Editorial: Students help enact school safety law
Published 1:15 pm Wednesday, July 15, 2026
Louisiana students who are members of the Legislative Youth Advisory Council (LYAC) were able to help lawmakers pass a school safety bill at the recent legislative session.. The students worked with state Sen. Rick Edmonds, R-Baton Rouge, last year to establish a school safety task force.
The Advocate in its school safety report said this year the students partnered with Edmonds on Senate Bill 450, which requires schools to report threats to law enforcement and allows schools to request campus security assessments.
After the students testified in support of the bill, the Legislature passed it unanimously. Gov. Jeff Landry signed it into law and it takes effect next month.
Three students interviewed by the newspaper were Beija Lopes-Morgan, a graduate of Mandeville High School who is headed to Harvard University this fall; Everett Etie, who graduated from Erath High School in Vermilion Parish and will attend the University of Texas at Austin; and Lincoln Trumps, who went to Lafayette High School and is entering Yale University.
Lopes-Morgan excelled in high school but said occasionally her mind wandered during class. She wondered how hard it would be for a stranger to enter the building. During a meeting of fellow student leaders on the LYAC from across Louisiana, she asked if anyone else had ever felt unsafe at school.
“Every single person raised their hand,” she said.
The Advocate asked the three students why it’s important for them to be involved in policy making.
Beija said, “As students, we are the eyes and ears of our school. So having students on the council, I think that representation of our stories really matters.”
Lincoln said, “I think it’s important that you speak or else other people are going to speak for you. A lot of times, there’s a certain disconnect, where maybe people who are very well-intentioned don’t really know what’s going on, on the ground.”
Everett said, “You get to be the voice of youth, and you get to speak with all these legislators and really make a difference.”
When asked about their own safety experiences, Beija said, “I’ll be in class, especially in the portable buildings, and I’m looking at all these cars outside, people walking, and I’ll think how easy it would be for someone to just walk in.”
Everett said, “My freshman year, my parish took some strides for safety and security. I saw my school transform from people just walking out all the time — we didn’t have gates, we didn’t have single-point entry — to our district safety officer implementing some of these things.”
Asked about other school shootings, Lincoln said, “A lot of times, the first thing that goes through my head is that you don’t want to get used to the idea of it. You don’t want to sit there and just write it off as, ‘Well, bad things happen, and there’s nothing really we can do about it.’ That’s kind of an easy mindset to slip into.”
This legislative experience served these students well and the news coverage of what happened benefits students everywhere.
