Pitt protesters promise to ‘rage on’ with more disruptions
A far-left protest group at the University of Pittsburgh is promising to “rage on” after shutting down a debate between scholars from the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute.
At least one protester was detained Wednesday night after a group of students interrupted a debate, making loud noises with kazoos to disrupt the speakers throughout the event hosted by the College Republicans.
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Now, the Pittsburgh Student Solidarity Coalition (PSSC)—which College Republicans President Marlo Safi claims is “the group that protested” during the debate—has vowed to continue its campus disruptions.
In fact, PSSC encouraged students before the event to show up with their “crew” and “get creative,” adding that “after all, there’s free Chick-fil-A involved,” leading to the eventual arrest of one protester.
“The University of Pittsburgh brings right-wing speakers to have ‘debates’ about immigration, continues to defend racist shit, and arrests any students who brings this to attention,” PSSC declared in a statement after Wednesday’s event. “The Pitt College Republican’s ‘debate’ had no room for the names of those who have lost their lives to this death machine.”
The statement goes on to say “f*ck every cop who ever did their job,” from “border police, to campus police, to the racist killers in St. Louis,” encouraging its members to “rage on in the face of state terror.”
[RELATED: Pro-Trump students have table flipped, lit stolen at Pitt]
One of the speakers from Wednesday’s event, the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky, has since recounted his experiences in an article for National Review.
Recalling the protesters’ tactics of “putting cone hats on their heads” and attempting to “loudly play kazoos,” von Spakovsky questions what they really thought they were “achieving” with their antics.
“Did they really think such infantile behavior helped advance their side of the argument and persuaded folks in the audience that they have the correct substantive view on immigration issues?” he asks, concluding that “all the protesters did was annoy the audience.”
“If the childish and thoughtless behavior of the protestors, however, was indicative of the type of intellectual rigor and cultural behavior being taught in our classrooms today, this country is indeed in trouble,” he adds.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @AGockowski
