What was meant to be a small event turned into a community affair this last Friday when UNCW’s PRIDE group formulated plans for a protest against recent actions made by North Carolina officials in regards to legislation.

The idea to march peacefully down Chancellor’s Walk emerged during an executive board meeting for PRIDE and was inspired by the passing of the recent law known as House Bill 2. The group even marched on the day the bill went into effect, April 1.

In describing their reasons for protesting, UNCW PRIDE member Monica Kessel said that HB 2 is damaging to college students for various reasons.

The first reason explained by Kessel was that the bill bars local and municipal governments from raising the minimum wage above $7.25. Students who work part time jobs at minimum wage will not see the minimum wage increase. 

The bill is also damaging to transgender students, according to Kessel, as they will now be forced to use the bathrooms that do not correspond with their gender identity unless they want to undergo a rather pricey sex reassignment surgery. 

At the event, there were well over 50 students, faculty and locals present in the amphitheater.

The protest began with a statement made by PRIDE’s president Nada Merghani, who was in Washington, DC at the time but typed up a speech for her colleagues to use in her stead.

The statement thanked those who came out to the protest, urged them on the importance of it being peaceful and, most importantly, discussed the implications this new law has for the state of North Carolina.

“House Bill 2 is not only violently discriminatory and unconstitutional, but the fact that it was enacted almost entirely in just one day and lawmakers were only given five minutes to read it and vote on it is proof that the government knew that the public and all supporters of human rights would heavily oppose [the] law,” said Merghani in her statement.

After the speech and some introductions, PRIDE and the other protesters began marching down Chancellor’s Walk. They chanted phrases like “We Are Not This!” and “Hey Hey! Ho Ho! HB 2 Has Got To Go!”

Along with marching and chanting, protesters held up handmade signs with similar phrases and political statements that resonated with their beliefs.

Groups from all over campus were represented. Giuliana Vaca-Tricerri from Centro Hispano explained that PRIDE walked upstairs in the Fisher University Union to their offices and invited their students to march, which some of them did considering how “sketchy” this bill and its passing was.

Another community member invited to attend the march was Jeff Mills, who also helped organize the rally on the corner of Oleander and South College Road later that day.

The bill was rather odious, according to Mills. He compared the bill to a Trojan horse, since it was snuck in on Holy Week and signed in 12 hours. Ultimately, Mills thinks the actions of the governor and the legislative body speak for themselves.

With all of this negative backlash over the bill, student groups like UNCW PRIDE hope that rallying students, faculty and locals as they had will help to show the legislature that North Carolinians are not pleased with HB 2.