It was supposed to be a silent protest, but for the second week in a row, outraged students made their voices heard loud and clear at Friday’s meeting of the controversial Pacifica Forum.
About 300 students from across the campus community — student unions, Greek Life, the ASUO, the Survival Center, the Women’s Center — showed up at the meeting to protest the Forum. In recent months, the Forum has been roundly denounced throughout Eugene for hosting what critics call bigoted, hateful and pro-Nazi speakers.
Students began assembling in the first floor of the EMU around 2:30 p.m. to coordinate a march and construct protest signs.
Many in the crowd said the Forum was a threat to student safety, especially after last week’s meeting, at which a Forum member made a sexually suggestive comment to a female student.
Student Beth Hall said the Forum personally threatened students and made them “feel unsafe on campus.”
Cameron Kennedy, a member of Eugene’s anti-fascist Black Tea Society, agreed and said the Pacifica Forum had crossed the line and no longer belonged on campus.
“I’d say that they’ve passed the boundary of acceptable free speech,” he said.
Protest organizers originally planned the protest to be silent, with students wearing masks or duct tape over their mouths.
Shortly before the 3 p.m. meeting, the crowd marched across campus to Agate Hall chanting, “Whose campus? Our campus!”
The Pacifica Forum usually meets in the EMU, but this week it was moved to Agate Hall to accommodate the group of protesters. Nevertheless, police turned many students away after the hall was filled to its 200-person capacity. Students were not allowed to use traditional picket signs or anything else that could potentially be used as a weapon.
The meeting was supposed to be a debate between Pacifica Forum members Billy Rojas and Jimmy Marr on the symbolism of the swastika, the ancient symbol that was co-opted by Nazi Germany and is now heavily associated with Nazism.
At the Dec. 11 meeting of the Pacifica Forum, Marr gave several Nazi salutes and showed a video on the national socialist movement in the United States. For his part, Rojas stringently denied any connection or sympathy with Nazism.
As soon as the presentation began last Friday, the silent protest quickly turned vocal, with students shouting, stamping their feet and booing.
Marr left the room 10 to 15 minutes later, along with an unidentified man who gave several Nazi salutes and shouted, “Sieg heil!” — or, in English, “Victory hail!”
EMU Director Dusty Miller attempted to quiet the crowd shortly thereafter, asking them to allow the presenter to express his views, but he was shouted down, as well. Miller threatened to end the meeting, but in the end, Rojas continued anyway.
Rojas said he was attempting to remove the stigma surrounding the swastika and return it to its original meaning — a religious and cultural symbol used by various groups for thousands of years before the rise of the Third Reich. The absent Marr was supposed to give a counter-argument, but he never returned.
Throughout his presentation, Rojas was continually interrupted by the raucous crowd, which demanded to know why the Forum gave a platform to Nazis. Rojas responded, saying the Pacifica Forum was dedicated to “promoting and defending free speech.” He questioned the crowd’s own commitment to free expression.
“The behavior of the protesters in this room is very similar to the Nazis in the 1930s,” Rojas said, to which one protester shouted, “Bullshit!”
Although Rojas mainly talked about the swastika, toward the end of the meeting a student asked him about his views on homosexuality, to which he responded that homosexuality was a pathological disease and “clinical heterophobia.”
Deafening boos followed, and several students walked to the front of the hall and unfurled large anti-Pacifica Forum banners. They were escorted out of the building by police.
The meeting was adjourned immediately thereafter, and Rojas thanked the protesters for “being a great crowd and giving us so much controversy.”
The protesters’ main concern was with the fact that the Pacifica Forum was allowed to hold meetings on campus, especially in the EMU. ASUO Vice President Getachew Kassa said it was completely unacceptable for the group to meet in the student union.
“As students, we all pay the incidental fee, which funds 40 percent of the EMU, and we will not tolerate this kind of activity,” Kassa said. “For this to occur in a facility we pay for, that can’t happen.”
Vice President of Institutional Equity and Diversity Charles Martinez said the students were right to protest.
“I think students are exercising their free speech en masse and countering hate-mongering,” he said. “That’s what we want from our students.”
The administration is set to meet with concerned community members and Eugene’s Anti-Hate Task Force in the coming weeks to discuss the Pacifica Forum and review the policy that allows the Forum to meet on campus. The group’s founder, Orval Etter, is a retired professor, which gives him free access to University space, according to the policy.
Martinez said the administration would be looking at that policy specifically.
“None of it is designed to temper free speech in any way,” he said.
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