University of Oregon President Michael Schill was supposed to deliver a speech last week about a $50 million dollar gift to the school. Before he could even take the stage, the event was taken over by student protesters.
The protesters claimed they weren’t part of any single cause but chanted “Nothing about us without us” implying that they demanded to be part of any decisions made by the school.
Therese Bottomly reported at The Oregonian:
Student protesters disrupt University of Oregon’s announcement of $50 million giftThe University of Oregon president’s state of the university speech in Eugene was canceled Friday after a noisy group of protesters took over the stage where he was to announce an anonymous $50 million gift.President Michael Schill walked out of the auditorium without ever taking the podium. He said later in a video address that, while he supports free speech, he does not support protests that impede other people’s free speech rights.The loud group of a few dozen students did not have a cohesive message but did express concerns over tuition costs, with the leader referring repeatedly to “CEO Schill.”Charlie Landeros, who led the march onstage and spoke using a bullhorn, said the group represented UO students who felt their voices weren’t being heard by university administrators.”Over the summer there has been a huge proliferation of neo-Nazi propaganda plastered all over campus,” Landeros said, adding he feared it could escalate to a violent hate crime. “We’re here to stand against that.”
In the video below, you can see the protest, a few lame comments from the Senior Director of Public Affairs and then the protest organizer Charlie Landeros. He claims that the university belongs to the students because they pay tuition. Also note his use of the word resist:
Nick Roll of Inside Higher Ed has more:
Blocking a President From Talking“Nothing about us, without us,” video shows the students chanting. Signs read “Take back our campus” and “CEO Schill,” a reference to university President Michael Schill.The scene was similar to Virginia Tech’s State of the University speech earlier this month, where the president was interrupted by students protesting against the university’s employment of a graduate student accused of being a white supremacist. At the end of September, College of William & Mary students shouted down a speaker from the American Civil Liberties Union.The students at Oregon did not have a cohesive message, The Oregonian reported, but rather expressed a wide array of grievances, including issues with tuition.“We are no official, established group here at the University of Oregon, we are simply the students,” Charlie Landeros, a student and organizer of the protest, told reporters Friday. “We’re here because we believe that the university inherently belongs to the students, and over the years, the university has been taken away from us. We say no more.”
What we have here is a group of entitled, self-important brats. They do not own the university and if the administration had any courage or brains, they would have locked the students in, taken their names and expelled every single one of them.
Featured image via YouTube.
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