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After the violent right-wing group Patriot Prayer announced a Monday protest at Clark College in Vancouver, Wash., the school has decided to close for the day.
"Given the history of violence associated with this group, as well as with the groups that often appear in reaction to it," president Bob Knight wrote in a statement, "we feel that suspending operations is our most prudent course of action."
Patriot Prayer's Oct. 22 rally, The Columbian first reported, is in protest of a Washington ballot item—Initiative 1639—which would raise the legal age for purchasing a semi-automatic rifle from 18 to 21, require gun-safety training before purchase and instate a 10-day waiting period before the sale could be completed.
Joey Gibson, the group's leader, told The Columbian that around 40 protesters plan to show up at Clark College and Washington State University Vancouver with fliers on Monday and Tuesday.
"They're not going to stop us talking to students. It's not going to happen," Gibson said.
In his statement on Clark College's planned closure, president Knight cautions people against being on campus on Monday.
"We realize this action is not a permanent solution to protecting our community from an increasingly violent political climate," he says. "We are in the process of reviewing and revising our incident response protocol to better respond to the kinds of risks we are seeing present at educational institutions across the country."
The school's cancellation comes a week after Patriot Prayer's and antifa's bloody brawl in downtown Portland. During the Oct. 13 protest, it has since been revealed, Portland police found a group of Patriot Prayer supporters with a "cache of firearms," atop the roof of a downtown parking garage.
The discovery, along with the amplifying of political violence in Portland, has pushed Mayor Ted Wheeler to propose emergency rules for keeping warring groups from beating each other bloody in the streets.