According to Layla Joseph, she and a group had written chalk messages on the sidewalks along Main Street and Elm Street on Saturday morning, prior to the planned Independence Day festivities. Submitted Photo.

Tracy Leturgey

SLIPPERY ROCK — Mayor Jondavid Longo responded to the confrontation he was involved in at the borough’s Independence Day parade Saturday where university students were protesting the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Slippery Rock University students Layla Joseph and Cassie Dietrich said they experienced a confrontation with Longo over messages they wrote in chalk protesting the decision, which gives rights regarding abortion to individual states.

Joseph said at Tuesday’s borough council meeting that Longo approached her and Dietrich with a police officer in the farmers’ market parking lot, where profane gestures were exchanged, according to both Joseph and Longo.

“It felt like Mayor Longo was trying to pressure the police officer with criminally charging us,” Joseph said Tuesday. “Later on, Mayor Longo posted misinformation about the protest online and mocked my peers and I for standing up for what we believe.”

Longo said during the meeting that he was offended by the placing of upside down American flags on a veterans memorial site in the borough, and that the event had been planned to be inviting to families and children.

“That in and of itself on our nation's Independence Day and as a veteran is vulgar to me," he said. "You cannot fault me for wanting to put on an event that most people in this room participated in and for there to be vulgarities of differing things.”

After the meeting, Longo said the claims made by Joseph and Dietrich were “totally baseless.”

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