By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
More than 200 students, faculty and community members gathered Thursday outside the Bowling Thompson Student Union on the name of peace and love.
The event, organized after Tuesday’s tumultuous election, was by design a non-partisan event. The winner, Republican Donald Trump’s name was not spoken. But the words he spoke during his successful campaign still resonated with this crowd.
Some were afraid for themselves or for their friends.
Jacqueline Adams, graduate student in American Culture Studies, said she initiated the event because “a lot of folks on campus feel the need to create a loving and caring space. BGSU is a loving space we just want to sit here to remind ourselves of that.”
Joanna Murphy, who was busy passing out cardboard and markers to make posters, said “we all just need to take a deep breath and be together, and promote solidarity or love” after a “volatile” election.
The hope was to bridge the divide.
Joey Sturgis said he was there to celebrate that BGSU was open to diversity and offered a spot for students to express themselves. “We’re very conscious about everything that’s going on in the country.” This gathering “was more intense,” he said.
Beneath these expressions of peace and love was an undercurrent of fear.
Murphy said she learned through social media that a black woman she knows was attacked early Wednesday morning by three men. The victim was wearing an Obama Hope t-shirt. The assailants were white. Murphy said, she didn’t know the motivation behind the attack.
That wasn’t the only incident, she said. “A number of my friends who identify as Moslem, trans and people of color have experienced everything from death threats to harassment in the last 24 hours.”
Adams noted recently that a racial slur was scrawled on the university’s Spirit Rock.
“A lot of people who are hurting at our university,” said Shayna Swerdlow. She came to the sit in “to let people know they are not alone and that they have a community that loves and supports them.”
Cassie Mere said “a lot of hostility and fear” came from the election. “I feel like this is something that’s helping.”
Sadi Troche agreed “there’s a lot of thing going on through social media. You can definitely pinpoint the reasoning for it. I just hope things can be settled back to where they were.”
Michael Markodimitrakis teaches ethnic studies which he feels is “more needed than ever.”
He said he’ spent the past couple days reading as much as he could “but I still feel I don’t know enough about what will happen.”
As a Greek he’s “privileged” not to be a member of group Trump targeted in his campaign. But he’s concerned for his friends who are Moslems and people of color, “anyone who would be targeted at this point.”
Bincy Abdul Samad, a graduate student from India and the mother of a 3-year-old son, told the gathering that she no longer felt this country, where she’s lived for nine years, was a safe place.
Now she’s concerned about policies that would force people like her to leave the country.
“I think it’s also a backlash against women,” she said.
The election stirred up these concerns, she said, but that’s all she would say. “I don’t want to use his name.”
Still when Adams was asked if such a gathering would have happened had Hillary Clinton been elected, she paused. Maybe, she said. But the tone would have been “more celebratory.”
