As colorfully-dressed students with even more colorful signs marched down North Stockton Drive Wednesday morning, a significant portion of the Upper School student body was missing. After the 17 minutes of silence for the victims of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting and before the rally, about 50 students broke away from the group, returning to school to watch portions of the CNN town hall on gun policy in America.

The alternate activity for students that opted out was not announced until the day itself. Of the people that showed up to the alternate activity, 40 of the 50 were male.

Senior Grace Andrews, who did not attend school Wednesday at all, supports the cause but didn’t feel like marching. “I think there’s a point to it, and I think it would be effective,” Andrews said.  “It’s just that I don’t want to stand in the cold.”

Other students like freshman Aiden Weinberg and sophomore Isaac Warshaw opted for the film rather than the rally because of the weather.

Some students, like junior Jalia Daniels-Halisi, had more organization-based issues with the march. “The rally seems like it was put together at the last minute,” Daniels-Halisi said. “You guys just asked students yesterday to come and say a little speech.”

Organizers explained that some of the planning for the rally started on Monday and the majority of students were asked to speak Tuesday, or even as the rally was happening on Wednesday.  Junior Sammy Kagan, a student organizer, explained that formal planning for the day as a whole didn’t actually begin until eight days before.

Some students had issues not only with the organization of the rally, but with its confusion of the priorities of the day. “I feel like the point of this moment of silence is to stand in solidarity with the students who passed away,” junior Isabel Bouhl said. “The march is next Saturday.”

Bouhl also had a problem with the way the rally represented Parker. “This entire thing seems more like a publicity stunt,” Bouhl said. “People are taking pictures and videos, and that’s just uncomfortable.” Bouhl’s friend, junior Bella Evan-Cook, agreed. Evan-Cook said, “It seems like Parker is trying to seem like it’s above other CPS schools that have done the walkout in a much more simplified manner.”

Another common reason for not attending the march was disagreement about its content and motivations. “I thought that the march would get pretty ugly in terms of signs and stuff,” junior Grayson Garelick said. “And my primary focus is on the kids. I don’t feel like I need to be part of the collective opinion of holding up a sign. Because I don’t necessarily agree with the collective stance. It felt like people were just going to be a part of something without having their own individual opinions.”

Garelick also echoed seniors Margo Fuchs’s and Martha Wedner’s statements from the rally that Parker needs to be educated on the issue it’s protesting. “Especially with the Alderman’s words,” Garelick said. “That kinda summed up the whole thing for me. Telling us to text our parents about a policy that we haven’t done our research on and know nothing about.”

Despite some disagreement about the purpose, effectiveness, and implementation of the rally that followed the silence, almost all students agreed that the 17 minutes of silence were important and powerful.