What started as a student-led memorial to the late Charlie Kirk, an American political activist who was a co-founder with William Montgomery of the conservative organization Turning Point USA, recently sparked both written and verbal debate among students at Shawnee State University along the main walkway between Massie Hall and the Clark Memorial Library.
On Sept. 15, a group of students planted signs meant to memorialize Kirk with American flags and self-made crosses composed of stones and sticks. Although the original signs were taken down, more were planted near the original site just opposite of the walkway the next day, giving a message of determination from the signs’ creators. One of the students involved in planting the signs, sophomore Connor Darnell, said he knew that there would be “mixed feelings” about the memorial and that “it’s important to recognize that outside Charlie’s politics, he was a very faithful man and stood for a lot of good principles. Some may disagree with that.”
When asked if the initial reaction among students was appropriate, Darnell said that “the best thing to get to is agreeing to disagree.”
Messages from both Kirk’s supporters on campus and those who did not agree with him have been written in chalk on the walkways and posted on signs in the days since the memorial was installed.
“I think that (the memorial) did start good conversation,” said Bethany Armstrong, president of Shawnee State’s Young Democrats. “I think one thing that we need to change for the future is how we speak to each other in general. We’re all adults here, and I think we need to speak to each other as adults.”
Other students offered their opinions on the displays as they viewed them on their way across campus last week.
“I think this is a fairly appropriate and a pretty good display of everybody’s free speech,” Landon Perkins said. “I think that it’s a lot of what Charlie would have wanted is people speaking out and both sides speaking and coming together.”
Lydia Castle, another SSU student, said, “I think this is a very good way to start discussions, because you have people who are just standing around and just observing and seeing what’s going on, and you have people who are writing things down, and it’s just an interesting way to see how people believe.”
Some observers noted that they had witnessed verbal criticism and disagreement among students in the vicinity of the displays, but a reprentative of SSU’s Department of Public Safety said that no arguments or confrontations had escalated into more intense conflict to date. Still, officers patrolled the site in the first days of the displays to create a sense of security and prepare for a “just-in-case” scenario.
