Schools

Hofstra students march to end mass shootings

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Editor's note: Melanie Haid is a freshman journalism major at Hofstra University. This piece originally appeared in the Hofstra Chronicle, the student-run newspaper.

Exactly a month after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., students united across the nation on March 14 to call for stricter gun control and ensure that such a tragedy never occurs again.

Hofstra University held its own March For Our Lives protest that day, organized by undergraduate students Brynne Levine, Rosario Navalta, Jesse Saunders and Sky Dellasala through a Facebook page. About 180 people expressed interest in the event, with 70 officially attending, coming and going as the event progressed.

Students gathered in the David S. Mack Student Center at the beginning of common hour and were led by the organizers of the event in a march across campus with posters to draw attention to what they say is the need for stricter gun control. After a lap around the south side of campus, the group settled on the Calkins Quad, where the floor was opened for participants to discuss their views on the issue and speak of their own experiences involving guns.

Freshman Brynne Levine, a public relations major and event organizer, voiced her opinions early in the march. She said most people were unaware what the goal of the demonstration was. She added that it was “a big misconception with the March For Our Lives … that people think we want to get rid of guns entirely. That’s not necessarily the end game.”

While many Hofstra students said they believe change is needed, whether they took part in the protest or not, there were differing opinions as to how to go about seeking change.

Students felt varying degrees of passion towards how policy change should be handled. Rebecca Skolnick, a sophomore drama major, expressed her frustration that teenagers as young as 18 can buy guns. “Who is going to tell me that I’m mature enough to buy a gun and kill people – but I can’t drink?” she said.

Lydia Oh, a sophomore film studies and production major, grew up less than an hour from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, where 26 children and teachers were killed in a mass shooting in 2012. She recalled how profoundly the shooting impacted the state and the communities surrounding it, including her own. “I still don’t know why Sandy Hook wasn’t enough,” she told the crowd.

How gun control should be handled was also a prevalent topic of discussion during the rally. About an hour into the protest, some students walking by offered their opinions audibly and created friction that allowed for deeper discourse among peers.
One of them was Austin Van Schaick, a junior history and secondary education major. He disagreed with the protest as a whole, but many of the opinions he offered shared parallels to those that the protesters stood for. Schaick went on to say that the issue of gun regulation needs “different viewpoints intersecting” in order for a solution to be reached.

Hofstra’s vice president of student affairs, Houston Dougharty, also attended the event. He applauded the students’ efforts to assemble and organize. “A university campus should be a marketplace for ideas,” Dougharty said. “It should be a place where people talk about issues they care about and engage in dialogue that includes many opinions.”

“Like any protest, it’s going to put issues into the forefront of people’s minds,” said Regina Volpe, a creative writing major in her junior year. “It’s really forcing them to be aware of the situation at hand.”

Jesse Saunders, another march organizer, led much of the conversation and acted as a mediator when the exchanges became too heated. “The whole reason we’re here is because this is not going to happen again,” said Saunders, who thought that, although small in number, the protest did reach many on campus and broaden awareness.