A conservative student from Park City High School in Utah is speaking out after a fellow student released bear spray inside the school’s lecture hall ahead of a Turning Point USA event. The incident resulted in nearly twenty students and staff members being treated by medical professionals, and one person hospitalized.

One Park City High School (PCHS) student is facing 18 criminal charges after releasing bear spray inside the school’s lecture hall hours before a Turning Point USA event. The chemicals from the bear spray ended up injuring nearly twenty students and staff members, and sending one person to the hospital.

Conservative PCHS student and Turning Point USA member Jonathan Mount — who had also been injured as a result of the bear spray incident — shared his story in a recent op-ed with Park Record. In his piece, the conservative student shared his personal story, and extended a hand of forgiveness, offering the suspect the chance to meet with him and spend time with his family.

“I am one of the kids who was sickened by bear spray at Park City High School,” said the student, introducing himself in his op-ed, “I am Jewish and gay, and also a conservative who is a member of the group that was scheduled to host an event in the PCHS lecture hall and may have been targeted by the release.”

“I would like to share my story,” said Mount, who then went on to divulge the details of his family background, and why he believes in conservative values.

“My mother is Jewish,” said Mount, “Her family escaped persecution by socialists in Germany and communists in Russia, luckily before World War II. My father’s family is from a poor, rural area in Alabama. His grandparents were sharecroppers. His parents grew up picking cotton and didn’t have electricity or running water.”

The student then shared how his mother ended up becoming an orthodontist, while his father, at age seventeen, “got on a Greyhound bus alone and took the 24-hour trip to Boston to enroll in MIT,” and later survived the 9/11 terrorist attacks, “only to die eight years later from what some have labeled a ‘9/11 related illness,’ although we will never know that for sure.”

The student, who is very proud of his parents, described them as “the poster children for the American dream,” who paid it forward with donations to educational organizations to help children who are struggling. “We believe we are good people, and, I think, most people who know us would say the same,” said Mount.

“Yet my brothers and I have been called racists and Nazis in our respective schools, including here at PCHS,” continued the student, “Why? Because we believe the United States is the greatest country in the world. Because we believe capitalism, while not perfect, has lifted hundreds of millions of people around the world out of poverty.”

“And hundreds of millions have been oppressed or murdered in the name of socialism and communism, added Mount, “Because we believe that people should be rewarded for hard work and perseverance, not handed things on a silver platter. Because we believe that the 1st Amendment applies to all speech, including those who call Jewish-Americans like ourselves Nazis.”

“Because we believe that the 2nd Amendment is a right, and most gun owners are law-abiding citizens,” continued the student, “Because we believe that there is a crisis at our southern border. Because we believe that radical Islamic extremists should be called out by name. Because we don’t believe illegal immigrants should have the right to vote.”

Mount concluded his piece by stating that “the possibility that a student sought to stifle free speech at PCHS by targeting a club hosting a conservative speaker” hurt more than the pain he had endured from the bear spray chemicals, but that nonetheless, he would like to invite the student and his family to spend time with him and his family.

“I think that would do more to ‘teach him a lesson’ than anything the courts could order.”

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo and on Instagram.