On February 25, an author, radio host, Breitbart contributor, and editor in chief of The Daily Wire Ben Shapiro gave a speech at CSULA called When Diversity Becomes A Problem as part of a Young America’s Foundation sponsored tour. The message of the speech was about the importance of diversity of opinion. It was a great, well thought out, and passionate speech. It is my favorite speech he has given so far. I would have been there if I didn’t have other plans that day, but I will not be writing about the speech. I’m writing about the reaction to the speech, before, during and after – in that order.

Before the speech happened, several students ignorantly claimed that having Shapiro’s speech would be harmful to their mental health, as if the point of college wasn’t to hear different ideas and to grow and come up with opinions of their own. A teacher on campus Robert Weide wanted to fight the students who set up the event at the school gym, called campus police on the students and tore down their posters promoting the event and later wrote a sign outside his office saying  “The best response to a micro aggression is a macro aggression”. In other words “I don’t like what you have to say, so I should have the right to harm you” fascism at its finest.

Another teacher Melina Abdullah posted about the event on Twitter asking what they should do about it and someone commented saying they had an idea but it involved physically harming Shapiro. And lastly a couple protestors tried to stop Breitbart journalist Adelle Nazarian from reporting by threatening to “beat the piss out of her” and take her phone, another hit her phone with his cone.

When the speech started not all participants were inside because protestors locked arms and blocked the doors and fire escapes (which is illegal). Because of the actions of these protestors, some people weren’t able to get inside to see the speech. Why these students couldn’t be moved by campus security so they weren’t denying speech attendees their right to see the speech, or even better, why the students couldn’t comprehend the idea of protesting without being authoritarian fascists by stopping people from seeing the speech, I don’t know.

Later on during the speech, one of the protestors pulled the fire alarm in an attempt to silence Shapiro (also illegal) which failed to stop the event.

After the speech, several fights broke out and Shapiro had to be escorted to his car and off campus by police in order to ensure his safety from a mob of angry protestors. One of the teachers mentioned earlier, Melina Abdullah made a claim on her Twitter about a speech attendee bringing a rifle onto campus which turned out to be completely false. A writer for the CSULA campus online newspaper ignorantly compared Shapiro to the KKK.

This is a good example of the daily fight between Political Correctness run wild and our Constitutional right to free speech. I expected resistance and protesting, but I never would have thought they would go as far as they did. All of this madness and mayhem over a speech a bunch of whiny college students didn’t like. Don’t get me wrong, these kids have the right to protest whatever they want, but they took it way too far. I don’t care what race, political ideology, or any other kind of difference you are, pulling fire alarms to silence people, attacking journalists, slandering those you disagree with and making threats of violence is never okay. Ever.

I can’t believe in 2016, this kind of morally reprehensible behavior is acceptable in America. These students didn’t even know what they were protesting against. No one bothered to look up Shapiro to see what he has written in the past. If they had done so, they would know he isn’t racist. They didn’t bother to listen to the speech and ask questions during the Q & A section. Anyone who did this could have expressed their concerns or better yet learned something. They would have let them in.

Shapiro doesn’t bite. He would have talked to them and answered any questions they might have had as long as they did so in a way that was civil. And no one bothered to think that maybe, just maybe, threatening physical violence on with whom you disagree with is an evil thing to do and should have no place on a college campus.

I applaud the brave students who helped plan and promote this event. They shouldn’t have had to go through what they went through to make this event happen. And I also applaud Ben Shapiro, for taking the time to visit college campuses to bring diversity of opinion. We need more people like him.

What happened to tolerance? Or value of different opinions and having civilized discussions? The ability to be able to have civilized conversations with people whom you disagree with is the birthplace of good ideas. Everyone has a different opinion and can bring a new perspective to the table or make you think about something from a different angle. This is what makes the right to free speech so important and something worth defending.