March for Our Lives at NC State joined Change the Ref with a bus parked in Wolf Plaza on Thursday as part of its 2024 U.S. road tour to raise gun violence awareness and promote preventive legislation.
Ryn Flood, a fourth-year studying environmental sciences and president of March for Our Lives at NC State, said Change the Ref was founded a month after the Parkland high school shooting on Feb. 14, 2018.
“It was two parents who lost their son,” Flood said. “They actually took his voice and six other voices of students involved in gun violence and used AI to recreate them to make phone calls to our representatives to call for change.”
Flood stood next to a poster and table promoting March for Our Lives, which they initially became involved with following the shooting of Zijie Yan on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus. Behind them was the Change the Ref school bus, operated and driven by the founders of Change The Ref, Manuel and Patricia Oliver, who lost their son, Joaquin.
“It stands for ‘Change the referee,’ because he used to play basketball,” Patricia Oliver said. “He loved basketball. Sometimes he was complaining about his referee not doing the right calls when he wanted to. Bringing memories, bringing situations together, we came out with Change the Ref.”
The bus displayed signs reading “Enough Is Enough,” “Stop Gun Violence” and “Save Lives,” printed underneath several tattered American flags draped from the bus’ roof. QR codes advertised The Shotline, a website sending AI voice recreations of gun violence victims to Congress members, one being Joaquin Oliver.
“We work a lot with the advertising industry,” Patricia Oliver said. “They come to us with different projects. This is one of the projects we represented last year. We work on the voices because it’s complex to bring the real voice together. It took a lot of time to get the right Joaquin voice. This is the real Joaquin voice. It is absolutely accurate.”
Gaby Salazar, national organizing director for March for Our Lives, shared her experience relating to gun violence.
“While I was a freshman on my campus in Tallahassee, there was a gunman that came on my campus,” Salazar said. “We’re no strangers to this. I feel like you can ask anyone and they’ll have a direct or indirect connection to the issue. As we saw yesterday, nothing is changing.”
Change the Ref’s visit occurred a day after a shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, which killed two students, two teachers and injured nine others. The bus was scheduled to visit campus before the shooting.
“We’ve been on the road for a month,” Patricia Oliver said. “We were leaving an interview with CNN on our way to pick up the bus and the shooting was happening. I think we need strong and federal background checks. Every year we have to renew our registration for our cars, we need to do the same with background checks.”
Flood said a major point of the campaign was to discuss the accessibility around gun registration.
“We’re not trying to take your guns, we’re trying to make it more lawful,” Flood said. “You have a car, but you have all these rules you have to follow to drive that car. We’re talking about background checks, making sure people have to take classes like how to lock up their gun, how to use it properly as well as limiting the access to automatic weaponry.”
Salazar said gun control legislation has garnered bipartisan support and must be put in place to prevent shootings like the one at Apalachee High School.
“Assault weapons ban, background checks — they’ve had bipartisan support for many, many years now,” Salazar said. “It’s just a matter of passing the bare minimum so what happened at Apalachee High School won’t happen again.”
Patricia Oliver said Change the Ref’s stop at NC State connects with her family’s own experience.
“Change the Ref was made to do better for each and every family around the country,” Patricia Oliver said. “We don’t want anyone to go through this situation of having lost your loved ones to gun violence because it’s unfair. It’s very preventable, and we all have to be part of the solution.”
