The corner between Bowman Park and the Student Union once held some of the best memories I had at the university that once was my home. From grabbing a quesadilla at late night or coming home from the frats with my best friends it was always a positive place. However on Wednesday the 23rd, I watched this former haven turn into a center for hatred. After DePauw saw religious protestors flock to campus, my view of the university shifted. Not because of what the protestors were saying. As I think we can all agree what was said was horrid, as they were attacking students individually. While I am in no way excusing the behavior of the protestors, I still have to acknowledge that the actions DePauw students took weren’t the right ones. As those of you who know me personally know, I transferred to The University of Missouri following my freshmen year at DePauw. A unique feature of the university is what we refer to as “Speakers Circle” to put it simply it’s an area in the middle of campus where anyone who wants to can come speak to the public. As you can imagine we often get a lot of these extremists on our campus, starting from about 8 a.m.-5 p.m. This means that on our way to classes we are constantly hounded with the same things that were said to DePauw students on Wednesday. So as a campus of about 35,000 undergrads, we are able to deal with these protestors without any sort of incident. While you may assume that this means we don’t care about our students or we don’t answer back to these horrendous things, you are mistaken. Today alone I participated in a student response to one of these groups. There was about 300 students, yet no one ended up in handcuffs or assaulting protestors. And yes throwing coffee on to protestors who are in their rights to be there is assault. Instead we simply took turns asking these protestors questions and took the time to share our views. So DePauw students I look to you in hopes of changing the stigma of what occurred, so that we can all take a critical look at the events that occurred and the responses to them.
Much love,
Amanda Brown
