A post reading “Doesn’t matter your political orientation, let’s keep this peaceful,” was posted on Yik Yak on Sept. 17 along with a flyer advertising an on-campus vigil for conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
On Friday evening, Fowlerville senior Jimmy Buurma held a candlelight vigil on “The Quad” to honor Kirk. Kirk, who was defined by the BBC as “one of the highest profile conservative activists and media personalities in the US,” was fatally shot on Sept. 10 while hosting a college event for the organization he cofounded, Turning Point USA.
“No matter how you felt about him, there should be no room for us to be happy about someone who passed away when they fought for what they believed,” Buurma said.
Buurma added the vigil was not “to take away from other groups that have experienced harm this year, any of the school shootings, any of the victims of other crime.”
The vigil was attended by a small group of students and three police officers. Dean of Students Leroy Wright and Assistant Vice President for Student Development Kelly Finn were also in attendance, which Finn said was “a safety measure.”
“When students are planning to host a vigil, an event, a demonstration, any sort of public event on the quad, we typically would have a staff presence there,” Finn said. “A, because we care about all of our students and B, because if something were to occur that needed someone to respond, we would want staff to be there.”
Finn added the police presence during the vigil was part of “measures in place around student safety” and “pretty typical that any time we would have a gathering of some sort, we would proactively put measures in place.”
“While students are more than welcome to gather on the quad for any number of things, for a vigil, a protest, sharing their thoughts about something, students should not be doing that under an umbrella of an organization that actually doesn’t exist,” Finn said.
Vice President of Marketing and Communications Melissa Anderson wrote in a Sept. 18 email that “as far as we understand, there is no vigil on Friday. The reservation and social post have been removed.” Additionally, Social Media and Content Strategist Kalli Onai wrote in an email the same day that “there is nothing on the campus events calendar regarding the vigil.” Both directed further questions about the event to Wright and Finn.
In addition to being posted on Yik Yak, an anonymous social media platform which displays posts from users in a five-mile radius, the flyer was also briefly posted on Instagram by @tpusa_albion before being taken down. Turning Point USA does not have ties with Albion College.
Shortly after the flyer circulated, backlash emerged online. On Yik Yak, some users expressed negative opinions toward the event.
“The response on Yik Yak, though it wasn’t unexpected, was still a very saddening thing,” Buurma said.
Albion senior Livia Sprouse, who said she wanted to go to the vigil but was unable to attend, said that while social media provides platforms for expression, it also complicates dialogue.
“Social media fosters a lot of hatred, in general it’s just a lot of negative energy towards a lot of things,” Sprouse said. “I always tell people, about Yik Yak, not to feed into that because it’s anonymous people and a lot of it can be negative.”
Buurma, who said he’s “an outspoken conservative,” said one of his goals in life is to create space for dialogue.
“I want people to have a space to be able to have those talks,” Buurma said. “I don’t want it to be, ‘hey, I’m worried that I’m going to be shamed for having an opposite view.’”
The Pleiad reached out to Katy Cobian and Haileystar Castaneda via email Sept. 18 and 19, listed respectively as president and vice president of College Democrats on Engage. Neither responded in time for publication.
Buurma added he has tried to build the kind of space within his fraternity, Sigma Chi, where there’s “a very even makeup of conservatives and liberals, and people that identify on the fence.”
“We are so much more than who we choose to vote for president,” Buurma said.
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