Sitting down to lunch outside the Memorial Union building, I’ve found a table all to myself on a beautiful, sunny day.
I’ve got my coffee, my sandwich and there’s even another student nearby strumming sweetly on an acoustic guitar. But then it happens: My perfect moment is squelched when a man strides into the area, climbs atop his soapbox and begins shouting at passers-by, shaking his fingers at them.
“You’re damned to hell!” he screams. “A great wrath is coming!”
I have to take a moment to remind myself that I’m at ASU in the year 2013, and not in some dusty town square in 11th-century Damascus.
I’m all for freedom of speech — that’s why I’m able to write this column, after all — but nobody else who sets up shop at the MU does so solely to make others feel guilty about their lives, spread hatred and intolerance or ruin my immaculate lunch.
One might argue that all this guy really wants is an audience. He’s trying to draw a crowd and a reaction. In all my semesters here at ASU, I’ve noticed that students have caught on to the “just ignore him, and he’ll quit” mentality, and since then, only one or two people have approached the crazed preacher to ask him if he’d please give it a rest.
No one pats him on the back; no one cheers him on. So what exactly is this guy getting off to? And why does he choose to harass college students of all people?
Either he’s a born-again Christian, trying to convert his gritty past into a godly future for the rest of us, or he seriously thinks he is our savior.
Think about it: College students are young, have impressionable minds and are among the most liberal citizens in the nation. We helped bring Proposition 8 to the U.S. Supreme Court and made medical marijuana widespread. We read Nietzsche, understand the economy and learn about third-wave feminism. t’s no wonder we’ve become such heathens in this guy's view. We appear to desperately need Christ’s attention.
But we aren’t the only ones who are desperate.
Last week, the preacher hadn’t had anyone so much as look in his direction for over an hour. I watched him descend from his makeshift podium to approach a group of frat guys, who had set up a fundraising table nearby. “You’re all rapists! You rape women!” he shouted, accusing them out of nowhere, in front of everyone. A scene erupted, meaning he got precisely what he wanted.
To set up a table, advertise or promote anything at all at the MU, a group must request and obtain consent from the MU offices for a specific date and time. If this preacher has been obtaining consent, how? Who signs off on him? And if not, why isn’t anyone doing something about it?
ASU is supposedly a “New American University” where tolerance, diversity and enlightenment aren’t just to be accepted, but celebrated. It’s supposed to be a place of safety and community.
Why, then, is this guy allowed to tell students their lifestyles are evil? What gives him the right to push his absurd, antiquated agenda on all of us? How many of my lunches will he be permitted to wreck?
Reach the columnist at jwadler@asu.edu or follow him at @MrJakeWAdler
