Last week, the Breitbart Technology editor, Milo Yiannopoulos, visited Rutgers University and sh*t hit the fan. I’m not sure who thought that bringing him in would go well since the school couldn’t even welcome Condoleezza Rice, the first African-American woman ever to be appointed Secretary of State, as a commencement speaker two years ago, but I was eager to watch anyway.
The topic of his speech is bound to stir up some controversy alone. To the protestors: let me start out by making it clear that I am not on your side. Like, not even a little bit. But I do understand that with the topic of a speech being “How the Progressive Left Has Destroyed American Education,” it was bound to hurt your feelings. If I were a part of the progressive Left, then my feelings would be hurt, too. However, your protest is everything that is wrong with your group, and all you did was prove Yiannopoulos’ point at that conference.
Milo Yiannopoulos is traveling the country giving this speech at stops in different states and decided to begin his tour at Rutgers University. His message is that by attempting to control what people say through extreme political correctness, the right to free speech is actually being smothered. And therefore, by association, people are not expressing their opinions because they know that someone will get offended, and ideas are not being debated and discussed. Instead, we know the progressive Left’s side of the argument and they smother out any opposition.
Well, that was bound to strike up some protests when he came to speak at our school, and luckily, they did not prove him wrong. This is what happened:
It’s hard for me to watch that video. I do have to say that I am impressed that you all did exercise your right to protest when something is happening that contradicts your belief. The only problem is that there was a Q&A section of the event where you could have waited your turn, gotten the microphone and shouted hateful things at him then. Wouldn’t it have been amazing if you had proven him wrong by sitting respectfully through what he had to say and not interrupted by yelling in the middle of his sentence and trying to smother him out, like exactly what he’s saying? I know you stormed out before the Q&A, though, and that one of you punched another student in the face because you didn't like what he was saying to you. I think it's unfair that you're allowed to do that, but Yiannopoulos wasn't allowed to punch you in the face because that would be an abomination.
I’m not much of a protester, myself, mostly because the types of protests that happen at my university are filled with disruptive chanting that gets nothing accomplished, but I feel that whoever planned this did not think this one through. I think that your protest shows that you are completely unaware of Yiannopoulos’ message. He isn’t against your movements; he knows that Black Lives Matter and feminism are important issues. He’s against the way that you take over a conversation completely to the point where you shut down the other person’s opinion completely by deeming them “hateful.” I hope you can see that Milo Yiannopoulos is not against minorities. But once you play the “hateful” card, the conversation is over. There’s no coming back from that.
Through my relationships I’ve had over the years, the one thing I’ve learned is that if you want to fix a problem, then a mature and open dialogue has to occur. Both sides have to be heard and then you can figure anything out because you are both intelligent and dedicated to fixing the problem. Clearly, both sides have intelligent people. I hope that one day, the open dialogue regarding political correctness (which is super important, but is being fought for in all the wrong ways) can occur, too.
