Students at the University of California, Santa Barbara, recently held an anti-racism rally in response to pro-Trump chalk messages that appeared throughout the campus in early April.
Student organizers of the “Million Student March” at UCSB claimed that the “heinous, racist, sexist, Islamophobic, anti-semitic, homophobic, and transphobic chalk statements” lead “to an intensification of campus climate.” As a sequel to a march in November 2015, the students organized a demonstration to protest the chalkings and to advocate for progressive ideals popular with millennials such as free public colleges.
In response to the chalkings, several hundred students, faculty, and community members marched from UCSB’s Davidson Library to People’s Park is Isla Vista. The demonstrators demanded free tuition at public universities, university divestment from prisons, and a $15 minimum wage for all university jobs.
The rally took place on the heels of a university-wide email from Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Margaret Klawunn that claimed the “intolerance contained in” the chalkings were “inconsistent with [the university’s] core values…and commitment to maintaining an inclusive and safe learning environment for every member of the UCSB community.”
A group of pro-Trump students challenged the demonstrators and marched down the streets of Isla Vista with their own signs. When they tried to speak with the student demonstrators, they were shouted down.
One of the marchers told a Trump supporter that his “white supremacist and imperialist domination of the world is not appreciated on [UCSB’s] campus.” When pressed for an example of Trump’s racism, the student refused to respond.
One of the demonstrators suggested that the pro-Trump students were unfeeling and incapable of compassion. He encouraged his fellow demonstrators to “hug” the pro-Trump students because “they need to be shown how to do it, not told how to do it.”
Although the event is several weeks away, UCSB students are already protesting Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos’ scheduled event at the University on May 26th.
Tom Ciccotta writes about Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity for Breitbart. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or on Facebook. You can email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com
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