Mercer Young Democrats held a moment of silence, student speeches and prompted a call to action at a memorial for gun violence victims on Tuesday, Nov. 18. About a dozen students attended the service that organizers said was meant to honor victims of gun violence across the United States while also confronting the logistics behind gun control. The event featured remarks from organization leaders and personal testimonies from affected attendees.
“For a lot of people on campus, and in our age group, there’s a lot of unprocessed trauma around gun violence,” Mercer Young Democrats President Harris Wallace ‘27 said.
“Americans have been demanding actions. All of these outcries followed in the footsteps of tragedy though,” Mercer Young Democrats Secretary Anna Taperski ‘29 said. “Too little has been done by our government to make a lasting change.”
Wallace said he hopes students would feel a sense of catharsis and community after the memorial, especially after Mercer students went under shelter-in-place procedure twice this semester.
“You’re not alone for feeling afraid when we get a text alert about an active threat on campus,” Wallace said. “You’re not alone for feeling like something has been taken from you your entire childhood – growing up in a world that has you practice active shooter drills in school.”
Ciaran Bice ‘29, a member of the Mercer Young Democrats, reflected on the fear that people experience going to school every day.
“You don’t have to be a direct survivor of a school shooting to have anxiety,” Bice said. “One of the reasons my girlfriend switched to an online school my senior year [of high school] was because her anxiety of being shot at school was getting so bad she could not physically go to school.”
Bice also said that they feel the world seems to be desensitized to shootings around the country. There have been 68 school shootings in the country in 2025, CNN reported, leaving 26 dead and over 100 people injured. Thirty nine of these shootings took place on college campuses, and 29 took place in K-12 schools. There have been 44 school shootings in Georgia since 2008, including one in Winder, Ga. that killed four people in September 2024.
“American kids like to joke that British people put beans on toast and call it a meal, but British people joke that Americans cannot make it to lunchtime without a bullet,” Bice said. “That’s a terrible reputation to have for our great nation.”
The program concluded with a reading of poems related to gun violence, and a few personal comments from attendees. Taperski emphasized the importance of student advocacy and campaigning for change.
“Change does not begin in the chambers of Congress, it begins here with us,” she said in a comment to those gathered in Willet Auditorium. “In school auditoriums, in streets protesting, in the hands of people who refuse to accept that this is the cost of growing up in America.”
Mercer Young Democrats said it plans to host more events like this in the future to address gun violence and spread awareness.
“As long as there is a need from Mercer students for this kind of memorial for remembrance of victims, we’ll continue to do events that are important and impactful for the Mercer community,” Wallace said.
