Gulf Coast Life

Student Walkouts - Reporters Debrief

By Mike Kiniry,

Julie Glenn, Rachel Iacovone, Quincy J Walters

Published March 14, 2018 at 2:56 PM EDT

Some Southwest Florida students walked out of their classes at 10:00 this morning on the one month anniversary of the day a 19-year-old walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and opened fire with his legally-obtained AR-15 rifle, killing 17 people.

Before school this morning, students at South Fort Myers High School assembled on the athletics field in the shape of a heart for a vigil. But, for the actual walkout there was some confusion in Lee County as to whether students would be able to participate. In Sarasota County the district and school principals announced they would permit students to participate without fear of repercussions.

WGCU’s Rachel Iacavone was at Cypress Lake High School in Lee County, and Quincy Walters was at Venice High School in Sarasota County, and they both joined us in studio to give us a sense of how it went.

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Mike Kiniry

mkiniry@wgcu.org

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Julie Glenn

(1971 - 2022)

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Rachel Iacovone

Rachel Iacovone is a reporter and associate producer of Gulf Coast Live for WGCU News. Rachel came to WGCU as an intern in 2016, during the presidential race. She went on to cover Florida Gulf Coast University students at President Donald Trump's inauguration on Capitol Hill and Southwest Floridians in attendance at the following day's Women's March on Washington.Rachel was first contacted by WGCU when she was managing editor of FGCU's student-run media group, Eagle News. She helped take Eagle News from a weekly newspaper to a daily online publication with TV and radio branches within two years, winning the 2016 Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for Best Use of Multimedia in a cross-platform series she led for National Coming Out Day. She also won the Mark of Excellence Award for Feature Writing for her five-month coverage of an FGCU student's transition from male to female.As a WGCU reporter, she produced the first radio story in WGCU's Curious Gulf Coast project, which answered the question: Does SWFL Have More Cases of Pediatric Cancer?Rachel graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.

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Quincy J Walters

Quincy Walters is a reporter and backup host for WGCU.

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