Beloit College Cancels Speech After Student Protesters Block Stage With Furniture
“hosted by Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative student organization”
If you look below, you can see a video of the protesters piling up furniture on the stage to prevent the speech.
The Wisconsin State Journal reports:
Protests prompt Beloit College to cancel Erik Prince lecture
Beloit College canceled a lecture by former Blackwater head Erik Prince Wednesday after protesters disrupted the planned talk.
Students piled chairs onto the stage where Prince was to speak at the small liberal arts college and pounded on drums ahead of the planned address, which was to be hosted by Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative student organization.
The school announced the event was canceled at about 8:15 p.m.
Prince, a former Navy SEAL, rose to prominence during the Iraq War when his private security company received lucrative government contracts and came under scrutiny when several Blackwater employees were involved in the shooting deaths of 14 civilians in Baghdad in 2007.
More recently, Prince has advocated for replacing U.S. forces with private security operations in Afghanistan and Syria. He was interviewed as part of special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation about a meeting he had with an associate of Russian president Vladamir Putin in the Seychelles shortly before President Trump’s inauguration. Prince is the brother of Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
In a statement, Beloit College said “open dialogue on all topics is one of our core principles” and condemned the behavior of protesters.
Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, was supposed to speak at Beloit College more than 30 minutes ago. So far, protests seem to have delayed that. pic.twitter.com/JarR5EvVlF
— Angela Major (@angela_major_) March 28, 2019
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Comments
Gee, another small liberal arts school in Wisconsin on the heels of the Viterbo U story. Except this one is a state school. If the administration isn’t willing to kick ass – by which I mean throw protestors out of school – then they don’t have freedom of speech. What the administration knows, but these dumb kids don’t, is that Erik Prince is a major contributor to Hillsdale College. So he is willing and able to give money to colleges. But I’m guessing Beloit is off the list.
a RIOT every single one of them should be EXPELLED
These kids sign agreements when they accept admission regarding standards of student behavior. They need to update the language a little and start enforcing the snot out of it. Protests are fine; harassment and disruptions are not. Stand in your “designated free speech zones” with your little signs all day every day, but disrupt ANY campus speaking event or performance with excessive noise, blockades, etc. and face immediate expulsion. After the first even with 20 or so students identified and expelled, this kind of thing would be severely curtailed.
Free speech zones are unconstitutional.
That said, heckling, harassment, and disruption of the freedoms of others are not protected forms of speech.
I don’t understand why no one challenges this behavior.
Go up there and remove the chairs. When one of the snowflakes tries to lay a hand on you, remove it.