not related to the usual blog things, and i really do hate only popping in here every two to three buisiness months and one of these days i will be back and mean it. i also never really do longer posts like this, so sorry in advance i guess but i really just need to vent for sec
i feel a need to start out by saying that i do not like charlie kirk one single bit, and you could not pay me money to feel any sort of sadness for his death. gun violence is bad always, no matter the victim, but charlie was an abhorrent excuse for a human being who had been spouting hateful rhetoric and inciting political violence for years. bigotry and hatred are not political beliefs. i'm also trying to be a little careful with what i post right now, so bear with me
but i go to uvu. i'm a busy student and am there practically all the time. i was at the event. i was (thankfully) not in a place where i could see him or the tent, but i heard the gunshot and the screams and took off running inside and into a storage closet with my coworker where we hid for about 10-15 minutes waiting for any communication from the school (which we never got. we got all our updates from twitter dot com. apparently you have to specifically opt in for campus safety alerts! bad idea, i think)
it's very bizarre to see your schools name all over the news, and see the hallways you walk through on every other video. it's especially strange to hear one single gunshot, run and hide, and slowly piece together from the internet what had actually happened. that shot was one of, if not the most terrifying moment of my life. i assumed there would be more, was instantly reminded that there were thousand of people in attendance at this event, and assumed it was a mass shooting. it was even more surreal to have to witness and relive this event over and over again from hundreds of different angles every 30 seconds online.
i genuinely cannot imagine what it would have been like to actually see it. to be in the front row, to be that kid at the microphone when it happened. to me, the real tragedy was the thousands of students that are forever changed and traumatized due to this event - not the man that caused it.
i also cannot iterate how little security there was. i honestly thought nothing of it, because that's the school i walk in and out of every day, that's the courtyard i pass everyday, why would there be security! i also simultaneously forgot that all schools in the state are open carry! which is totally awesome and not at all problematic and probably played zero part in what happened yesterday. the event was supposed to ticketed on an RSVP basis, but i was never stopped at my point and asked for a ticket check. no one cared seemingly at all, which is a massive oversight at an event with THOUSANDS of people in attendance.
frankly, i'm scared to go back to school on monday (apparently if your school hosts a political assassination all you get is a 4 day weekend and a campus visit from kash patel!) HBCUs are shutting down around the country, left and right. i've seen reports from two separate campus's with active shooters today alone, not counting the school shooting in CO yesterday. as i looked out from the balcony over that crowd yesterday and saw a sea of red hats and TPUSA logos, i was viciously reminded who my classmates are. my peers, my neighbors, my "friends". i would be lying to say there's a 0% chance of one of those red hats coming back in monday looking for retaliation or revenge. i'm a little scared to go back to school.
i had the thought this morning that this situation hits very close to home, then remembered, "oh wait, yeah, that is home!" i walk by that courtyard daily. usually multiple times a day. i will never be able to walk by again and not be able to remember how i felt that day, how my classmates and fellow students felt that day. being made witness to a targeted assassination is just very, very strange.
anyways, the statements "political violence is bad", "charlie kirk was a terrible person who spent his life advocating for the exact thing that ended it", and "a national headline just occurred at my school and traumatized students and i feel weird about it" can all coexist. i've seen tons of other students say that they hate the jokes about it. personally, there are few things i love more than a good social media collective comedy moment, but i completely understand. again, i was not an eyewitness to the shooting itself, and i imagine i'd have a much different perspective if i had been closer instead of only hearing it and later seeing the video. but this really is more than a headline for uvu students.
