When 17 students and teachers were murdered on what should have been a peaceful school day, students across the US took to the streets to demand change.
The outpouring of protests in the wake of the tragic mass-shooting in Parkland, Florida, last month is an important reminder that students can challenge the status quo.
The #NeverAgain movement, led by high-school and college students, is asking for gun reform in the US to improve safety in schools. It is a reasonable demand, and one that research has shown lowers mass shooting fatalities.
The current attempts to change the US stance on gun ownership pose a rewriting of the country's constitution. Rewriting a constitution is no easy task, but students in the US have a long history of protesting the status quo to instil reform.
Student activism is not limited to the US either — it was pivotal to events such as the Australian Freedom Rides, the ending of apartheid in South Africa, and anti-nuclear sentiment in New Zealand.
Students were active in demonstrations against the Springbok tour in New Zealand in 1981 and just this week turned out by the dozens in Wellington to make a stand against sexual harassment in the legal profession.
Fifty years ago in the US, the Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-Ins were led by four students in North Carolina.
Their actions spurred a further 300 or so to join them over the next few months, resulting in Woolworths officially desegregating all the lunch counters. The students endured all kinds of humiliating acts, from taunts to being covered in food and drink by disgruntled patrons.
In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was introduced, making segregation in public places illegal.
A year later, in February 1965, several University of Sydney students organised a bus tour of New South Wales towns. Led by Charles Perkins, an Arrernte man from Alice Springs, the students wanted to draw attention to the terrible living conditions many Aboriginal residents endured.
The students also offered their encouragement and support to the Aboriginal communities, hoping it would help close the gap between white and Aboriginal living conditions.
Not all student protests have been non-violent. South African students' long (although sometimes violent) history of protests to change the very constitution are a useful example.
This year marks the 70th anniversary since apartheid was introduced in South Africa, officially disenfranchising black Africans and institutionalising a racist method of privileging white South Africans in every aspect of life. Black South African students successfully enacted real change in government policy.
Student protests can make a big difference. In the wake of the Florida shooting, American students have already been instrumental in spurring peaceful protests across the US.
Such protests, if they can be sustained, are likely to have a significant impact at the local level, by creating conversations about gun control and students' rights to access education safely.
At a global level, these protests help to keep media attention and pressure focused on the need for congress to introduce gun reform laws.
• Claire Cooke, Honorary Research Fellow in History, University of Western Australia
• This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.