A handful of BGSU students became involved in north Toledo riots Saturday, but organized campus groups avoided the chaos in the neighborhood around Woodward High School.

Freshman Tyler Wittenmyer found himself in the middle of the riot, after traveling to Toledo with friends to protest the Nazi march.

What began with a small agitated crowd shouting back against 14 Nazi chants of “white power,” escalated into mob of hundreds of angry residents. The crowd’s frustration shifted away from the Nazis, when the Nazi march was canceled and they were escorted out of the neighborhood safely by police. Instead, the crowd targeted police, whom they attacked by throwing jagged cement pieces.

“I knew there was a big potential of violence, or at least a moderate potential of violence,” Wittenmyer said. “I didn’t expect necessarily for the entire community to correlate between Nazis and police.”

When police used tear gas to control the crowd, Wittenmyer and his friends were affected by the spray. One friend was sprayed so severely that he developed a nose bleed.

Senior Bianca Hutchinson’s grandmother lives in the neighborhood on Mulberry Street. The home is also just a block away from where a building was set on fire by gang members. Hutchinson’s grandmother told her that the inside of her house became cloudy with tear gas, when a relative rushed through the front door to avoid the spray.

“My grandma said it wasn’t enough [tear gas] to hurt her or anything,” she said. “But I would imagine other residents, if their windows were open, or who knows, it probably would have been a big problem.”

Hutchinson was not in Toledo during the riot. She is the president of BAMN, a multicultural group also known as the “coalition to defend affirmative action and integration.” The group decided not to travel to Toledo to protest the Nazi march, although in the past they’ve traveled as far as Washington, DC for political rallies.

She worried about her grandmother on Saturday, and wished the Nazis had protested somewhere other than her relative’s neighborhood. But Hutchinson and members of BAMN do not feel that the group should have been silenced.

“We don’t agree with it, by no means at all, but we won’t take away their right [to speak],” she said.

Another campus group was absent from the speak-out against the Nazis. Members of the Black Student Union did no protest attend because they were at the Millions More March in Washington, DC. The event was held in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Million Man March, according to BSU president Tawana Jackson.

The campus chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People didn’t go to Toledo either. Jessica Wilson, public relations for NAACP on campus, spoke on behalf of her group.

“We feel that by attending the march we would be giving them an audience and we don’t want to give them an audience,” Wilson said.

The Latino Student Union had similar reasons for avoiding the protests.

“[Nazis] just make a lot of noise. And I just don’t want to give them that level of attention,” said Brian Dixon, who is the political action chair of LSU. “For groups like that, they don’t have any standing, they don’t have any power to change the law. Hate doesn’t rule the law … you don’t fight hate with hate.”

Sophomore Joe Aufenthie is proud of his decision to protest the Nazis.

“And I think it’s really important, not to have a passive voice,” he said. “You need to have an active voice to have change. I had an active voice, and I think that mattered.”

Despite the potential for violence, Aufenthie chanted with a small student group of socialists from Kent State, who he called “the good kind of socialists – not racists.” Aufenthie was careful to specify what kind of socialists some protesters were because the Nazi group is officially known as the “National Socialist Movement.”

Aufenthie managed to leave the area before the crowd became engaged in the violent riot.

“The Nazis would have outnumbered the people if people didn’t show up,” Aufenthie said.

Bill White, spokesman for the Nazi group NSM, told The BG News that 80 members showed up to march in the Toledo neighborhood. However, only 14 actually stood in formation Saturday, shouting Nazi chants at protesters. White claimed that most of the members could not get through barricades around the high school, in part because protesters blocked the entrances.

If the NSM Nazis came to Bowling Green, BGSU freshman Wittenmyer said he wouldn’t expect a violent reaction like the riot in Toledo on Saturday. But even if another Nazi visit would be peaceful, “don’t come to my neighborhood,” said Wittenmyer of the Nazis.