Last Wednesday the conservative group on UNO's campus, Turning Point USA, held a free speech event. The club had giant beach ball in which students could write whatever they wanted on it without fear of any consequences. The statements written on the ball ranged from "Trump=Hitler" to hilarious messages such as "Feminism is Cancer". This free speech ball event received quite a bit of positive feedback and a few negative ones of course.
How it works is that if you are upset by a message on the ball then you can take a marker and write a counter argument. You do not have the right to silence someone, even if you disagree with what they have to say. However some extremely sensitive students did not think this way. One student came by and wrote an anti-Semitic message on the ball. The message read "Jews don't deserve rights". That is clearly an awful statement. I am very much Pro-Israel and I find that statement disgusting. Did I disagree with the statement? Of course I did, but it was an opinion and not a direct threat so it stays on the ball.
Shortly after, these two students came over to questio
n me why I kept the message on the ball and I did not cross it out. I said that even though it is a horrible statement, it is still protected. They said that it is not protected, it is slander. Slander is when someone tells one or more persons an untruth about another, which untruth will harm the reputation of the person or persons being defamed. This horrible statement was someone's opinion about a group, not slander.
I asked the two students if someone was physically harmed by the statement written on the ball and they ignorantly replied "yes". Another person came up and altered the statement to read "Jews don't deserve to lose rights", yet this still did not make the other students happy. Since I was not going to remove the statement, the beta male decided to report me to UNO security for a disturbance. UNO security came over and I explained what happened. They did not stay long since they knew the reason they came over was complete nonsense.
The event turned out to be a huge success, faculty and students alike all had a great time writing their messages on the ball. Free speech does not exist on many campuses and we do this to promote our 1st Amendment rights. These overly sensitive students need to learn that words are not violence and you do not have the right to shut down someone else's opinion because it does not line up with yours. I am not defending the statement that was written, I am only defending his right to say it. The University of Nebraska at Omaha needs to tell these students to grow up. If you are upset by words written on a giant beach ball, then you should not be in college.
