Approximately 125 students and staff members at Washington High School walked out Wednesday to protest violence.

Before the walk-out a school assembly was held in the auditorium and it was student-led. Nine students stood on stage with different colored t-shirts that read #March4OurLives and each shirt represented different acts of violence from Columbine in Colorado in 1999 to Parkland in Florida this year. Students were then asked to walk out if they agreed, or to remain seated if they did not want to participate in the walk-out.

Senior Mallory Foster tells KCII News it was important for it to be student-led and she shares why she’s passionate about this cause, “I’m a firm pacifist and I really don’t like violence in any sort of way. And I really look up to people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., and people who were able to change the world without violence. And I really feel like if the world can come together and have this awesome unity then this world would be such a better place, and something that everyone would always want it to be.”

The walk-out lasted 17 minutes which stood for the 17 people who lost their lives in the Parkland school shooting. Each minute a name of one of the victims was read, and the last six minutes, which represented the length of time that passed during the Parkland shooting, were observed with silence.