Last Thursday around noontime a religious group not affiliated with TCNJ, called The Bible Believers, infiltrated campus to preach their opinions on abortion, the LGBTQ people, the Muslim religion, and women.
Over the course of two hours, they yelled various hateful comments at the swarm of students surrounding them. They screamed at female students, saying, “women should not be on college campuses unless they’re taking a cooking class,” for example. Their solution to prevent abortions? They said, “stop being whores.” They verbally attacked a sorority group raising money for their philanthropy by yelling, “close your legs! You won’t be sisters forever, you whores.”
The Muslim Student Association happened to be in Alumni Grove at the same time as the protesters, doing a fundraising event for orphans, when this hateful group attacked their religion, simply because they had different beliefs.
These are only a few examples of the aggressive and unruly behavior that unfolded on Thursday. The group berated several other categorizes of people based on their philosophy of doing “God’s work”.
I went to Catholic school for 11 years. Let me tell you, this is not God’s work. God’s work is accepting everyone for who they are because, as we were taught in the Bible, “God loves everyone,” even the sinner in all of us.
Naturally, the student population took the belittlement of its community well. They rallied together to counter-protest this degrading group and havoc erupted.
While The Bible Believers claimed to be advocating for their beliefs, it seemed their sole purpose on campus was to incite violence. Their signs that targeted “homos, whores, porno freaks, masturbators, money lovers, witches, liars, Muslims, drunks, sissies, the Pope, ankle biters, gangsters, and whoremongers” naturally drew in an insane crowd to defend themselves and their peers for the aggressive and hateful behavior.
But why should TCNJ students have to pause their studies to defend themselves? Why was this sort of hateful protest allowed?
People were outraged to find that the college permitted this group to enter campus and disparage its students. However, the First Amendment of the Constitution grants freedom of speech and assembly, and the college abides by constitutionally protected speech.
The college also has a “Use of Campus Property” policy which protects groups from using the campus for protests like this one. Yet, when looking closely into the policy, there are many questionable restrictions and permutations.
It states, “an overriding principle of this Policy is that Campus Property may not be used in a manner which unduly interferes with the safety and security of the campus or the mission of the College…or otherwise disrupts the normal activities for and to which Campus Property is intended and dedicated.”
The college was under the impression that The Bible Believers would only be on campus to “preach the gospel,” and they were unaware of the group’s harmful intent. The Bible Believers are notorious for inciting violence for the purpose of suing on the different college campuses they visit. If the school had done research on the group prior to approval, they would have been made aware of this.
At one point during the protest, there was a physical altercation with a student and a member of the group. Perhaps the disagreement didn’t reach the point of being a “safety hazard,” but it still caused concern. After seeing the chaos that erupted, the college sent out an email apologizing for the “disruption of our normal activities.”
Now, the students of TCNJ are left to ponder what our constitutional rights on campus really are. On one hand, we all have messages we wish to spread and love our ability to share them. Yet, on the other, it is jarring that we entertain hate speech in our community.
Certain members of the student population felt slighted by the college’s decision to let an organization, of which they knew little about, onto the campus to go against its own policy. Some protested, asking, “why is it that the school allows this degradation of its students if they won’t even allow unaffiliated fraternities the ability to table for charity?” Fraternities such as Sigma Pi and Phi Kappa Tau. I must admit it seems a little hypocritical and counterproductive to openly invite unknown groups onto campus over actual students of the school with much warmer intentions.
The “Use of Campus Property” Policy dictates, “This Policy affords Non-College Users certain prescribed rights to use Campus Property. However, those rights are more limited than those afforded to College Users”; yet, it isn’t fully true. These unaffiliated organizations are not allowed the right to assemble on campus to raise money and awareness for suicide prevention, TCNJam, and other philanthropic organizations. I suppose the college follows their statute that a “College User” by definition only includes “currently enrolled students, faculty, staff, and affiliated groups.” However, on this same standard, these unaffiliated organizations could then be classified as “Non-College Users” as this group is defined by being “any Users who are not identified as College Users”. With this mentality, those unaffiliated fraternities should have the same rights as “Non-College Users” and they would not abuse the school’s public property such as The Bible Believers did.
Yes, there is certainly a question of ethics when it comes to our First Amendment rights, but it is time the college chose which side it is on when allowing certain organized groups onto this campus.