The “Weird Feeling” of School Shooting Alumni: MSD Alum’s Collective Identity and Community Consciousness in the DC Area
Open Access DepositedThis study examines the lives of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (MSD) alumni who live in the Washington, DC, area regarding their identities and community ties today. On February 14, 2018, MSD High School became the site of one of the most notorious school shootings in the United States. In the aftermath, MSD became nationally well-known due to the significant organizing effort of student survivors to combat gun violence and work toward gun control reform. From February until May 2024, 17 interviews were conducted in the DMV with MSD alumni who graduated between 1993 and 2016. I argue that alumni from a high school that became a household name after a horrific mass shooting share this collective experience and identity. I label this as a stigma and show that it is a common collective identity associated with secondary trauma that can be found among alumni from school shooting communities. Thus, this association of being a place where an infamous school shooting has happened led to this phenomenon of stigma, especially among MSD alumni. In this study, some themes evident include stigmatized identities based on their background, complicated feelings as graduates, and building and finding a sense of community outside their high school and hometown communities.
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