Some use a microphone outside of Baker University Center.
Others quietly hold up signs in front of the Athens County Courthouse.
But wherever they are, local protesters say they will stop at nothing to get their points across.
Some students aren’t very kind to Jerry Mawhorr, the preacher who visits Ohio University every now and then to preach his non-denominational church.
Mawhorr preaches into the microphone while John Lengacher, a church member, holds the signs. The duo travels to various public universities throughout Ohio including Kent State, Bowling Green and Ohio State, among others.
“There’s not a hateful bone in me,” Mawhorr said. “In colleges, there are young people who are still formulating ideas, morality and what they’re going to do with their life, so it’s a wonderful forum to help people.”
Mawhorr and Lengacher — who together formed a non-denominational church in the Mount Vernon, Ohio, area — typically draw crowds outside Baker Center.
Mawhorr said it’s no surprise some don’t respond peacefully.
“I don’t come here for that purpose,” he said. “If we did, we’d have our wives make about five dozen cookies and give free bottled water with business cards that say ‘God loves you.’”
In more than 20 years of preaching, Mawhorr said students have thrown food at and spit on him, but that has never discouraged him from preaching his message and continuing to visit college campuses in Ohio.
“Whenever something like that happens, we just tell them ‘God bless you’ because that’s what the Bible says we should do,” he said.
Every Monday for about 35 years, Peggy Gish, a local activist, has been standing in front of the courthouse on Court Street. What began as a trip with her late husband, Art, to the March on Washington in 1963 has turned into more than three decades of protesting and peaceful vigils.
“We got involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement in the 1960s,” she said. “At that point I was very much involved and passionate about alternatives to war and non-violence.”
Gish protests with other Athens residents, but they all don’t protest the same thing, with topics ranging from the environment to war to racial profiling.
“I think (our protests) help support local people in their own personal protests,” Gish said. “They hear and know that there’s other like-minded people out there and it gives them courage to take a stand.”
Richard McGinn, a retired Athens man, has been protesting with Gish for about eight years but prefers the word “vigil” — a stationary, peaceful demonstration in support of a particular cause — to describe his actions.
He carries a sign that reads “Prevent Future Wars.”
McGinn says he originally started because he opposed the Iraq war, but his mission has now shifted to protesting for peace in general.
“If I ever get the sense that we’re done and that peace has come to the earth and that the U.S. would stop attacking these countries and dropping bombs and unused arsenal, then I’ll stop,” McGinn said. “But here I am.”
AZ346610@ohiou.edu
@XanderZellner
