BUS to host counterevent to open carry march on Saturday
Black United Students announced Wednesday they will be conducting a counter-event during Saturday’s planned open-carry walk.
BUS will hold a memorial service for gun violence victims. The campus organization said in a statement that it did not want to take part in any counterprotests because it “felt like we were being used as minor players in other organizations’ grand plans.”
The counter-event is scheduled for 3 p.m., which, as of now, will be in the middle of the planned open-carry walk. Community members were asked to bring names of loved ones who died due to gun violence.
“We are tired,” the statement said. “We are tired of seeing the people we care about taken from us at the hands of guns. We are tired of seeing the brutalization of Black bodies posted online for the world to see, but we must keep fighting.”
BUS called the message in Saturday’s walk “hateful and dangerous,” and that it will not support the attempt to “instill fear and hate” on campus.
Laina Yost is an enterprise reporter. Contact her at [email protected].