Students protest Parkland shooting survivor’s Penn State appearance
While March For Our Lives co-founder David Hogg prepared to speak to a sold-out crowd at the HUB on Penn State’s campus Friday, another group gathered for a march of their own.
Aidan Mattis, a 21-year-old Penn State student from Chester County, organized a protest of the university’s Student Programming Association and Hogg, whose speech was presented by the SPA.
“They have a tendency to only bring liberal speakers and never conservative speakers even though they’re supposed to represent the entirety of the student body,” Mattis said during a phone call Thursday.
In an event called “Come and Take It, Hogg,” a group of about 15 people gathered at Grace Lutheran Church, turned right on South Garner Street until they reached East College Avenue and then walked about half a mile before they reached the South Allen Street gates while singing the national anthem.
About four police officers from State College and Penn State police monitored the gathering as various debates took place.
Hogg survived the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14, 2018 and spoke in the HUB-Robeson Center’s Heritage Hall about an hour after the protest ended.
Since last year’s shooting, Hogg has spearheaded an effort to fund gun violence research, require universal background checks, ban high-capacity magazines, disarm all domestic abusers and more.
He’s traveled across the country for appearances, marches and protests — and also insists the Never Again movement is “not trying to take away your guns.”
Mattis, however, wonders about that possibility.
“My concern is that if David Hogg is successful, then what we’ll see is an America that is stripped of its guns and thus completely vulnerable to whatever government is in power,” Mattis said.
The junior said Hogg’s appearance was a tipping point after conservative students have tried unsuccessfully to get equal representation on student leadership committees like the University Park Undergraduate Association and the SPA.
“In order for us to get a conservative speaker, we can’t go through the Student Programming Association. College Republicans, Turning Point USA, Young Americans for Liberty — those groups have to go and spend their money to bring people here because the Student Programming Association won’t do it,” Mattis said. “We chose basically the only option left available to us to make our voices heard.”
SPA Executive Director Sammy Whitney did not respond to an email asking why the SPA invited Hogg to speak or what measures, if any, were taken to host a conservative speaker.
“I don’t support the right to carry, I don’t support the right to practice with a firearm because ... that’s my duty,” Mattis said. “It’s because I have a mother and a father and two little sisters and a little brother back home. I want to make sure that they’re safe. I want to make sure that they never have to endure what people do in dictatorships.”