I had looked forward to volunteering at Saturday evening’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner for months. Verifying attendees’ tickets before they went through magnetometers, I helped welcome a wide array of guests, including reporters, sources, Democrats, Republicans and celebrities, all excitedly arriving at the ballroom from receptions and the red carpet. The hotel was filled with a sense of camaraderie rarely felt in our nation’s capital.
After most of the guests had filed in, I headed to the volunteer room for a quick dinner break. Minutes after sitting down with other volunteers, we heard a sequence of loud bangs just down the hall from us at the security checkpoint. Recognizing the noises as gunshots, our response at this point was not biological instinct. It was not a result of watching action movies or playing video games during the Covid-19 pandemic. For my generation, video clips and articles about school shootings and political violence are mainstays of our conscience and social media feeds. Lockdown drills are a routine of growing up.
My reaction reflected the motto “run, hide, fight” that I have heard a thousand times before.
When I heard the shots, my first response was not shock or surprise. Even though I had never been in a shooting, it almost felt like I had dealt with a similar scenario before. My reaction reflected the motto “run, hide, fight” that I have heard a thousand times before. We immediately bolted through the back of the hotel. At first we considered hiding in a bathroom, but we realized there was nothing to barricade the door with, so we continued through an emergency exit and hid in a staircase.
After some time, and not encountering any additional law enforcement or fearing an assailant would find us in the staircase, we walked out into the hotel’s parking lot, raising our hands above our heads and calling out to anyone who might be in the vicinity. We passed law enforcement agents, running in what seemed like every direction, and headed out into the street. I later found out the assailant assembled his weapon in front of the volunteer station I was next to minutes before. By nature of luck and the grace of G-d, I was on my dinner break.
Saturday night, many of the most powerful individuals, nationally and globally, grasped the same sense of fear that too many young Americans experience daily while simply going about their lives. Tragedy after tragedy, from Sandy Hook and Parkland to Tree of Life and Charleston, have led to more frequent lockdown drills, more fortified places of worship and a heightened sense of anxiety at public events.
Saturday night was the first time I have ever run away from gunshots, but many young people I know have been there before. I was a camp counselor to young kids who survived the Highland Park July 4 mass shooting, had former coworkers who were near the MSU Student Union, had friends who attended Stoneman Douglas and know those who lost classmates at Brown University this winter. Two years ago, I anxiously messaged my older sister while she was barricaded in a bathroom due to an active shooter near her campus.
My generation has never known the sense of safety that previous generations once took for granted in the very same spaces. We also do not know a “normal” politics of decorum, diplomacy or dialogue. The beginning of Saturday night’s event was my first brief taste of a politics where traditional political opposition gave way to a spirit of unity, joy and bipartisan camaraderie.
The excitement of Saturday’s event — and how quickly it was snatched away — offers a lesson that I’m hoping is not lost on the individuals who were in the room. Gun violence and political violence are diseases infecting American society. Collectively, we must lower the temperature and use this moment as a call to action. My generation’s future depends on it.
Leo Auerbach is a student at Georgetown University.