What I saw unfolding before my eyes on Oct. 25 started to look like yet another recent headline. Young, upstanding college students silencing another person who dares to believe the first amendment is real. 

Does freedom of speech truly apply to everyone or does this freedom only apply when people espouse views similar to your own? Religious Demonstrator Matt Bourgault decided to aggressively preach his personal religious views. He was met with anything but tolerant champions of the cause for freedom and peace. Instead, he was met with intense hatred, malicious language, and objects being hurled at him. 

In contrast to what I witnessed, I’ve read the President’s email, as well as other commentary on the event. Does anyone but me see a problem here? Has our University truly found itself in such dire straits that it no longer understands the grounds upon which it was founded? The very students that claim to stand for peace and freedom were the same ones’ throwing full water bottles at the speaker, spitting on him, pushing him, shouting sexual obscenities about him and his family, throwing ice at him, shoving their middle fingers in his face, as well as many other “peaceful” gestures. Are these the people promoting freedom and peace?

If you cannot openly discuss your personal views on a college campus where open discourse is necessary, then where can you? Isn’t the point of college life to invite differing viewpoints and debate? 

There was the widely held view that students in fact allowed him to speak. Standing in the inner circle that closed around him and grew tighter each minute, no one truly had any interest in conversing with him. Posts on social media regurgitated the same words I heard but in a different order, “Shippensburg unified against a hateful radical Christian.” It is amazing to me that college students across the country, including many at Shippensburg, are following a political agenda and embracing censorship and intimidation when dealing with opposing views. 

Real life is not a safe space where the company around you will always hold the same values as your own. If the situation were flipped and you were the one being encroached upon and silenced, how would you feel about the treatment received?

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