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Hate speech on college campuses topic of Chapel Hill gathering

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Monday, June 1, 2009

(Updated 5:43 am)

By
Associated Press

CHAPEL HILL (AP) — Community members are gathering to speak against hate speech on college campuses after two controversial speakers visited a North Carolina university.

Students from the University of North Carolina and various community groups will meet outside the courthouse in Chapel Hill on Monday to support a campus hate speech policy.

They also will speak against Youth for Western Civilization. The student group, which opposes what it calls mass immigration and radical multiculturalism, invited former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo and former Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode to speak on the campus in April.

Tancredo's speech was canceled after campus police used pepper spray on protesters denouncing his stance against illegal immigration. Goode's speech a week later was completed though seven people were arrested.

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obiwon

June 1, 2009 - 7:54 am EDT

Is this hate speech as defined by the UNC leftist student body for the most part or as defined by their actions when a guest speaker was invited to talk and some of the leftists acted like terrorists in stopping the discussion? I guess it all depends on what side you sit on.

ghost from white oak

June 1, 2009 - 9:05 am EDT

Why is it that hate speech is only right to left?

rayzer

June 1, 2009 - 9:39 am EDT

This is censorship, plain & simple - advocated by those who claim to support free speech!

jsipe29

June 1, 2009 - 9:49 am EDT

It's only free speech if it goes agaisnt the grain of common sense.

Panacea

June 1, 2009 - 10:09 am EDT

So, let me get this straight. This student group wants a policy against hate speech, then wants to suppress the free speech rights of a group they violently disagreed with?

Who's the pot calling the kettle black here?

Norm*

June 1, 2009 - 12:56 pm EDT

Here's their website: http://www.westernyouth.org/About/index.htm I thought the purpose of education was to learn about the world around us. That just might include learning about people who live in cultures not like our own. This might be especially important as the world continues to be a "smaller place". An on-campus organization at a University which does not support understanding but instead wants barriers to views outside of "American and Western Cultural Heritage" doesn't quite fit the model. They sure do sound like a white supremacist group to me. What do you folks think?

Panacea

June 1, 2009 - 1:21 pm EDT

Even the KKK has a right to march in public. As repulsive as that is to me, I have to support the free speech rights of those I find reprehensible, lest I find my own free speech infringed upon.

I don't like what these students are doing in trying to peg points of view they don't like as "hate speech." These are the same students who violently disrupted invited guests of the University rather than picket peacefully outside.

That kind of power can be abused. It sends the message, "If you are a UNC CH student, and we don't like your point of view you 'd best get over it because we will not allow you to dissent from the "proper" point of view."

That's why we have the First Amendment. As Patrick Henry said, "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend with my life your right to say it."

I don't see anything on their website that advocates violence. They may be a white supremacist group in disguise. But, as much as I find them distasteful, I see nothing illegal about what they are doing, and they have just as much right to organize as anyone else. That's what college is about--debating issues.

I find the idea that if you are right wing or ultra conservative, that your ideas would be unwelcome on campus to be hypocrisy.

And the insistence of students opposed to YWC to stifle their free speech just gives attention and energy to a group that should be allowed to exist in obscurity.

Get A Clue

June 2, 2009 - 2:05 pm EDT

Freedom of speech is just that, right wing, left wing, radical fringe.
I personally enjoy when morons such as Tancredo and Limbaugh and Ron Paul open their mouths to spew their hate and stupidity. Now I know who they are and I no longer have to guess. And if they were invited to speak at my school, I'd simply not attend. I'd get on with my life and accept the fact that sunshine has always proved to be the best disinfectant.