Duke Protesters Sad Alumni Weren’t Happy They Disrupted the Speech They’d Come to Campus to Hear

When Duke President Vincent Price spoke recently to Duke alumni, protesters rushed the stage and interrupted him.

“President Price get off the stage!” they screamed.

“Whose University? Our University!”  Then, they demanded the university staff get training on how not to not offend illegal immigrants, and — in a stunning display of non sequitur reasoning — demanded that “medically unnecessary surgery on intersex infants” be stopped.

Okaaay…

The alumni — you know, people old enough to know better — were not digging the interruption. After all, they weren’t teleported to this event.  They had to make plans, decline other events, and prioritize this in their lives and schedules. I doubt they would have attended an event led by childish students making demands about intersex infants.

Some of the alumni booed, turned their backs to the protesters, and yelled profanity.  (Hey, free speech cuts both ways.) PJ Media has what happened next:

The administration stepped in to deal with the interruption, and students were shocked to find that the school wasn’t supportive of their behavior. Bryce Cracknell, a senior, was “disappointed that the administrators focused more on stopping the students than angry alumni.”

“Instead of actually going to the alumni and saying ‘that’s not appropriate’ or removing them from the space, they were more worried about us,” he continued.

“So, not only should upset alumni have been reprimanded instead of those protesting,” The College Fix wrote, “the protesters should face absolutely no consequences for their actions!”

Good grief, this combination of petulance, rudeness, and entitlement is tiresome, isn’t it?

A lifetime of coddling such behavior has done these protesters no good. These kids now need to be met with tough responses every time they pull these antics. They need to be shown that it’s never acceptable, regardless of their causes. That the world does not owe them anything.

School administrations have to take the lead in making it clear that such behavior is inappropriate. While protests are fine and all college students have a right to free speech, interrupting speakers is the breakdown of civil society.

Exactly.

The one good thing about free speech is that you can see pretty quickly who the bad guys are.  I guess if we wanted to make this a glass-half-full scenario, we could be thankful to the Duke students for being so willing to out themselves as idiots so obviously.

Hat Tip: PJ Media

Image Credit: Kyle Flood from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (Waaah!) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons