With almost 500 students packed into the Ohio Union Performance Hall and hundreds more flooding out into the main hall, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke addressed as many as he could through an impromptu speech before his scheduled campaign stop at Ohio State Tuesday evening.

An estimated 900 students attended O’Rourke’s town hall event, Abe Ravok, a member of O’Rourke’s team campaign, said. O’Rourke spoke on education, immigration, gun rights and took questions from the audience.

“I’m here at Ohio State to listen and learn from people who are already leading on the issues that I care most about,” O’Rourke told The Lantern. 

He added that he does not want to be a candidate that “lectures” to students. 

“I just want to make sure that they are getting an opportunity to lead,” he said.

During his speech, O’Rourke laid out his plan for addressing student loan problems by making the first two years of public universities and community colleges free. For lower- and middle-income students, all four years would be debt-free. 

Debt-free, O’Rourke emphasized, includes not only tuition, but all other costs that students take on during college.

This contrasts with the plans of top-three candidate Bernie Sanders, who has proposed tuition-free public college.

Democratic candidate, Beto O’Rourke, speaks with the media after an event at the Ohio Union on Sept. 24. Credit: Amal Saeed | Photo Editor

To introduce his position on immigration, O’Rourke spoke about his hometown of El Paso, Texas. El Paso is on the United States-Mexico border, and he explained the close relationship between his town and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, just across the border.

O’Rourke said El Paso is one of the safest cities in the U.S. because of the influence of immigrants, and the recent shooting in the city was based on racism from within the country. He said President Trump’s rhetoric toward immigrants brought out that racism.

Laura Loya, a graduate student in the Moritz School of Law who attended the speech said she grew up in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, and she agreed with O’Rourke’s description of El Paso as a safe city. Since the shooting, however, Loya said the city has only been a source of negative news.

“It’s very sad because we were targeted because of our race, our ethnicity,” Loya said.

O’Rourke spoke about his gun control plan during the speech. He included policies supported by most of his Democratic contenders, such as universal background checks, red-flag laws and ending the sale of weapons of war, but with the addition of his buy-back plan. The plan would force assault weapon owners to sell their guns to the government. He said he would support this plan despite any political consequences.

“We have turned our backs on those who need us the most; we have taught our children that political consequences, our fortunes in the next election, our careers as politicians, are more dear to us than are their lives,” O’Rourke said. “As a father of those three kids in El Paso, Texas, I cannot look them in the eye, I cannot look at myself in the mirror, I cannot face their judgement unless I’ve done the right thing while there is still time.”

Nate Turner, a fourth-year in computer science and engineering and the president of Turning Point at Ohio State, said in an email that he thinks O’Rourke’s plan will not actually reduce crime. He compared it to the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, which he said studies show had little effect on the crime rate.

“Those weapons bans won’t work. They just put ordinary people at risk and give evil people an incentive to get their weapons and commit acts of terror. The best option is to give people the equipment to best defend themselves in the case of a shooter, or some other evil person, like a robber, rapist, home invader, etc.,” Turner said.

Loya said she supports O’Rourke’s plan to introduce a mandatory buy-back program for assault weapons.

“I don’t know why people here in America feel like [the government] is taking something away from them that is so precious,” she said. “I don’t think it’s necessary for someone to have such an easy opportunity to destroy so many people in such little time.”

O’Rourke will be a participant in the Oct. 15 Democratic debate at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio.