Parkland Students Have an Instagram Dedicated to Their Clear Backpacks
Before 17 of their classmates and school staff were brutally killed and before they were on national television calling for gun reform, the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were regular teenagers.
The students used to contribute to an Instagram account that made lighthearted jokes about their classmates wearing camouflage at school. One photo posted to the account showed four students at a lunch table, three of whom are wearing camo, alongside a caption that read: “I feel so bad when people eat alone...”
Now there's a new Instagram they contribute to about the clear backpacks all students are required to use, as of Monday, as a safety measure.
The Instagram account gained nearly 3,000 followers since it was created this week. Each day, new photos of the backpacks and the belonging of the students carrying them are posted on the page.
When the clear backpacks were introduced to the school Monday, some students decided to use them not only for carrying books, but as part of their message about gun control, too. Some students have used the bags to bring more attention to the issue at hand by adding tags that read “$1.05”—the amount of money Florida Senator Marco Rubio took from the NRA, divided by the number of students enrolled in Florida schools.
Student Jaclyn Corin decorated her backpack with the March For Our Lives logo and pins urging people to vote. Another student, Lauren Hogg, commented wryly that the bag was "almost as transparent as the NRA’s agenda.” Cameron Kasky filled his backpack with tampons, tweeting Tuesday that he only had light ones, but that he would bring more Wednesday for those who needed them.
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Viral internet jokes adapted for the message of the students were some of the most common used to comment on the backpacks. The internet’s newest star, a 10-year-old who was filmed yodeling in a Walmart, was adapted for a backpack sign that read, “We just need gun control.”
Spongebob memes were popular too: One read, “ravioli ravioli give us the gun controli.”
But maybe the most impressive of the adaptations was pulled off by a student who put a tank of apparently live fish, right in the backpack for all to see.
Newsweek reached out to the Instagram account but got no immediate response.