Students protest gun policy on VTech anniversary

The only sound onlookers heard for three minutes on the sunny afternoon of April 17 was the clicking of cameras as photographers snapped away and the slight spring breeze rustling through the trees' branches.

Thirty-three students, faculty, and staff lay on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the new Simmons College sign with their eyes closed, homemade maroon and orange ribbons draped around their necks, and their hands resting either on their stomachs or holding the hand of the person who lay next to them.

When junior Kathleen McKendry's cell phone alarm went off, marking the end of the three minutes, she sat up, told the lie-in participants they could get up, and thanked everyone for coming.

The students lingered on the corner of Avenue Louis Pasteur and the Fenway, chatting with their peers, answering journalists' questions, and giving hugs and support to those remembering Ross Alameddine, one of McKendry's best friends from high school and a student who died in the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University massacre last year.

The lie-in at Simmons, the only one in Boston, was part of Protest Easy Guns' national campaign on the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre.

McKendry, the protest organizer, was contacted by Protest Easy Guns' founder Abby Spangler to organize the protest with the understanding that she was responsible for getting 32 people to participate and see about doing the protest on Simmons property, neither of which were easily accomplished.

"I had to go through Simmons to see if we could do it on Simmons property because if I didn't do it on [their] property then I would have to go through the city of Boston and get permits and the detail police workers, which I went through all the hassle anyway because Public Safety wanted to make sure since it was so close to public property that I didn't need permits and whatnot.

"So that took about a whole month's worth of jumping through hoops to get settled and I had everything settled and ready to go about four days before the protest," she said.

While she had the issue of location secured a few days before the actual lie-in, the issue of getting the bodies in place for the protest came down to the last minute.

"That day I was anxious because for a good while I only had 22 people, and I waited an extra five minutes and I still only had 22 people, and then, I said, 'All right, I guess that's all who are going to show up. So I guess we're going to lay down.' And then we were about to lie down and my best friend was like, 'Oh, hold on. We have more.'

"And then I got another 11 people within a matter of seconds, who either showed up or we pulled from off the street that were very interested in doing it, which made me happy. In total, we had 33 people, and that made me feel really good because it was one more than my intended goal," she said.

McKendry was also happy with the amount of media coverage the protest received, because "what's a protest that doesn't get noticed?" She said that photos taken at Simmons were used all over the country-from the Washington Post to a small Texas newspaperand around the world. One of the photos, taken by an Associated Press photographer, showed up on Yahoo! France.

Despite the timeliness of the protest with the announcement earlier this semester that Simmons' police officers will be armed as early as August, McKendry said the two are unrelated.

"Personally, I don't see the point because in an event like Virginia Tech, there were officers there that were armed and the killer had locked everybody inside, so there really wasn't anything they could do," McKendry said. "But I'm not uncomfortable with the idea or completely opposed to it. The whole message of our protest group isn't against guns, it's against how easy it is to get guns.

"We just want national background checks done, and also to close the gun show loop hole, which is in many states you can go to a gun show and buy a gun from an unlicensed dealer-walk in, get a gun, and walk out. That shouldn't be allowed to happen," she said.

Simmons was one of five schools in Massachusetts to participate in the Protest Easy Guns protests two weeks ago; the other schools were Harvard University, Wellesley College, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and Clark University. Simmons' lie-in had participants from Simmons, Wheelock College, Emmanuel College, Northeastern University, Boston University, Roger Williams College, and Bridgewater State College.

This article was originally published here: http://media.www.thesimmonsvoice.com/media/storage/paper829/news/2008/05/01/News/Students.Protest.Gun.Policy.On.Vtech.Anniversary-3752921.shtml