Student rips DeVos at school safety commission for failure to take on guns

A graduating high school senior reportedly tore into Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her school safety commission for their “misguided and inefficient” efforts to improve school safety without addressing guns.

Alessia Modjarrad from Montgomery County, Md., attended the public forum at the Education Department and told DeVos’s commission that their efforts to improve school safety were not working.

{mosads}”We, the students, experience the American school system every day. We used to sit in classrooms waiting for something to be done,” Modjarrad said, according to CNN.

“I don’t want to be scared. I don’t want to think that, at any moment, someone with a gun could walk in and hurt us all.”

American students have become leading gun-control activists in the wake of several high-profile school shootings, including in Parkland, Fla., and Santa Fe, Texas.

Modjarrad, who is also an activist, told the commission that students are using their voices to speak out for change. 

“I would ask to please consider the possibilities that guns are the most important aspect of the purview of this commission,” she said.

The event comes one day after DeVos told lawmakers at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing that the commission will not focus on the role of firearms in gun violence at American schools.

“That is not part of the commission’s charge, per se,” DeVos told Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) at the hearing Tuesday.

“I see,” Leahy responded. “So, you’re studying gun violence but not considering the role of guns.”

“We’re actually [studying] student school safety and how we can ensure our students are safe at school,” DeVos said.

During the commission session on Wednesday, Modjarrad called on DeVos to reconsider its “current complicit stance on the role of guns in school safety,” CNN reported.

President Trump established the panel in March to “study and make recommendations” on a range of topics, which included age restrictions for certain firearm purchases.

The group is comprised of four of Trump’s Cabinet members: Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and DeVos.