By Long Beach State, like many other universities or colleges, aims to create a safe environment for students and faculty to exchange ideas and perspectives.
The operative word, or words, in that sentence being “students and faculty.”
For the past couple of weeks, CSULB has been visited by outside individuals and groups who also want to join in on this exchange of ideas.
Without platforming any of them, it first started with the usual so-called “anti-abortion activists.”
It then escalated some more when a trio of misguided individuals armed with a “pro-mass deportation” sign and a couple of Youtubers made a surprise appearance on campus.
Then the day after that there was a man yelling bigoted and homophobic obscenities “in the name of God” to students who were walking by.
As much as they believe they come in peace, they usually invoke a not-so-favorable reaction in the student population that is within earshot.
Henceforth, I do not believe that these people and groups have a right to be on campus or access our safe space to share ideas.
I understand that the CSULB campus is public property and that anyone can have access to the campus. However, the presence of many of these types of groups and individuals can be hurtful to this exchange of ideas and information.
Everyone in the United States has the undeniable constitutional right to exercise their freedom of speech. However, the ideas and concepts these people bring are borderline or complete hate speech.
For example, holding a sign that says “pro-mass deportation” in itself is an attack on a substantial population of people on campus.
These recent groups that have visited our college are spreading messages, ideologies and ideas that are targeting marginalized populations of individuals and groups on our campus.
Allowing these outsiders to spread these messages of bigotry, xenophobia and anti-feminism turns that safe space of sharing ideas that CSULB tries to create into a hostile environment.
Students and faculty of CSULB come from diverse backgrounds and walks of life. CSULB is made up of LGBTQ+ and undocumented students and faculty and this school is a place for the campus population to escape from all of that.
The manner in which they conduct themselves is not productive to the exchange of ideas they are trying to have.
Yelling obscenities is not a productive way to convert someone to your religion. Telling someone they are going to hell because they got a medical procedure done to save their life is not how you start a conversation.
Showing up to our campus to make shock value content for the Internet about a devastating and unconstitutional crime that is happening to millions of undocumented Americans is not only pathetic, but is a spit in the face to students of color, students who are immigrants and children of immigrants.
Students form around the pro-mass deportation debate taking place near the Friendship Walk on Feb. 24 as YouTuber James Klüg spoke with Long Beach State students about immigration and their thoughts. Photo credit: Samuel Chacko
They believe they are acting accordingly to the message they are trying so hard to pass on, yet their lack of decorum and nuance shows us aggressively otherwise.
Now this begs the question, is their presence on campus a violation of any of the Time, Place, Manner rules (TPM) of CSULB?
That is met with a surprising, no.
The locations on campus in which these groups operated in were listed as “public places,” or in the case of the abortion archconservatives with their poster boards showing extremely graphic and necessary photos: their acts are listed as “tabling.”
Yet, I would like to argue that they should be.
My reasoning is something that I’ve continued to mention: these visitors make CSULB a hostile environment.
In each of the recent visitations from these outsiders, their presence visibly bothered the students of the university.
One student knocked down one of the abortion anti-activists’ signs. Students counter-protested the xenophobic content creators in their own makeshift ways. Not to mention, the man yelling hateful things near the psychology building was met by a crowd of jeers and a minor (and expensive) barrage of eggs.
This alone should tell university administrators that these people should not have full power to show up on campus and purposely make a scene.
In the current sociopolitical climate, Americans are worrying more about the loss of the civil liberties they are constantly facing every single day. That is something that many in the student population of CSULB do not take lightly.
The officials have not been making an effort to stop the riling up of students because they are also allowing visitors to use the campus as a platform for reactions.
There needs to be a policy that escorts these visitors off campus once the behavior is enraging students at an extremely distracting level.
Otherwise, there is no hope for these people to realize that their opinions are not to be accepted here if they are solely seeking a reaction from the public and some videos documenting it.
All it takes is one of these visitors to bring the wrong message or say the wrong thing to the wrong group of students for there to be a sale on pitchforks and torches at the bookstore.
