Lane Murdock


Lane Murdock is a 17-year-old activist and founder of The National School Walkout.

Early life and education

Lane Murdock was born in 2002 in Texas. When she was four years old she moved to Ridgefield, Connecticut.  She attends Ridgefield High School. The school is a 20-minute drive from Sandy Hook Elementary School, the site of the 2012 massacre in which 20 children and 6 staff members died.

National School Walkout Conception

After the shooting in Parkland, Murdock placed a petition to change.org asking people to protest the lack of responses that follow school shootings in America by participating in a walkout. The petition accumulated over 270,000 signatures. Murdock and fellow RHS students Paul Kim, Max Cumming, and Grant Yaun then set about organizing their nationwide walk-out with Indivisible.
The NationalSchoolWalkout Twitter accumulated more than 100,000 followers in five days. National School Walkout scheduled the nation wide walkout to take place on April 20, as it marked the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High school shooting.
The April 20 walkout organized by Murdock was set to last until the end of the school day, because the issue is one that needed to be ‘addressed longer than 17 minutes’. This was said in reference to the March 14 walkout which lasted for 17 minutes to mark the 17 lives lost at the Marjory Stone High School shooting, with students returning to their classrooms soon after.