Under Gabriel Reynolds’ bed in his dorm at New England College, three white signs with black Sharpie letters are tucked away.

One reads, “to take away our 26th amendment, you’ll have to take away our 2nd.” Another says, “no forever war in Mexico.” And the third states, “Vivek, more like trainwreck.”

While Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur and Republican presidential candidate, spoke at a town hall event at the Henniker campus hosted by SiriusXM Radio last Friday, Reynolds propped his signs on a black patio chair and strummed his guitar from outside the auditorium.

It wasn’t the first time Reynolds, a sophomore at the small liberal arts college, stood outside a candidate town hall. Ahead of the 2022 New Hampshire Senate election, he gave Republican nominee Don Bolduc the same treatment.

“I really only do that when the candidate is somebody that I really think is bad,” he said in an interview with the Monitor. “I made the signs the day before. This was my plan for it because I really wanted to make him aware of how unpopular he is, and aware that students are going to speak out about it.”

But when Reynolds’ cacophony caught Ramaswamy’s attention on stage, the candidate proceeded to calmly and politely invite the 19-year-old student to come join the crowd inside.

“You can bring in the signs if you want, but who needs the signs when you have your own voice,” Vivek said to Reynolds. “Come on inside and we will give you a chance to ask a question.”

The invitation, which went viral on social media, was hailed as a moment of civility in a politically divided country.

Reynolds saw the situation differently.

“I knew very much right away that it was going to be a PR stunt. It was going to be a move for him to put on his TikTok and his Twitter and talk about how civil he is for surrounding a media-untrained college student with 50 cameras,” he said.

Their interaction is now captured in a 30-second TikTok video on the Ramaswamy campaign account.

“Would you like to come in and join us because I’ve noticed you’ve been very vocal,” Ramaswamy in the clip. “You are welcome.”

He then helps Reynolds buckle his guitar case as it’s carried inside.

The video now has more than 2 million views.

In rewatching the video, Reynolds notes that the campaign edited out all of his responses to the candidate while Ramaswamy plays the hero, he said.

“It only shows when I look like I have poor posture because I’m nervous because there’s 500 cameras around me,” he said. “And it has like sad piano music that makes me sound like a sad puppy that needs to be let inside from the rain.”

But Reynolds is not surprised by Ramaswamy’s stunt, he said. In fact, it’s not the first time they’ve met either.

When Ramaswamy visited New England College earlier in the campaign cycle, Reynolds was enrolled in an introductory journalism class. For an assignment, he was writing an article on how the opioid crisis has impacted Manchester and went to hear Ramaswamy speak, particularly curious about one of his policy platforms: deploying troops to Mexico to stop drug trafficking.

“That is one of those ideas that is so abhorrent to me that I wanted to like get up and scream in his face, he just made me angry. And, of course, I didn’t do that. There’s an element of civility to it,” he said.

Reynolds pressed him on the issue again at the town hall, he said. In response, which was not featured on the Sirius XM show, Ramaswamy said that the two could find common ground in their anti-war viewpoints.

The notion of agreeing, when Reynolds would reaffirm he is viscerally opposed to Ramaswamy’s policy, again was a publicity stunt, he said.

“It very much felt like he trivialized my view, in a way where he was looking to take away its teeth,” he said. “He wanted to very much water it down and be like, ‘oh, yeah, I totally agree with you.’ ”

It wasn’t the only question he dodged either, said Reynolds.

Ramaswamy has proposed raising the legal voting age in the United States to 25 years old unless young adults serve in the military or pass the county’s naturalization test required for new citizens.

But when pressed about what that would mean for student voters, like Reynolds who just became of voting age last year, Ramaswamy said the policy would reinstate patriotism in the country.

“That’s what we’re going to need to revive national pride is all of us have to embrace our civic duties and have skin in the game,” he said. “Citizenship isn’t about what you get, it’s about what you give. It’s about the duty you bear as a citizen. So I do think that we have a duty as citizens to know something about our country, to serve our country in some way.”

When that answer is given to a room of college students – the direct subset of people who would lose their voting power – an emphasis on restored patriotism misses the mark, said Reynolds.

“Just leaving it there, instead of addressing the elephant in the room – you’re restricting voting. That’s not going to be popular with us,” he said.

It’s actually motivated Reynolds, who says he is an independent voter, to become more engaged with voter registration and pro-democracy policy on campus. When he went to register to vote last year, he was told he was not able to as an out-of-state student (he’s from Rhode Island).

But in reality, he was able to change his domicile to New Hampshire to cast a ballot.

“Next time there’s voting, I am going to be picketing outside letting everybody know that they’re allowed to vote,” he said.

In the meantime, it’s been odd for the college student to watch his clip go viral on Ramaswamy’s social media account. As the video gained traction, he debated asking the campaign to remove his likeness from the clip.

Instead, he’s monitored the comments – many of which state false information about Reynolds, claiming that he doesn’t have a father, or he was paid by a campaign, with differing comments suggesting Ramaswamy himself or the Democratic Party, to stand outside the event.

“Nobody can decide on who’s funding, but someone is app arently,” he joked. “I haven’t seen any of that money. And if I was I’d be going to Cancun or something, I wouldn’t want to stay here. It’s like 40 degrees out now.”