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My poli sci prof swore I should go watch the campus speaker instead of the protest, and she was dead right
Honestly I almost skipped it. My poli sci prof pulled me aside 2 weeks ago and said if I really cared about the free speech fight at our school in Eugene, I should sit through the whole talk instead of standing outside with the signs. I blew her off at first because marching felt like the point. But I went, and about 40 minutes in the speaker said something I actually disagreed with hard, and then a student stood up and calmly took him apart on it. That one exchange did more for me than 3 hours of chanting ever did. Now I'm wondering if the protest crowd and the audience crowd are even mad at the same thing. Has anyone else been told to just go listen and found it weirdly worth it?
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elliotr398d ago
That professor did you a solid. Back in 2019 my school had this big fight over a speaker coming and I spent the whole week at the counter protest with a sign and honestly I could not tell you one thing anyone said on either side. Friend dragged me to a debate on the same topic a month later and a girl in the crowd asked one question that flipped my whole view on it. Standing outside with a sign feels like doing something but you are mostly just yelling past people. Sitting in the room forces you to actually deal with the hard parts of the other side. Your point about the two crowds maybe not being mad at the same thing is real, half the protest crew usually does not even know what the speaker is going to say.
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