The Pacifica Forum hosted its meeting, “Everything You Wanted to Know about Pacifica Forum but were Afraid to Ask” today in the Walnut Room of the EMU, and never has so much been said by so many about so little. The meeting began quietly, with a distinctly hostile attitude permeating the room. Picking up steam, it climaxed in a student leaving the room in tears after a heated confrontation over rape epithets.

But mostly the hate speech debate ran in circles between Forum member Billy Rojas and Michael Williams, a member of the Eugene Anti Hate Task Force. The core of the debate revolved around prior Pacifica meetings which many students allege advocated violent acts towards Jews and other minority groups. Emma Kallaway had a strong opinion against the forum, stating she didn’t want the forum in the EMU at all.

Beyond what amounted to a giant circle of “You’re hurting our feelings and making us feel insecure” countered by “Because we can” the single most intelligent point was put forward at the end of the debate with “why should we care?” The Black Tea Society does nothing but give these wackos more power when they attend meetings with signs and yell “Get off my campus!” As it was well put forward, no one is rushing to join the forum, maybe it’s time to stop caring and take the wind out of these wacko’s sails.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 17:10 by Ross Coyle and is filed under ASUO, Campus, Crazy, Eugene, Free Speech, Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.