By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Earlier this month high school students, including 300 from Bowling Green High School, walked out of classes to demand action on gun violence.
On Saturday more than 200 gathered on the Bowling Green State University campus to echo that message. The Rally for Our Lives, took place as the March for Our Lives events were happening in Washington D.C. and across the country.
The BGSU event was organized by Connor Froehlich and Carlie Pritt, both of whom are at BGSU studying to be teachers, and many of those who came to speak were also education students. They asserted they did not want to carry weapons that they may have to turn on their own students.
Megan Cammalleri, a sophomore, said everyone has a right to an education, but that was denied to those who died at Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, and Parkland.
Ariel Tonkel, Lena Nighswander, and Carlie Pritt display hand-made signs
“Days after the Parkland shooting,” she said, “I walked through this building (the Bowen-Thompson Student Union) behind me, and I was scared. I really thought this is such an open building that if an open shooter came in here… what would I do? I shouldn’t have to think that way.
“I’m also going to school to be a teacher, and I should not have to think about being armed or what I would do for my students or where I would put them.”
Alyson Baker, one of the organizers of the walkout at Bowling Green High School, said: “I’d rather have my teacher with a working computer than a gun.”
The rally also called for voters to hold members of Congress and other legislators accountable at the ballot box.
“We’re here,” Pritt said before the rally, “because we’re done with nothing being done.”
Lena Nighswander, a senior from Anthony Wayne high School, said “our generation is finding our voice.”
She said that as they discussed the issues at her high school those who were resistant at first became more supportive.
Ariel Tonkel, also from Anthony Wayne, said by speaking out they were setting an example for their peers and emboldening them to make their views known.
The rally had tables for participants to write letters to their representatives and sign on to petitions.
“When all the rallying is done, when all the marching is done, it’s time to vote,” Froehlich said
The rally drew a cross-generational crowd from children brought by their parents through people in their 70s.
Anti-gun violence protesters rally in front of BGSU student union.
Daniel Gordon, a member of city council and candidate for state legislature, said: “One basic element of our social contract is that adults are supposed to protect kids. Nobody should gave to go to school afraid. They shouldn’t have to worry about whether they are going to live out the day. They should have to worry about whether they’re passing their algebra class. … It’s sad that at the end of the day it’s students who have to tell members of Congress how to do their jobs.”
Gordon claimed the protests have already effected more change in the last few weeks than has been accomplished in the last few years. And he was hopeful about the future. “If it’s a fight between the kids in the country and the NRA, we know who’s going to win.”
In urging young people to vote, Aidan Hubbell-Staeble noted the dismal turnout in campus precincts in the last election. That has to change if they want to be heard.
Connor Goodpaster, graduate student in public administration, spelled out what the Ohio legislature should be looking at waiting periods for gun purchases, more thorough background checks, and taking weapons away from those accused of domestic violence or otherwise deemed a threat to themselves or others.
Standing in the crowd taking it all in was State Senator Randy Gardner (R-Bowling Green). When approached, he declined to speak. The first responsibility of a legislator he said, was to listen, and the first responsibility of a citizen to make their concerns heard.
Gardner did note that for all the current concern about gun violence, it has been going down since the 1990s. Social media, he said, tends to amplify incidents. But that does not negate the validity of the concerns of those at the rally.
Cassie Woodbury, a local high school student, countered the claim that violent video games were causing school violence. “What’s desensitizing us are all these shootings.”
Bruce Dunlavy recalled an earlier generations struggles. He remembered protesting during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968 when police shot and beat protesters. He urged the young people to continue to make their voices heard.
Some people think reciting the Pledge of Alliance the loudest is patriotism, he said. Some people think having the largest flag is patriotism. But, he asked the crowd, what is the greatest act of patriotism? Voting, they replied.
As the rally was disbursing, Jamie Sands, a Bowling Green resident, said she and two other mothers with children who were attending the rally were approached by a young man trying “to intimidate us with his two guns and argue about gun control.”
The man was wearing a sweatshirt with the words “Operation Inherent Resolve Jordan,” the name of a U.S. military anti-ISIS operation.
