Chris Armstrong said Wednesday that the recent media spotlight about gay teens bullied to death had motivated him to speak up about his own bullying experience.

Armstrong, 21, became the subject of ongoing attacks by Assistant Michigan Attorney General Andrew Shirvell after he was elected president of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor Student Assembly in April. Armstrong is believed to be the first openly gay student to hold the post.

Shirvell criticized and belittled Armstrong at Chris Armstrong Watch, a website he runs, now sealed off behind a password protected page.

“Given what's happened in the past week, and given the suicides that have happened in the past few weeks, it's been, it's been – it's hard not to say something,” Armstrong told Anderson Cooper, host of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360.

“I felt like it was important for me to speak out as well just because I think that it's important for them to understand that things can get better. And it's important to know you can reach out in your community, you can reach out to friends and they can support you,” he added.

At his blog, Shirvell accused Armstrong of preying on impressionable freshman, of being “Satan's representative on the student assembly,” and labeled Armstrong a Nazi, a racist, a liar and an elitist.

He begins a recent post titled OUTRAGE ALERT: Armstrong Invites U of M Freshman to Join the Homosexual Lifestyle with: “Parents of University of Michigan freshmen beware: the University's first openly 'gay' student body president, Chris Armstrong, is actively recruiting your sons and daughters to join the homosexual 'lifestyle.'”

“It seems that the aim of this 'party' is to liquor-up underage freshmen and promote homosexual activity,” he writes in another post.

After the University of Michigan banned Shirvell from its campus and Armstrong filed a personal protection order against him, the University of Michigan alum decided to take a personal leave from the attorney general's office.

But while Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, a Republican, initially defended his employee's actions – “He's clearly a bully. But is that protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution? Yes.” – he now reasons that the university's actions, among other things, justify disciplinary action.