Buehrle Academy Student Hopes to Create Change in Lancaster

Noariana Dawson-King, a student from Buehrle Academy in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, has been troubled by the recent spike of violence in her small city – so she is working to make a positive change in her community by bringing people together to talk about the issue.

Dawson-King drafted an essay, “Lancaster Can Change,” asking her community members to come together to talk about the violence that is plaguing their community.

“It wasn’t like this before,” Noariana said in an interview.  “It used to be peaceful.  Now it seems like everyone is shooting.”

Over the past year, there has been a spike in shootings in Lancaster.  A former Buehrle student was killed in January, and many students have been affected by the violence.

“This is a small community,” said Buehrle Academy Executive Director Matt Wiltrout.  “Most students know each other, since there is only one high school.  So when someone is shot, we know that several students will be impacted.”

Noariana’s goal is to start a small group in the community in which people can come together periodically to speak on issues that are important to them. Hopefully, this will lead to a reduction in violence.

“I want everyone to start talking to each other,” Noariana shared.  “To put the guns down and talk to each other instead of shooting.

Here is Noariana’s full essay:

My name is Noariana, and I live in the city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In the past couple days I have been noticing a lot of families being hurt because of them losing loved ones.  It touches me a lot because in the past Lancaster was not so cruel and bad as it is becoming now.

When I was younger, Lancaster was very peaceful and families were always happy. Now it seems like every time you turn around a family is losing a loved one from being murdered.

This is really sad and I don’t want to see any more families being down and hurt from losing a loved close one. I want our small city to go back to how it used to be, which was peaceful, loving, and caring.

So I would like to start a small group in our community, where everyone can come together every once and a while and talk about anything in our community that they need to get off of their chest about situations they have witnessed or want to change. We are all a team, and we can make a change any day.