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Compiled by Alyssa Loftis<\/strong> | Freelancer\u00a0 &\u00a0 Sage Kiernan-Sherrow<\/strong> | News Editor<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHate speech is not free speech,\u201d assured Western Oregon University\u2019s President Rex Fuller, during the Nov. 7 event titled \u201cFree Speech on Campus: Controversial Speakers, University Preparedness and Legal Considerations.\u201d\u00a0 Following a brief statement from President Fuller, ASWOU\u2019s current President, Erik Morgan Jr., and Ryan Hagemann, Western\u2019s Vice Chancellor of the Legal Counsel, allowed the audience to voice their questions and concerns. Most of the questions and concerns were regarding the controversy that stemmed from the College Republican Club inviting Patriot Prayer leader, Joey Gibson to campus last June, which was approved by the administration, despite student retaliation.<\/span><\/p>\n Much of the retaliation was due to concerns over safety. At the time of the presentation held on June 4, Gibson \u2014 who calls himself a \u201cconservative activist\u201d \u2014 had multiple court cases filed against him for inciting violence. Additionally, Gibson\u2019s ideology clashes with Western\u2019s student government values as portrayed through ASWOU\u2019s statement released before the event. What\u2019s more, students were told about the event on May 30, giving students little time to process and causing polarizing tensions to rise quickly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This was addressed during the free speech discussion, when one student asked: \u201cyou mentioned over and over that you had those weeks in advance of knowledge. You know that something like this is coming, and you know that there are going to be students that don\u2019t feel welcomed \u2026 what is the administration going to do specifically to present a much stronger stance rather than just sending out a letter that sort of has these platitudes about how we value diversity (and) ensure that there is a fail safe resource available for students?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n On the day of the event, some professors urged their students to \u201cstay at home,\u201d in fear of violence ensuing. As anticipated, protests against the event \u2014 and against the administration who allowed it \u2014 occurred shortly thereafter, although they remained nonviolent.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Director of Public Safety Rebecca Chiles defined her role here at Western, in addition to shedding light on the decisions and planning that goes into preparing for emergencies. Regarding future events like the one featuring Gibson, Chiles said, \u201cwe move forward with safety being our number one priority \u2026 always. The safety of our folks on campus is going to come first.\u201d She later added that, \u201cwe need people to attend those things; first aid, CPR … get certified \u2026 that\u2019s the best way to move forward, with all of us collaboratively to be a disaster-resilient university.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n For information regarding the June 4 event, refer to the previous article on wou.edu\/westernhowl<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Contact the authors at aloftis18@wou.edu<\/a> and howlnews@wou.edu<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Photos by Mikayla Bruley<\/span> Compiled by Alyssa Loftis | Freelancer\u00a0 &\u00a0 Sage Kiernan-Sherrow | News Editor \u201cHate speech is not free speech,\u201d assured Western Oregon University\u2019s President Rex Fuller, during the Nov. 7 event titled \u201cFree Speech on Campus: Controversial Speakers, University Preparedness and Legal Considerations.\u201d\u00a0 Following a brief statement from President Fuller, ASWOU\u2019s current President, Erik Morgan Jr., […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1094,"featured_media":11359,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"modified_by":"The Western Howl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1094"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/files\/2019\/11\/freespeech3-color-1024x683.jpg\")
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