Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton rallied supporters together to “Commit to Vote” for her in the 2016 election Thursday at Case Western Reserve University, her first stop in Ohio since she announced her bid for the presidency in April.

Nearly 2,000 people attended the rally, and students at the event said their top concerns were student loan debt, women’s rights and gun violence.

“I think violence is something they (political candidates) should all acknowledge,” said Anthony Marchi, a bioethics graduate student at CWRU. “Especially with what just happened yesterday. That was tragic.”

Marchi was referencing the two journalists who were killed Wednesday in Virginia after a former co-worker opened fire on them during a live broadcast. The shooter later killed himself.

Clinton also made reference to the event while speaking about gun control.

“Yesterday, once again, this time horrifically on live television, we saw the terrible consequences of gun violence,” she said.

Clinton said we need “common sense reforms,” including universal background checks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, the violently unstable, domestic abusers and terrorists who find it easy to get weapons in America.

“I know politics are hard,” Clinton said. “I’ve got the scars to prove that. And I know when it comes to gun violence…a lot of people just basically say, ‘You know, it’s just too hard, we’re not going to try this again.’ Well, I am going to tell you, I am going to keep going. I am not giving up. I am not going to sit by while more good people die, and they get 24 or 48 or 72 hours of TV coverage and then we all just say, ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do’ – until the next time people are murdered by gun violence.”

Although she was rallying on a college campus, Clinton made little reference to the rising student debt rate except to point out it wasn’t talked about during the first round of the Republican debates hosted in Cleveland in early August.

“You didn’t hear a single word, not a single word about how to lower the cost of college and how to save people money so they can lower their interest rates,” Clinton said.

Stefanie Wise, a senior news major at Kent State, said women’s rights would be what affected her vote.

“In Ohio, (Gov. John) Kasich has taken us back almost a decade on reproductive rights,” Wise said. “Hillary has always been a champion for women’s rights.”

Clinton reprimanded Kasich for defunding some rape crisis centers because they sometimes send victims to health centers who do provide abortions.

“Extreme views about women, we expect that from some (of) the terrorist groups, we understand that from people who don’t want to live in the modern world, but it’s a little hard to take from Republicans who want to be the president of the United States, yet they espouse out-of-date and out-of touch policies,” Clinton said.  They are dead wrong for America were going forward, were not going back.

Polling currently has Clinton ahead of Republicans Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, as well as fellow Democrats Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden.

Contact Hannah Armenta at [email protected].