The college student newspapers were in overdrive yesterday (at least those not on Spring Break), reporting on the myriad March for Our Lives events from across the country.
As you might expect, the vast majority of the coverage was sympathetic and without challenge or opposing points of view … which is pretty much the opposite of what you’d encounter when the subject is an anti-abortion event.
Starting us off is Texas A&M’s The Battalion which features the aptly named retired entomology professor Ray Frisbie with this amazing piece of insight: “The Second Amendment is not the right to kill kids or other people, that’s why I’m here.”
Frisbie’s take wasn’t much more enlightening than that of A&M sports management professor George Cunningham’s sixth grade daughter, also was in attendance at the March: “I don’t think that people should be shooting each other to solve problems, I don’t think that’s the way you should do things.”
The University of Wisconsin Madison’s Badger Herald features high schooler Stephanie Trask who complained about having to deal with active shooter drills in school: “I learned how to shove pencils in a door that was incapable of locking,” she said. (Good thing she doesn’t have to go through “duck and cover” drills, eh?)
In The Daily Cardinal (also of UW Madison), Trask is quoted as saying “When I am in class and the door is left open I sit in fear. This is the reality of growing up in a nation with an epidemic it chooses not to solve.”*
It also quotes Democratic US Representative Mark Pocan: “The NRA isn’t the family in Wisconsin that goes out hunting. Their motive is greed and ours is survival.”**
The Pitt News (University of Pittsburgh) details the march through that western Pennsylvania city: Local teacher Brent Dye said he feels school “lockdown” procedures aren’t effective against a potential Nikolas Cruz (the Parkland, Florida shooter), while Baldwin High School student Julia Gaetano said “It is time to close your wallets and take back your spines from the NRA. We are a generation tainted by bullets and blood.”*
American University’s The Eagle wants us to remember that intersectionality has a role in yesterday’s protests (“All of our fights are connected,” a student said), and AU freshman Miranda Dotson encapsulates this perfectly: She protested yesterday as a member of the group Fossil Free AU and wants everyone to remember “that people of color have been subjected to gun violence long before it came to our classrooms.”
But the … “best” comment from the Eagle report comes from AU Democrats Chief of Staff Alex Russo who said the march “was especially against those who are against saving lives.”
Just how big is that number — the number of Americans against saving lives, that is?
Over at The Post (Ohio University), Athens High School teacher Amy Shaw offered up the very profound “I believe education should be safe. Children should not have to worry about gun violence in schools.”*
Penn’s The Daily Pennsylvanian reports that even after the “official” march had ended, demonstrators continued chanting “Hey Hey Ho Ho NRA has got to go,” and “No justice, no peace, no guns in our streets.” Meanwhile, a little girl sat on a relative’s shoulders holding a placard saying “Choose me over a gun!” and Villanova freshman Madeline Evans said “You shouldn’t fear to go to school, maybe fear for a test or something, but you can’t fear for your life.”*
Finally, The Brown Daily Herald quotes Rhode Island (Democratic) US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse saying “Remember that the NRA would not have the power that it does in Congress if it were not for the power of money in Congress.”** Coventry High School student Tyler Alexander told the crowd assembled at the Rhode Island State House lawn that “Soon it’s going to be us calling the shots and there will be no more shot.”
And how will this happen, Mr. Alexander? Gun confiscation? Abolition of the Second Amendment? Or (more likely), the liberal wing of the US Supreme Court overturning Heller and McDonald?
* “Schools are safer than they were in the 90s, and school shootings are not more common than they used to be,” News@Northeastern
** “According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the NRA gave close to $1 million to Republican senators’ PACs in 2014 — or about 1 percent of the $67 million they raised that year,” Vox.com
MORE: Student spokesmen call the NRA ‘child murderers’
MORE: Parkland, Florida students to share their ‘expertise’ at Harvard
IMAGE: Sam Felder/Flickr
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