Several hundred people gathered at the University of New Hampshire Wednesday night to remember and celebrate slain conservative leader Charlie Kirk.
The vigil was part religious service, part patriotic rally. It also attracted many UNH students who described themselves as conservative and said they were often uncomfortable expressing their politics in what they felt to be an overwhelmingly liberal environment. For them, the gathering offered what they called a rare chance to voice conservative views on campus.
Panayiota Papantonakis, who helped make posters memorializing Kirk for the event, said the shooting brought her closer to fellow right-leaning UNH students and encouraged them to take more action.
“We started a Turning Point chapter here at UNH. We already had one, but it wasn't really active,” she said, referring to the conservative activist group Kirk founded in 2012. “... And I want to see more people join our club and not be afraid to speak up on campus.”
“If people stop being afraid, we can really promote that and get that message across,” she said.
Liam Murphy, a senior from Danville, said he didn’t always agree with Kirk but wanted to honor him Wednesday. Murphy said he has feared that sharing his political beliefs will cause conflict with classmates.
“I mainly just keep my head down,” he said.
Phillip Cooper graduated from UNH last year but drove an hour from Massachusetts to attend Wednesday’s rally. He said he felt being conservative carried a stigma on campus during his undergraduate years, but Kirk’s death changed his perspective.
“It definitely emboldened me to be more open about being a conservative,” he said.
While few counterprotesters turned out Wednesday evening, many students voiced opposition to the vigil on the anonymous social media platform Yik Yak.
“If ur man goes to the kirk vigil break up with him,” read one post with more than 1,000 upvotes.
Eirian Wells, a UNH graduate student, was among the protesters who showed up to Wednesday’s vigil in person. She said she hoped the push by conservatives to carry on Kirk’s mission would not cause progressives to yield in their own efforts.
“I hope that people who are advocating for civil rights, trans rights, the rights of people to not be killed on a normal day – I hope that they don't back down from those beliefs,” Wells said.
One vigil attendee, Heather Mullins, tried unsuccessfully to engage Wells and another protestor in a conversation about their conflicting views – as she had seen Kirk do.
“We can't keep going on like this,” Mullins said. “Violence is never okay on either side of the aisle. And Charlie was so big on wanting people to have a conversation.”
Wednesday’s rally was organized by Rep. Sam Farrington, a UNH student who is also a Republican member of the New Hampshire House. Kirk's death has served as a call to action for Republicans in the state in recent days. State lawmakers – including the majority leader in the New Hampshire House – have proposed legislation intended to honor Kirk that aims to combat what they call "leftist indoctrination” in public schools.
UNH itself has been a target of Republican action in recent years. In the most recent state budget, passed in June, State House Republicans cut funding for the entire University System of New Hampshire – which includes UNH, Keene State College, and Plymouth State University – by about $18 million over two years. A month later, UNH President Elizabeth Chilton announced plans to cut $17.5 million from her school alone to make up for the state budget cuts, changes in federal funding and declining enrollments.
This spring, Rep. Joe Sweeney, a Salem Republican and UNH alum, accused the state’s public colleges and universities of “harboring an unknown number of illegal aliens” and admitting them at the exclusion of legal New Hampshire residents. Enrollment numbers provided by the schools did not bear out those claims.
Turning Point USA has also targeted UNH. It included four of the school’s professors on its “Professor Watchlist,” which the organization says documents “the most radical left-wing professors.”
Critics say the list incites online harassment of those named on it and amounted to an attack on academic freedom.
