ Those children have no instruction concerning how to serve their God."

The word spread via the blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and activists from the school's GSA who were prepared to meet the WBC with a counter protest. The following video shot that day shows what happened next:

The community threw its support behind the Gunn student body, faculty, and staff nullifying the message of hate and corrupted biblical theology endorsed by the WBC by organising a "Not In My Town" counter-protest.

The stated mission of Henry M. Gunn High School on its webpage is: 

"..to foster a community of creative thinkers who will acquire knowledge, skills, values, and integrity to : be resilient, responsible, respectful, contributing citizens, lead rewarding lives which pursue personal excellence and life-long learning."

According to Gunn's Principal Noreen Likins, she felt proud that all of her students met and exceeded those stated goals listed in the school's mission statement that January day.