A student at the University of Minnesota Duluth was captured on video admitting to tearing down Turning Point USA posters, which read, “I love America.”
A member of the school’s Turning Point USA group confronted a student who tore down posters at the University of Minnesota Duluth, according to a report by Campus Reform. The student admitted to tearing down at least four TPUSA posters, one of which, simply read, “I love America.”
When asked by fellow student and TPUSA member Caleb Anderson if he loved America, the vandal responded, “No.” The incident was caught on video.
Watch below:
“I wanted to ask why you ripped down our TPUSA poster today,” said Anderson in the video.
“I don’t support you,” affirmed the student. “I don’t want to see [the poster] on campus.”
“So that gives you a right to destruction of property?”
“That’s not destruction of property, dude.”
The vandal added that he did not consider the tearing down of TPUSA posters to be a violation of his peers’ First Amendment rights.
“Do you support free speech on college campuses?” asked Anderson.
“I’d like to say, yeah.”
“So you support free speech as long as it’s not TPUSA?”
“I support free speech as it relates to government,” responded the vandal, “but I don’t think that prohibits other people from limiting your free speech.”
Anderson then informed the student that he and his group have been working hard to spread their message, and extended an invite for the student to come to a TPUSA meeting to express his differing views, rather than tearing down the conservative group’s posters.
“It’s just a little bit disappointing that we’ve been putting in a lot of hard work to try to spread our message,” said Anderson. “If you disagree with us, we welcome you to our meetings. We want you to come to our meetings if there’s something that you disagree with us on. But at the same time, we would just ask that you don’t rip down our posters.”
“You’re probably gonna still continue doing it anyways,” Anderson continued, “but we want you not to do that. I mean, that discourages other people — we don’t go around and disrespect any other people’s property, we don’t rip it down off the wall. So I just ask that if you’re part of a community of individuals on a college campus that you respect everyone’s opinions.”
“You’re allowed to have your opinion just like everyone else is allowed to have theirs,” he added, “and we’re not harming anybody — we’re just having a poster that said ‘I love America’ — do you love America?”
“No,” responded the student.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo and on Instagram.
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